Hey everyone,

TL;DR - Our team is struggling with good technical analysis and planning for new features added into the product, so we need some ideas to help refine our process.

Whenever there's a new feature or a big enhancement to be added into the product, many times we struggle with efficient analysis and planning. This in turn messes up the estimations, and we end up scrambling at the end of sprints either shuffling tickets around or stretching our work hours.

What I've suggested as a good starting point is to have a set of questions written down that cover the basic stuff common to most features or any new work in general. So, for any new feature request coming in from the clients, if we manage to get answers to these questions then at-least we have a good understanding of the LOE that's needed to get the work done, and also ease up the breakdown of big features into smaller tasks.

The clients thoroughly cover the business aspect of the requirements. We need some ideas to get better at the technical side of things. I've felt many times that during planning we are left wondering what should we do during planning, and it all ends up being a wild goose chase. This is the number one problem we want to address.

Also, how much time do you guys usually put into planning a new feature or a module. Eg: if at first glance, something looks like 3-4 days worth of work, than I think it's a good idea to put aside 2-3 hours where we can just brainstorm and think about all the teeny tiny details.

One last question, is it a good idea to have everyone on the team sit down during the planning meeting?

Thanks a lot in advance.