in this video I'm going to answer the question what is rolling wave [Music] planning rolling wave planning is an iterative planning approach where we plan near-term project activities in detail and give less detail to our plans for activities further in the future then as we move through our schedule we progressively El elaborate on the detail of the plans for each chunk of work the structure of rolling wave planning a typical structure for Rolling W planning might be to plan the next month or two in great detail and then to show subsequent months in far less detail months Beyond say the six month or 9month period might be in very little detail indeed nothing more than an overall strategic plan or roadmap level of detail in my experience we might plan the first 3 months in detail then the next quarter maybe the next two quarters might be in less detail and then subsequent quarters will just be shown as priorities for each quarter rather as we would do for a far out road map or a project or program strategy in terms of a work breakdown structure we might plan the near-term in terms of detailed plans on an activity by activity basis the midterm might only look at work package level of detail and the long term would just look at what kinds of activities are happening on a workstream basis and of course your work breakdown structure will evolve as you fill out the details going through the project the rolling wave planning process we start with our outline project strategy or project road map next we work with our team to determine which areas of work we need to address in the next time period for the first wave we put details on our plans for that first increment and then we start to identify what is likely to go into the second wave or second increment we do this in terms of the broad themes or the work packages we're going to deliver in that second increment and some of the major Milestones that we'll need to hit teams will then work on this first wave of our project and as project managers we will manage this paying attention to all the usual things particularly schedule and budget performance and of course at the same time we need to monitor the quality of the deliverables that our teams are producing we continue to track performance through to the end of the increment as we near the end of this first wave we start to plan the second wave in detail learning from our observations of the first wave and once we've got that second wave in detail we can start to sketch in the broad picture of what the third wave will look like and so it continues so what's the relation ship between rolling wave planning and agile project management well let no one tell you differently rolling wave planning is an Adaptive approach to project delivery like other aspects of agile project management rolling wave planning allows us to adapt ourselves to new circumstances and to new knowledge yet it is very much a part of the predictive project management tool set predictive project man managers like me have been using rolling way planning for years and years and years and years rolling way planning is great for dealing with predictive project management in contexts of high uncertainty changing requirements and the kind of lack of clarity that only time will resolve for me it absolutely puts to the LIE any contention that there is a hard distinction between addictive and agile project management and of course rolling planning predates the formal Foundation of agile project management with the agile Manifesto by many many many years but why bother with the midterm and long-term planning at all that's the kind of question that some agile practitioners might ask rolling we planning allows us to understand the broad scope scope of our project whilst not needing to plan all of it in detail this gives our team members the big picture of what we're asking them to do and the context within which they are doing it gives them a better framework within which to solve problems and make the day-to-day decisions that they're going to have to face as a result we get better problem solving better decision- making more buyin and greater motiv ation rolling W planning makes for better projects and more successful project delivery please do give this video a like if youve enjoyed it or learned from it I'll be making loads more great project management videos for you so please do subscribe to the channel and hit the Bell so you don't miss any of it and I look forward to seeing you in the next video