Planning to Plan

—The Bobs’ whiteboard title from the movie Office Space

Pre-Plan

Definition: Pre-Plan describes the activities that align and prepare ARTs within a Solution Train for PI planning.

ARTs on a Solution Train plan their work through a series of common, cadence-based PI Planning events. Aggregating these outcomes results in a PI Plan for the Solution Train (see Roadmap). The ART planning events may be conducted as a single ‘Solution Train PI Planning’ event, or ARTs may plan in a more distributed fashion. In either case, Solution Train PI Planning is a critical synchronization point across all the ARTs and suppliers. This article describes the Pre-planning activities needed to prepare ARTs on a Solution Train for PI Planning.

詳細

PI Planning is perhaps SAFe’s most powerful event as it creates business and technology alignment for an Agile Release Train (ART) and its stakeholders for the next increment of value delivery. In the context of a Solution Train, alignment before PI Planning is critical because multiple ARTs and suppliers are involved in individual or joint PI Planning sessions. Solution Train leaders must ensure their ARTs enter PI Planning aligned on a shared vision, goals, and objectives for the upcoming PI.

Figure 1 shows the SAFe practices that help Solution Trains create and maintain alignment during PI execution, as described in the Coordinate and Deliver article. Pre-planning describes Solution Train leaders’ activities to align ARTs on the upcoming Solution Train Capabilities and cross-ART dependencies they will need to address during their PI Planning events.

Plan Capability Delivery

As described by SAFe’s connected Kanban system, the Solution Train Backlog drives a portion of its ART’s backlog every PI. To prepare for ART PI Planning, Solution Train and ART leaders discuss this work and agree on a set of prioritized capabilities they anticipate the teams will be able to support in the upcoming PI.

The result is a mapping of capabilities to the ARTs (and ideally teams) required for their implementation, similar to the capability delivery board shown in Figure 2. Identifying specific teams, when possible, is helpful so the teams on each ART understand what external conversations they may need to have before or during their PI Planning events. ART leaders use the information to prepare for PI Planning as it helps inform their planning scope, briefings, and backlog prioritization.

Understand and Map Dependencies

Aligning on capability delivery helps ART leaders identify some of the cross-ART dependencies for those capabilities. But ARTs have additional, local work driven by the Solution Vision, Solution Intent, and Solution Roadmap. This local work may also have dependencies that Solution Train and ART leaders must identify before the ART PI Planning events.

A Solution Train ’dependency board’ shows work requested by one ART and provided by another in the upcoming PI. The board may also include internal and external suppliers. ARTs and their teams use this information to determine the scope and priorities for the upcoming work and to identify some of the cross-ART conversations required during their PI Planning events.

As it shows only dependencies, the dependency board does not replace the Solution Train planning board developed during PI Planning (see Coordinate and Deliver).

The Pre-Planning Workshop

A ‘Pre-Planning Workshop’ is one way to create the alignment described above. Other SAFe events, such as the Solution Train Sync (see Coordinate and Deliver), also create alignment during the PI, which may be sufficient for the ARTs to enter PI Planning. The STE determines if a workshop is necessary based on the Solution Train’s and ART’s state of alignment. When a workshop is needed, most Solution Trains run them two to four weeks before PI Planning to provide the ARTs and teams with sufficient time to absorb the information and consider their coordination requirements for PI Planning preparation and execution.

Workshop attendees typically include the Solution Train and ART leaders, Business Owners, and other relevant stakeholders. The workshop’s goals and agenda vary widely depending on the solution under development, the Solution Train’s current level of alignment, and the upcoming work. STEs use their facilitation skills to design and structure the workshop. They define the workshop’s purpose, desired outcomes, and the activities to achieve them. Workshops often include breakout sessions for the different ART representatives to discuss specific topics. For example, the STE may use a breakout session to define the implementation strategy for an upcoming capability or address a dependency between ARTs and suppliers.

Either with or without a workshop, Pre-planning results in a shared understanding of the anticipated Solution Train level work and cross-ART dependencies for the upcoming PI. Solution Train and ART leaders create this information with sufficient time for the ARTs and teams to absorb it and consider their coordination requirements for PI Planning preparation and execution. See the Coordinate and Deliver article for more details on achieving alignment throughout the PI.

Last Update: 9 October 2023