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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

The dbPalace team and IJI’s SAFe Fellow Ian Spence share their thoughts on the team’s successes and how globally dispersed self-managing/self-improving teams introduced significant, notable change - programme increment by programme increment.

Deutsche Bank Logo, Leads to an interview explaining the significant benefits of their Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) transformation with IJI

Now moving into its third year since introducing the Scaled Agile Framework, the dbPalace team at Deutsche Bank is well beyond the roll-out and introduction phase and results have been significant – from a 35% increase in product delivery to a 50% reduction in defect leakage to faster on-boarding of new businesses – the team has achieved significant results winning multiple industry awards. Listen to the interview.

Effective Product Management requires constant interaction with the customers and the developers, and awesome listening, negotiation, synthesis, communication and leadership skills, all of which can easily get lost if our focus is purely on which User Stories to focus on next. In this series of webinars, Ian Spence explores the value of treating Features as first class citizens as part of a hypothesis-driven approach, and how we can then use the analysis of these Features to improve our development value streams

So what does it mean for a Feature to be “Ready”? And just as importantly when do they need to be “Ready”?** Definition of Ready can be a dangerous thing leading to waterfall behavior and strict hand-overs between Product Owners and their teams. To help resolve these issues, IJI has developed a set of 6 mini-checklist cards that together define the lifecycle of a Feature to use when preparing features for PI Planning.

In EM360's Podcast interview, Ian speaks about his experiences of specialising in large-scale agile adoptions. Drawing on his expert knowledge, Ian has worked with hundreds of projects to introduce iterative and agile practices in sectors as diverse as government, telecommunications, finance, and internet start-ups.

Scaled Agile Framework for enterprise - SAFe Fellow Logo

Scaled Agile, Inc. today announced the induction of Ian Spence as a new Fellow into the SAFe Fellow program. The SAFe Fellow achievement is Scaled Agile’s most prestigious distinction, recognizing individuals who have exhibited the highest levels of thought leadership and transformational expertise for implementing the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe). Ian met the SAFe Fellow requirements based on his ongoing contribution to the evolution of the Framework, his demonstrated success in implementing SAFe implementations in a broad range of industries and disciplines, and his willingness to share his expertise publicly through writing and speaking.

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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