Software Release Planning

Incremental software development replaces monolithic-type development by offering a series of releases with additive functionality. To create optimal value under existing project constraints, the question is what should be done when? Release planning is giving the answer. It determines proper priorities and assigns features to releases. Comprehensive stakeholder involvement ensures a high degree of applicability of the results. The formal procedure of release planning is able to consider different criteria (urgency, importance) and to bring them together in a balanced way. Release planning is based on (estimates of) the implementation effort. In addition, constraints related to risk, individual resources necessary to implement the proposed features, money, or technological dependencies can be easily adopted into the release planning approach presented in this article.. Releases are known to be new versions of an evolving product. However, the idea of a release is not restricted to this, but can be applied to any type of periodic development where a release would correspond to an annual or quarterly time period. The special case of one release called prioritization is of even larger applicability wherever competing items have been selected under additional constraint