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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.

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 2 of this series, Ian Spence defines the seven deadly sins of feature preparation, and the most wasteful practices we have seen teams adopt in an attempt to be better prepared for the PI Planning event.

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.

Four, completely unofficial, rules for scaling agility.

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).

This year has bought us a new major revision of SAFe® with an emphasis on business agility and, as a consequence of this, an additional 10th Principle. Our familiar SAFe® Principle Cards have been updated as well as the specialisations which put the principles in the context of the roles within SAFe®.

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.

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.

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 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