Field of View is defined as the angular extent of the observable world that isseen at any givenmoment.
As we all know, in Agile, planning is a continuous process. We do not believe in big planning upfront; rather planning is a continuous process and we do planning at different layers, at different stages in the life of a project. Mike Cohn refers to these multi-layer planning as Planning Onion.
At different layers of this Planning Onion, the project team focuses on varying level of details at different stages of project.
At the inner most layer, the daily planning, team focuses on the particular day (What am I planning to do today? Are there any impediments?). So, at the inner most layer, we can say that our field of view is just that particular day, we focus on one day and thats about it.
The next layer is Sprint planning, often refered to as Iteration planning. The team is now expanding the full of view and now focusing on one iteration. Team’s field of view is expanding from one day to couple of weeks (depending upon the length of the iteration.)
So as we move from the inner most layer to outer layers, the field of view is expanding. As you get to the inner layer the details become more and more clear.
If I put a flashlight in front of this planning onion, you will see that the light is brightest near the flash light at the inner most layers, and as we go the outer most layer the light becomes more and more dim, the details become hazy. So, with this flash light, you would still be able to see (kind of) the road map if you were looking far ahead but at the same time it would not give you lot of details.
