Agile organizations are winning more customers because they can adapt faster to changing market requirements. But how can organizations become Agile? Thousands of organizations are using the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe) to deliver value early and often.
SAFe offers a proven framework to increase time to market, productivity, employee engagement, and improve quality. Hoylu sat down with Enterprise Agile Coach Milan Zbirkovsky to discuss some of the SAFe best practices. Below are three things to consider.
1. Develop a Growth Mindset
SAFe encompasses many bodies of knowledge, said Milan, integrating the power of Agile, Lean, and DevOps into a comprehensive operating system. A Lean-Agile Mindset requires leaders to grow the others, be inspirative lifelong learner with high maturity of emotional intelligence. Leaders have the influence to drive change within the organization by inspiring behaviors and decision making.
2. PI Planning is Essential to SAFe
If you are not doing PI Planning, you are not doing SAFe, said Milan. It’s all about alignment and synchronization. “Through PI Planning. we are building a solid plan that plays together,” he said. “PI Planning is one of the crucial parts where we translate enterprise strategy into execution.”
PI Planning is a mostly two-day event, multiple teams, multiple sprint planning exercise. The sessions determine the overall plan and objectives for an Agile Release Train (ART). The teams plan and define the work that needs to be done, in correct priority and implementation order, as well as identify risks and dependencies and addressing them as soon as possible.
The goal of PI Planning is to align strategically for the next Program Increment and embrace cross-team collaboration to build transparency and ultimately build amazing products. (Read more in A Beginner’s Guide to PI Planning).
3. Software Solutions can Help the Teams Stay Aligned & Coordinated
PI Planning is essential for the success of organizations. In SAFe, the RTE (Release Train Engineer) has the dedicated role of facilitating the PI Planning. This role is key for coordinating all the effort and preparing a space, which could be the physical big room or in a virtual space. PI Planning will stay virtual in most cases as it’s proven to be more effective, said Milan. So it’s important to find the right digital collaboration tool to manage these sessions. To be successful, the one you select must be easy to use and improve the way your team naturally works. The right collaboration tool is making PI Planning effective with valuable use of time! See also: Tips to help you select an easy-to-use PI Planning solution.)