Agile + New Products + Milestones = Problems

"Build projects around motivated individuals.
Give them the environment and support they need,
and trust them to get the job done."

When you are building a new product in your startup or company, you need to have a launch date or you have milestone dates that must be met. Your epics are done but since your team is usually new, no one knows the team velocity. Quite a conundrum.

This seems to conflict with standard Agile tools, but it does not conflict with Agile principles. Just add a dash of project management.

1. Bring the team together and estimate the time for each Epic.
2. Group the Epics into your milestones and calculate the dates.
3. Put the milestones into a project schedule and determine the negative float.
4. Themes are your friend. Examine the themes, epics and user stories and rank them.
5. Apply lean startup techniques to validate each key hypothesis.
6. Add and subtract stories.
7. Get to work and start calculating velocity.

Remember this is a team project, but you need to be willing to ruthlessly drop stories and epics if they don't directly contribute to your core value proposition.