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Sprint SAFe-ly
- Scaled Agile (SAFe) combines bottom-up team processes and top-down strategic planning to scale agile across the enterprise, but when misused, it can introduce rigid bureaucracy that stymies product teams' agility. Effective PI Planning can provide teams with a bird's-eye view of obstacles ahead and create a more collaborative and strategic environment for planning and execution, with transparent discussions about trade-offs and capacity, alignment across stakeholders, and anticipation of risks and challenges.
- During PI Planning, technical team members and key stakeholders from business, operations, and marketing align priorities, manage expectations, and gain buy-in throughout the delivery cycle. It also helps facilitate effective collaboration on trade-offs and avoid misalignment in cases of dependencies.
- PI planning aims to understand the priorities, risks, and dependencies of anyone and everyone involved in the product, including cross-functional team members, to enable incorporation of different perspectives early, resulting in more robust planning and reduced last-minute surprises.
- One of the most critical aspects of PI planning is trade-off management, especially between features and technical debt. Technical debt should be reduced continuously to avoid increasing the complexity of systems and processes, which in turn would slow down delivery and make every step on the path more difficult.
- Continuous Improvement should be the goal of each PI with rapid feedback loops created through frequent feedback from stakeholders, customers, tools, and other teams, retrospectives within each PI, and open and honest feedback sessions where all voices are heard.
- Scrum of Scrums (SoS) is an in-sprint tactical meeting for teams to synchronize, discuss their learnings, and adjust their strategies.
- The most critical output of PI Planning is the priorities, risks, and dependencies, not necessarily the plan itself. Teams must be agile and resilient enough to manage unexpected changes through adaptive planning.
- Innovation, learning, and sharing are key components that teams must incorporate into every sprint and throughout each PI, empowering teams to prioritize vital growth.
- Leadership is crucial in PI Planning, setting the vision and ensuring the culture supports collaboration and continuous improvement. Psychological safety is also vital to success as teams must feel safe to challenge assumptions, raise concerns, and propose alternative solutions.
- PI Planning is an essential process in transforming product teams from reactive to proactive. It provides teams with a bird's-eye view of the jungle, allowing them to map their path more efficiently, anticipate risks and challenges, and adjust their strategies accordingly for a successful journey.
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