Release planning looks ahead to the release of a product, often a few months ahead of the start of a project. Release planning defines and re-defines the product backlog, and may involve refining larger user stories into a collection of smaller stories. Release planning provides the basis for a test approach and test plan spanning all iterations. Release plans are high-level.

After release planning is done, iteration planning for the first iteration starts. Iteration planning looks ahead to the end of a single iteration and is concerned with the iteration backlog.

In iteration planning, the team selects user stories from the prioritized release backlog, elaborates the user stories, performs a risk analysis for the user stories, and estimates the work needed for each user story. If a user story is too vague and attempts to clarify it have failed, the team can refuse to accept it and use the next user story based on priority.