Traditionally, this has occurred in a very material way: the two-day planning session might see anywhere from 100 to 200+ members of ART travel from around the world to a single site to plan for their next Increment of work.
During this stage, Product Managers define the Program vision in the form of top forthcoming Features, or teams identify & plan activities to help those features. Once work is scheduled, Product Owners & their development teams define cross-team dependencies, which are conveyed to the ART on a physical Program Board using string (Spaghetti Board).
Physical PI Planning Challenges
After each day, it is someone’s responsibility to enter this information into Jira. Even after that, there is no natural mechanism to graphically display dependence connections in Jira, such as the Spaghetti Board. Because of this lack of insight into dependencies, Release Train Engineers will frequently wrap up the physical Program Board and hang it outside their office. Not suitable, especially for remote team members.
We know from communicating with clients that face-to-face planning of Program Increments is vital. However, organizations experience specific frequent issues while conducting physical PI Planning meetings. These are some examples:
- The cost of geo-distributed businesses flying in staff for the two-day event (can be up to 5 times a year)
- Difficulties communicating information to non-participating team members following the event (dependency visualization in Jira lacks the context of the physical Program Board)
- After the planning phase is completed, the ability to follow the Program’s progress with scattered team members is required.
Execute distributed PI planning sessions using Jira
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Business Context
Business owners give a presentation about “the current health of the business and provide a viewpoint on how effectively existing solutions are serving current Customer demands” to start the event.
Easy Agile Programs and Jira
For instance, business owners can connect to a Confluence page in the Program details section to share a video-recorded presentation across the entire ART. This presentation may be used during the whole planning session and is not just available to team members who are physically present. -
Solution/Product Vision
The current program vision will then be presented by Product Management, often in the shape of a list of the top 10 planned features.
Easy Agile Programs and Jira:
Program Managers may plan their Jira Features (Epics) into a visual timeline for the duration of an Increment rather than listing the top 10 Features in list-like presentations. The Increment Roadmap makes ensuring that all teams are in agreement on the planned features for a program increment and gives all stakeholders visibility into the path of the Program. -
Team Breakouts
Teams independently estimate the capability for each Sprint in the Program during the breakout session. Teams record any new or current issues from their backlog that will aid in achieving the specified Features on sticky notes. The preliminary plans from each team will be posted on a wall for the entire ART to see. Teams identify dependencies throughout this procedure by displaying them on a standard Program Board using sections of string sandwiched between post-it notes.
Easy Agile Programs and Jira:
There is a “Team Planning Board” for each team. Within every Program Increment, Product Owners and their teams choose the capacity for each Sprint.
Teams can add current issues from their backlog or new ones to the planning board to promote Feature completion when the Feature Roadmap is shown to them at the beginning of the planning session. Cross-team dependencies are created and shown using straightforward drag and drop.
The ART as a whole may see each team’s draught plan in the Increment Overview.
Distributed teams can take part in digital PI Planning sessions thanks to teams’ ability to promote cross-team planning and dependency management.
The physical Program Board that was generated during the two-day PI Planning session is represented digitally by the Increment Overview. By digitizing this, we can avoid processing information twice and monitor the development of the feature in real time. -
Plan Review and Rework
Teams submit their strategy to the ART and negotiate scope, cross-team dependencies, and resources throughout the closely timed session. Post-it notes to record any changes to estimating, resources, or storylines. Strings are relocated to handle dependency problems.
Easy Agile Programs and Jira:
Reworking the plan is quick and easy due to the ability to inline change problem estimates and summaries in real-time. Every modification made to an issue in Easy Agile Programs is immediately updated in Jira.
Easy agile programs and agile training with Cognixia
The latest version of the Scaled Agile Framework, SAFe 5.1, was released in January 2020 and includes a knowledge foundation of established integrated principles, practices, and competencies. SAFe helps lean firms achieve business agility by combining lean, agile, and DevOps principles and frameworks. SAFe’s most recent version is founded on seven fundamental competencies: lean-agile leadership, team, and technical agility, agile product delivery, enterprise solution delivery, lean portfolio management, organizational agility, and a culture of continuous learning. Scaled Agile was established on the core idea that better software and systems make the world better. SAFe 5, on the other hand, has the ambitious objective of allowing the business agility required for enterprises to compete and thrive in the digital era.
The Leading SAFe® 5.1 training is designed to expose participants to the SAFe foundations and provide advice on the ideas and practices that will allow them to drive the Lean-Agile transformation confidently. The SAFe Agilist training course provides vital skills for successful leadership in today’s remote & hybrid situations with teams scattered across regions. The SAFe Agilist Training course offers a better knowledge of how businesses may achieve business agility and how SAFe can be applied inside an organization. The training will concentrate on how SAFe may increase quality, employee engagement, efficiency, and time-to-market.
The SAFe Agilist certification training course provides you with all of the skills and information you need to help the business align around shared goals and objectives. It will also help you enhance value generation and workflow from planning to delivery. Furthermore, the SAFe Agilist training & certification program will shed light on what makes organizations more customer-centric and assist participants in learning how to execute SAFe alignment & planning events, such as PI planning.
In this online SAFe 5.1 certification course, you will cover the following modules –
- Introducing the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
- PI planning
- Embracing a Lean-Agile mindset
- Executing and releasing value
- Understanding SAFe principles
- Implementing an Agile release train
- Coordinating large value streams
- Ledng the Lean-Agile enterprise
- How to thrive in the digital age with business agility
- How to establish a team and technical agility
- Build solutions with Agile product delivery
- Explore lean portfolio management
Prerequisites
The Leading SAFe course is available to everyone, irrespective of expertise. However, it is strongly advised that persons planning to take the SAFe® 5 Agilist (SA) certification test have the following:
- At least 5 years of expertise as a software developer, tester, business analyst, product manager, or project manager.
- Prior Scrum work experience
