Blog

Stories, or User Stories, are a common way to express each backlog item for a single team to complete within one Iteration or Sprint. Lots has been written over the years about how to write good stories; so why are so many stories still bad? In this webinar we describe where the user story concept came from, the true purpose of stories and explain ways that teams can avoid falling into the trap of doing work rather than delivering value. We describe how in SAFe the purpose of stories can be different to other agile development practices, since SAFe describes a Feature as being a releasable item, not an individual story. And we explain strategies to slice a SAFe Feature into stories.

A single backlog of work shared by many people focuses and aligns their work towards the most important work items. In SAFe, an ART Backlog of Features is used to align the work of multiple teams in the ART to the most important work items. However there are many pitfalls that must be avoided when writing Features for the ART backlog. Bad Features will result in poor work throughput, unaligned and disempowered teams. In this webinar we describe some of the strategies you can follow when writing Features to encourage agility as well as improve productivity.

A single backlog of work shared by many people focuses and aligns their work towards the most important work items. In SAFe, an ART Backlog of Features is used to align the work of multiple teams in the ART to the most important work items. However there are many pitfalls that must be avoided when writing Features for the ART backlog. Bad Features will result in poor work throughput, unaligned and disempowered teams. In this webinar we describe some of the strategies you can follow when writing Features to encourage agility as well as improve productivity.

How do Epics get work done? How do they get work done in a manner that respects the Lean/Agile Principles and Values rather than replicating the old processes.

What should you be considering when approving Epics? The Epic needs to be considered within the context of the Portfolio rather than in isolation. What is that wider portfolio context?

An exploration of the activities that an Epic Owner needs to perform to progress an Epic through it's lifecycle.

PI Planning is a core mechanic within SAFe; it’s one of the few things that SAFe does that is unique to it amongst all the other scaling frameworks. This series of articles presents IJI's interpretation of how PI planning should be done and, maybe more importantly, why we think it should be done this way. This article covers retrospection and adaption of the PI Planning process and what to be wary of when adapting.

PI Planning is a core mechanic within SAFe; it’s one of the few things that SAFe does that is unique to it amongst all the other scaling frameworks. This series of articles presents IJI's interpretation of how PI planning should be done and, maybe more importantly, why we think it should be done this way. This article covers the principles that underpin PI Planning and the preparation necessary for PI Planning.

The third of three articles exploring organising around value. This article tackles Funding and Reporting; how does the organisation know whether the Development Value Streams are doing the right thing. For this to work the organisation needs to provide clarity on the destination the Development Value Streams should be heading for.