
A release
planning meeting is used to create a
release
plan, which lays out the overall project. The release plan is
then used to create iteration plans for each individual
iteration.

It
is important for technical people to make the technical decisions and
business people to make the business decisions. Release planning has a
set of rules that allows everyone involved with the project to make
their own decisions. The rules define a method to negotiate a schedule
everyone can commit to.

The
essence of the release planning meeting is for the development team to
estimate each
user story
in terms of ideal programming weeks. An ideal week is how long you
imagine it would take to implement that story if you had absolutely
nothing else to do. No dependencies, no extra work, but do include
tests. The customer then decides what story is the most important or
has the highest priority to be completed.

User
stories are printed or written on cards. Together developers and
customers move the cards around on a large table to create a
set of stories to be implemented as the first (or next)
release. A useable, testable system that makes good business sense
delivered early is
desired.

You
may plan
by time or by scope. The
project
velocity is used to determine
either