Speculate Summary

Product development hinges on managing information and how that information evolves over the course of a project as learning takes place. This progression of information requires a framework, or model, that assists in getting the right information to the right people at the right time, guides project participants , and monitors real progress.

There are three key activities that need to be completed prior to beginning feature developmentarticulating a product vision, defining the project's scope and constraints, and creating an iterative, feature-based delivery plan. The last of these is the primary deliverable from the Speculate phase. Once the release plan has been completed, other common project management planning artifactssuch as expenditure budgetscan be finalized. The fact is, when you get the feature list and release plan done, the rest is relatively easy!

While a Speculate phase may sound a little, well, speculative , in reality the practices presented in this chapter have proven highly reliable in extracting useful planning information early in development. Feature-based planning forces the engineering and customer teams to understand the product in ways that task-based planning rarely does. With the replanning that occurs at the end of iterations and milestones, plans and the product evolve as information is gained through experimentation and constant feedback.