To be successful at enterprise scale agile, organizations must connect the work of their agile teams, to their strategy and to what they deliver. At the core of scaling agile is release planning which must be done together in a ceremony called Big Room Planning

1. 10 Years of
Big Room Planning
MARTIN BURNS
27 September 2017

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3. Deadly
Context
Warning
DO NOT
do
Big Room
Planning
If this is your whole product org
Photo: Wikimedia

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Vision
Roadmap
Release
Iteration
Day
Long-Range Planning
Mid-Range Planning
Short-Range Planning

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6. Mid-Range Planning
is CORE to
Agility at Scale

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9. Purpose

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11. “95% of a company’s
employees are unaware of,
or do not understand,
its strategy.”
Harvard Business School

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If you can’t deliver on your
strategy, it doesn’t matter
how good your strategy is.

14. Better Plans

15. What is life like without
release planning?

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Which of these is eating your budget?
What % of budget?
1. Dependencies that
block
2. Risks that explode
3. Unrealistic plans
4. Unstaffed priorities
5. Frequent pivots
6. Lack of commitment
7. Late delivery

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How Many Decisions?
How Fast?
…Reducing ’DiP’

19. Happier People

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What are participants saying?

22. Results…

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What are customers saying?
We wish
we’d done
it sooner
We
delivered
earlier than
expected
Silos are
broken
down
Quantity &
Quality of
collaborations
go up
More
objectives met;
with fewer
heroics
People are
happier
Increased
decisions
made in
real time

25. Make the INVESTMENT

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Video:
https://www.ca.com/gb/collateral/videos/big-room-planning-in-action-harnessing-the-power-of-agile-at-scale.html

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Summary of Learning Points
1. Context matters – BRP is for Team of Teams delivery organisations
2. Holistic thinking, focused on value realisation gives better results
3. Linking strategy to execution is critical for Agility at Scale
4. BRP gives better, more reliable plans faster, with happier people,
who are more committed to execution
5. We drink our own champagne; BRP is a long-standing CA/Rally
method that we use for our own products and with customers

28. Senior Principal Transformation Consultant
Martin.Burns@ca.com
Martin Burns
@ca_agile
slideshare.net/CAInc
linkedin.com/company/ca-technologies
ca.com

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Logistics Tips
• A large enough space, with
‘breathing room’ - well stocked with
supplies
• Order healthy food; it’s a long day &
is seen as an investment in the time
together. Good food makes a real
difference
– Corollary: blood sugar often dips;
candy for the tables helps a lot
• Different coloured stickies for
different things; try to be able to read
at a distance
• Chat or group messaging for all
participants to run cross-community
comms
• Strong, accessible WiFi to handle all
the connections
• A/V set up and thoroughly tested
in advance
• Fund a bar tab for the end of day
one while Mgt Review is taking
place.

30. Thank You.