How to prepare for SAFe Global Release Planning(PI planning)

1. Ashutosh Rai

2.  Why Common Release Planning
 Preparation Required
 Dummy Release Planning
 RTE & Support(local)
 From Portfolio
 From Product Management
 From Architects
 From Teams

3. "Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.“
Dwight D. Eisenhower
 Transparency among all teams and stakeholders
 Organizational alignment for common goal.
 Team of teams alignment for a common goal.
 Team collaboration for faster decision making
 Team understanding on the importance of achieving goals
 Opportunity for teams to decide scope as par capacity
 Teams confidence for goal commitment
 Opportunity to collaborate upfront for dependencies and risks.
Quality
Cost Time
Scope
Fixed
Variable

4. Jul-Sep
Every one in team understands release planning
Every one in team understand the objective of release planning
Have workshops with all stakeholders and teams
Have stakeholders prepare for valuable business goal
Have product management decide most valuable 10 features
Have pre alignment session with Product manager, system architect and team PO’s
Have PO’s align with teams to refine S+2 sprints at-least
Have PO’s discuss the high level goal with the team
When will you do this?
May 15th For first timers
June first week Evolve with experience
*Recommendation based on our experience

5.  Have an integrated environment ready
 Have teams understand the importance of working on a
common cadence
 From a cross functional scrum team to a cross functional team
of teams for supporting each other to achieve common goal.
 Have a sprint DoD and a release DoD
 Have all resources in place
 Video conferencing
 Collaboration tool
 Have one representative from each location fly to the location
where business people are available.
 Book required rooms at each location
Release DoDSprint DoD
*Recommendation based on our experience

6.  Have an integrated environment ready
 Have teams understand the importance of working on a
common cadence
 From a cross functional scrum team to a cross functional team
of teams for supporting each other to achieve common goal.
 Have a sprint DoD and a release DoD
 Have all resources in place
 Video conferencing
 Collaboration tool
 Have one representative from each location fly to the location
where business people are available.
 Book required rooms at each location
*Recommendation based on our experience

7. *Recommendation based on our experience

8. *Recommendation based on our experience

9.  Use some predefined workshop to simulate
vision, feature backlog and stories to have a
dummy release planning with all key
stakeholders and teams.
 This will help to understand the purpose and
outcome expected from release planning.
 This also helps to create consensus among all
involved.
 This helps to understand the preparation
require for actual release planning.
*Recommendation based on our experience

10.  For each ART you need one RTE the facilitator for
release planning.
 How the RTE will work in global context with
teams at 4 different locations.
 Fly everyone at one location
 Use technology (Video Conferencing)
 With technology RTE need some local support
 One of the local SM can help RTE while
 Conducting Planning SOS
 Supporting teams for aligning with global teams
 Supporting management review and problem solving
 Supporting to identify business value from teams objectives
per sprint.
*Recommendation based on our experience

11.  Leadership talks about WHAT & WHY
 Leadership is transparent with everyone
 Arrange Video conferencing for this message.
 Avoid phone calls (not effective specially when
phone is on mute)
 Answer questions from the teams
 Present Long term (1 Year) , Mid term( 6
Months) and Short term (3 Months) goals.
 Roadmap helps team to motivate, it also help
team to create better architecture and solutions.
*Recommendation based on our experience

12.  Product manager should have linked top 10
prioritized features related to the short or mid
term vision (based on product)
 Product manager should have clear business
value identified for priorities.
 For whom
 Enabling opportunities
 How will it impact
 Priority helps team to decide scope based on
capacity.
*Recommendation based on our experience

13.  Identify relevant architectural epics/stories
 Worked with Product management to have
right enabler stories in backlog
 Common tools and technologies for all teams
 Have Backlog items for NFR’s in place.
*Recommendation based on our experience

14.  Understands the importance of their
participation during release planning
 Ready with references for estimation
 Its all about one single big team and not about
the scrum/ kanban team.
*Recommendation based on our experience

15. Ashutosh Rai
@ashurai77
Ashutosh Rai
(ashurai77@hotmail.com)