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The first in a series of three articles exploring organising around value. This article tackles Aligning Around Value; why you should align around value and some of the challenges that that presents to organisations that have not historically focused on value.

The second in a series of three articles exploring organising around value. This article tackles Development Value Stream Patterns; what are some of the common structural patterns that are seen when trying to organise around value.

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.

PI Planning

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.

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.

Navigating towards achievable objectives

The management review forms a key check-point mid-way through a PI Planning event that allows the stakeholders and facilitators of the event to offer sensible steering to the teams within the train. In this short set of blog posts we’ll share our approach to the management review and whilst it is impossible to predict what might happen in a planning event we can share some of our stories to highlight the sort of challenges that organisations might face.

Image of part of a concept map used by IJI consultants to explain Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) principles in this instance Portfolio Events - exploring the decisions being made.

In this series of posts we wil explore the Events that either perform, schedule or track the activities that affect the Lifecycle of an Epic. This first post looks at the activites that the Portfolio needs to perform in order for it to make progress.

Image of part of a concept map used by IJI consultants to explain Lean Portfolio Management (LPM) principles in this instance structuring portfolio events.

In this series of posts we wil explore the Events that either perform, schedule or track the activities that affect the Lifecycle of an Epic. This second post looks at how the events that run the Portfolio could be structured.

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.

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.

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