{"id":9258,"date":"2019-09-05T15:54:52","date_gmt":"2019-09-05T18:54:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.plataformatec.com.br\/?p=9258"},"modified":"2019-09-30T10:11:19","modified_gmt":"2019-09-30T13:11:20","slug":"how-to-manage-deadlines-in-agile-environments-get-to-know-the-reality-check-tool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.plataformatec.com.br\/2019\/09\/how-to-manage-deadlines-in-agile-environments-get-to-know-the-reality-check-tool\/","title":{"rendered":"How to manage deadlines in agile environments? Get to know the Reality Check Tool"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

TL;DR: The Reality Check is an agile tool designed to check if a deadline is feasible given the project context<\/strong>. It works by formulating a hypothesis<\/strong>, which can be updated every week by the technical team, where we organize our demands and the weeks before the delivery date. It only requires a simple board – physical or virtual. This tool is an alternative (or complement) for Burnup charts, Monte Carlo simulations, schedules, or other practices and techniques.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The beginning<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In 2017 I was working on a project to release a new product for our customer. The team had many challenges, including an aggressive deadline. The reason for such a tight deadline was simple: the customer expected to deploy the new product in an opportune moment in Brazil because of changes in the financial scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When will the team deliver the next feature? When will the project be delivered? Will the deadline be respected? These are examples of questions the team had been received regularly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We needed answers to those questions, but I didn\u2019t have any past releases of the product or techniques based on legacy data or statistics (for example, a Burnup Chart with predicted dates). I didn\u2019t want to build a schedule either. So, I asked for advice from some colleagues from Plataformatec.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Searching for ideas to resolve that situation, one of my work friends told me about a specific ceremony. This idea had been used in a similar condition in 2015, and I got interested. The practice consisted of putting all demands (such as user stories) on post-its and organizing them per week until the last before the deadline, forming a timeline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They didn\u2019t have a name for this ceremony, so they chose \u201cReality Check\u201d, because it\u2019s used to verify if it\u2019s possible to meet the number of demands in that specific time range (considering other variables too, such as the size of the team, technical environments, dependencies with other teams or systems, etc.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want to know more, you can read the blog post Bringing continuous improvements into your agile process: The Reality Check Ceremony<\/a>, written by my friend Lucas Colucci.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evolving the idea: a new tool<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The idea seemed to be exciting, but in that situation, I was looking for something solid because it was necessary to keep the customer expectation aligned all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I thought: if I turn the ceremony into a tool, adding more features and practices? I built a board with our weeks, and the deadline for the first release (according to the expectation from the CEO and the Head of Products, both from our customer). I added other feature concepts to the board too, and I talked to some work friends to get more ideas. Finally, I showed it to the team, and we built the first Reality Check Tool of the project. Below you can see one real photo of the result (with blur to preserve the confidentiality of our customer):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The subtitles are missing, so I\u2019ll explain the details below. By the way, I drew that subtitle next to the tool so that all people could understand each part of the Reality Check. The details are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n