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SAFe Dispersed PI Planning Diagram - how to run PI Planning events remotely

With more and more people working from home, many organisations that have adopted SAFe® are having to adapt their processes in order to accommodate completely dispersed teams.

Image depicting the focus on writing good PI objectives - the title / logo for the series of four blogs around Writing good Planning Increment PI Objectives

A short series of articles on crafting effective, well-formed objectives as part of the SAFe® Program Increment (PI) / Big Room Planning activity. A series of four related articles: 1. Why do we need PI Objectives when we have Features? 2. Writing good PI Objectives 3. PI Objectives and the PI Planning Process 4. PI Objectives Beyond PI Planning: Reaffirming and Monitoring Your Commitments

Image depicting the focus on writing good PI objectives - the title / logo for the series of four blogs around Writing good Planning Increment PI Objectives

A short series of articles on crafting effective, well-formed objectives as part of the SAFe® Program Increment (PI) / Big Room Planning activity. A series of four related articles: 1. Why do we need PI Objectives when we have Features? 2. Writing good PI Objectives 3. PI Objectives and the PI Planning Process 4. PI Objectives Beyond PI Planning: Reaffirming and Monitoring Your Commitments

Image depicting the focus on writing good PI objectives - the title / logo for the series of four blogs around writing good Planning Increment PI Objectives

A short series of articles on crafting effective, well-formed objectives as part of the SAFe® Program Increment (PI) / Big Room Planning activity. A series of four related articles: 1. Why do we need PI Objectives when we have Features? 2. Writing good PI Objectives 3. PI Objectives and the PI Planning Process 4. PI Objectives Beyond PI Planning: Reaffirming and Monitoring Your Commitments

A magnifying glass observes some text from the article 'Writing Good PI Objectives'

A short series of articles on crafting effective, well-formed objectives as part of the SAFe® Program Increment (PI) / Big Room Planning activity. A series of four related articles: 1. Why do we need PI Objectives when we have Features? 2. Writing good PI Objectives 3. PI Objectives and the PI Planning Process 4. PI Objectives Beyond PI Planning: Reaffirming and Monitoring Your Commitments

Many teams struggle to let go of their waterfall, silo mentality when they first transition to agile ways-of-working. In particular they shy away from collaboratively working on the definition, evolution and implementation of their backlog items insisting on up-front definition of Features and Stories, and clean handovers between the Product Owners and the Development Teams. This is an issue that we see with all the various agile methods but which always seems to get compounded whenever teams try to scale. So what are the worst things you can do to compromise the agility of your program when using Features? In Part 4 of this series, Ian Spence provides some practical tips to avoid waterfalling your features.

Free Agile Resources - Feature State Cards from Essence Agility Pack

Many teams struggle to let go of their waterfall, silo mentality when they first transition to agile ways-of-working. In particular they shy away from collaboratively working on the definition, evolution and implementation of their backlog items insisting on up-front definition of Features and Stories, and clean handovers between the Product Owners and the Development Teams. This is an issue that we see with all the various agile methods but which always seems to get compounded whenever teams try to scale. So what are the worst things you can do to compromise the agility of your program when using Features? In Part 3 of this series, Ian Spence provides guidance on what it means for a Feature to be Ready.

Safe Principles Card Image

The SAFe® principles are very powerful but our coaching and consulting experiences have shown that, as currently presented, they are far less accessible and intuitive than the Agile Manifesto and its supporting 12 Agile Principles. In line with the release of 5.0 of SAFe®, which simplifies and enhances the SAFe® big picture, we have produced a set of cards that we believe do the same for the underlying SAFe® Principles. The cards present the ten principles in a self-contained, readily accessible fashion — allowing executives, leaders, and team members to readily understand the principles and quickly assess their relevance. Download the cards today to help your teams be SAFe®. This blog post introduces the SAFe Principle Cards produced by Ian Spence (SAFe Fellow, SPCT) with help from Brian Kerr (SPC) and Brian Tucker (SAFe Fellow, SPCT).

Preparing Features for PI Planning: SAFe

Many teams struggle to let go of their waterfall, silo mentality when they first transition to agile ways-of-working. In particular they shy away from collaboratively working on the definition, evolution and implementation of their backlog items insisting on up-front definition of Features and Stories, and clean handovers between the Product Owners and the Development Teams. This is an issue that we see with all the various agile methods but which always seems to get compounded whenever teams try to scale. In this short blog series we will look at how this tendency towards waterfall thinking can seriously hinder team’s adopting SAFe® and working with a Program Backlog full of Features. We will also provide some advice on how to get your Features Ready without succumbing to premature Story writing.

Many teams struggle to let go of their waterfall, silo mentality when they first transition to agile ways-of-working. In particular they shy away from collaboratively working on the definition, evolution and implementation of their backlog items insisting on up-front definition of Features and Stories, and clean handovers between the Product Owners and the Development Teams. This is an issue that we see with all the various agile methods but which always seems to get compounded whenever teams try to scale. So what are the worst things you can do to compromise the agility of your program when using Features? In Part 4 of this series, Ian Spence provides some practical tips to avoid waterfalling your features.

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