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Program Increment Planning

Program Increment Planning

Pre-PI effectiveness: There was some flux in incoming projects. Digital Project Manager assignment missing for some projects. 4 projects did not do any Pre-PI sessions due to such gap. Teams could only put high level stories without enough story pointing for such work. Pre-PI discussions effective for ongoing projects or new projects which are identified early in PI planning process

Learnings
Blockers:
Constant flux in pre-PI prioritization. There is still significant amount of Projects which are flowing in late, or discretionary projects that are in-scope, in the PI planning process
Leadership support to ensure priorities remain stable during PI Period (during execution phase)

Impediments:
DIGITAL Project Manager assignment is key for operationalizing the Value Stream based PI planning process. Also Project Managers need to make sure all key members participate so all dependencies(hard) can be tracked early in the process
Feature decomp & HL sizing is key to improving confidence of PI commitments
Project decomposition / Feature readiness impacts PI effectiveness

Best Practices:
Add PI Planning tasks to team backlog, to ensure time commitment
MVP identification will help determine project scope that can be delivered within the PI period

Retro Feedback: 4.19 PI planning retrospective.pptx

Other aspects that impact agile maturity
Lack of QA regression automation is impacting team productivity
Features committed on the PI day need to make sure meet the VS KPI

Feedback
As an Inspect & Adapt Function, we interviewed the Apply VS and PI Coaching partners and their feedback generally fell into six categories
Strategy and Leadership
The Value / Benefit of moving to a PI model is not completely understood
Desire to see the pilot hypothesis and metrics to determine success or failure
Questions about how KPIs and projects come together
Training, Coaching and Team Readiness
Overviews were provided; however, this shouldn’t take the place of more detailed and thorough training
Experienced coaching was invaluable; however, spread thin and some were unable to provide support
Consider shifting coaching focus to include Project Level
Using concepts of SAFe, but not organized to SAFe; training inconsistent between our approach and SAFe
Making Work Ready
The value of feature decomposition was not well understood; features were not decomposed and ready for PI
Pre-PI Planning was not well attended; likely due to lack of understanding; Teams operated “Just in Time”
Flux of projects inhibited feature readiness
Roles and Accountabilities
New concepts for PMs; a lot of confusion about accountabilities.
Lacked a single thread of accountability (Digital PM) which contributed to the readiness gap for PI Planning
Some POs, VSDM, VSL were new to the concept & needed to gain sufficient experience and training to lead teams
Tooling and Support
Using a Bauer Board was helpful; however not everyone has the training or skill
A more comprehensive tool to make dependencies transparent to every member of the team would be helpful
Excel was default team wide for transparency. Scaling to 84 teams with excel as a foundation is risky
Organizational Readiness and Alignment
Competing work within a vertical Value Stream (pieces/parts of projects). Concerns about being messy to scale
Challenging to manage scheduling / attending Pre-PI & PI sessions across VSs. Can current model scale effectively?
Each VS has limited view of the total project needs; lots of brainstorming about shifting to a horizontal VS model to support business partners

SAFe Implementation Roadmap
Whichever approach we take, we need a change
Achieving the business benefits of Lean-Agile development at Scale is not trivial.
SAFe has realized that businesses getting to scale typically follow a similar path
A Change Management plan is important and usually starts with a single ART or VS and gradually expands as the organization gains experience
Transitioning from traditional and Scrum to SAFe can take 12+ months and requires substantial work; however the benefits can start to be achieved early

Options to Scale
Big Bang – Single Phase
Description
All Value Streams convert at the same time
Target Start Q4 2019
Maturity Realized mid-2020
Pros
Gets everyone into a PI Rhythm more quickly; teams use new terms and planning to same cadence for better synergies
Better metrics as teams/VS will learn and achieve the same level of maturity together
Project level commitment will be more effective if all VS participate in PI Planning
Cons
Higher training and support needs within a limited timeframe; we may lack the resources
Limited ability to learn from prior PI rollouts
Sink or swim for employees learning new model
Scheduling Pre-PI and PI sessions may put a severe & unknown drag on our organization
Multi Phased Approach (Recommended)
Description
Two or Three Quarterly Phases
Target Start Q4 2019
Maturity Realized mid to late -2020
Pros
Learnings rolled forward to each future phase
Less overall support supporting personnel required. Experienced support can roll from phase to another
Creates experience and change champions with each successful adoption
More Measured pace of change
Cons
Inconsistent Adoption: Teams with dependencies on other teams that will transform in a different timeline creates complications and pushback
Creates confusion for projects by having PI teams and non-PI teams working together because of the different attitudes and commitments they bring
May lack commitment from leadership if not all teams are converting together
Scheduling Pre-PI and PI sessions may still put a severe & unknown drag on our organization
There is inherit risk in both options: organizations of our size can take 12-18 months to realize scale

Plan to Implement: 2 track approach (Adoption & Continuous Improvement)
Adoption Flow
Leadership Awareness
Selection
Socialize
Coaching, Training & Support
Pre-PI
PI Planning
Continuous Improvement
Monitoring commitments of previous PI
Socialization Next Steps
Agreement on Big Bang or Phased Approach
Leadership socialization (what leaders?)
Job Aids and Training Material
PI Purpose and Overview
Feature Writing, Estimating, and Decomposition
Job Roles and Interaction Models
PI Planning Logistics and Templates
Tooling standards & requirements to support PI
Will need close collaboration and cooperation from VS and project leadership

Support will be needed to migrate from Scrum to SAFe
# of VS
Phase over 2 Quarters
~ 12 VS per quarter (45 Teams per quarter)
or
Phased over 3 Quarters
~ 8 VS per quarter (28 Teams per quarter)
Coaching Requirements
Team Level and VS Level Coaching Recommended:
9 Team Coaches Recommended - 1 coach per 5 teams
4-6 Program Coaches Recommended – 1 per 2/3 VSs
SAFe and Job Role Training Program Recommended
AIM Support
5 People Current
Requesting 2 to 3 incremental people to help support rollout
Activities: Socialization, Office Hours, Ceremony Setup, Project Manager Pre-PI Support, VSDM Support
Tooling Support
No Incremental Support Required:
Jira, Bauer Board, Agile Central, Confluence