The Agile Manifesto’s sixth principle states: “The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation”
I guess most of us can agree with it. Face-to-face conversation and co-located teams enable osmotic communication, a term introduced by Alistair Cockburn, one of the authors of the Manifesto.
“Osmotic communication means that information flows into the background hearing of members of the team so that they pick up relevant information as though by osmosis.” (Cockburn, 2005)
But is it possible to fail when working face-to-face and succeed online? Somehow, we managed to do it, and this was our journey.
March 2019
New company. New job. Big project. My team had to deliver using SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework for Enterprise). And the project was already started when I joined. Quite a challenge. As I had no experience with SAFe before, I began getting familiarized with it.
The SAFe framework picture overwhelmed me. I started reading and one topic got my attention. There is an important big room planning event called PI (Program Increment) planning. This is where the SAFe magic happens.
“There is no magic in SAFe…except maybe for PI Planning.
Program Increment (PI) Planning is a cadence-based, face-to-face event that serves as the heartbeat of the Agile Release Train (ART), aligning all the teams on the ART to a shared mission and Vision.
PI planning is essential to SAFe: If you are not doing it, you are not doing SAFe.” — extract from https://www.scaledagileframework.com/pi-planning/
April 2019
Two weeks until my first SAFe PI planning and still a lot of unanswered questions, two of them being:
“Isn’t it cost-ineffective to bring everyone from all over Europe to a single location?” and
“How do we plan and commit for 2–3 months in advance? There are so many unknowns!”
One of my colleagues cleared it up for me: “You will experience it yourself live. No need to have everyone there, only team representatives. But we do need to prepare beforehand.” And so we did! But as it turned out, it wasn’t like anything I imagined. Several refinement sessions with our team weren’t enough.
The big day arrived. I entered the meeting room. There were 50–60 people, gathered from different countries, all preparing for the big event. I took a seat and opened the product backlog, a very distinguished Excel file. The file had sheets with features, use cases, acceptance criteria, links to external diagrams, etc.
My colleagues introduced me to some of the people. And there I was, all smiles and eager to experience the magic of the PI planning.
What followed was far from my expectations. Only a select few people were talking. Everyone else was staring at their laptops. And many questions were left unanswered. I had a very strong “No worries, we will figure it out!” feeling.
We stated that the proposed scope is impossible to deliver in one PI and most likely it will take around 5–6 months. And surprise! No one seemed to be bothered by this. This got me intrigued!
The result: two big walls stuff with post-its assigned for each team and a high score on the confidence vote. Me? Puzzled and wondering “what did I marry into?” and furthermore “how would I manage it?”
August 2019
Four months and two PI planning events later …
Without going into many details, nothing planned happened.
Remember our 5–6 months delivery statement? The scope was still not delivered. The business was unhappy — they needed predictability and faster delivery.
In short: we had to change! And so, a new model, based on cross-functional feature teams replaced SAFe.
December 2019
The feature team delivery model was a moderate success. However, the idea to switch back to the SAFe delivery model was growing. I had strong feelings against it. But the headwinds were strong to bring SAFe back, and before long we were preparing for our next PI planning event.
Nobody could have predicted the challenges that we would face during the preparation of the event.
The next PI planning event was about to take place in March 2020, when something happened:
“- Did you hear there is a virus in China?”
“- Neah, don’t worry…”
March 2020
Back to SAFe. The preparations began in January 2020, but the pandemic events increased the uncertainty. Each day we needed to adjust. Due to the lockdown situation, we had to reconfigure the event to be completely remote.
One week before PI planning everybody was in lockdown. Teams located in 9 European cities, 3 time zones span, more than 130 people working from their homes.
Remember the virus from China? 😊
Businesses were struggling to survive.
We had to succeed this time, against all odds. We had to make it!
I’m not sure how, but the entire situation enabled a magic flow within teams. Everyone had the same goal in mind: this time we would succeed.
We put all our efforts and passion to make it happen. And we did it!
Several key factors supported our success:
– Planning and preparation
– Online tools
– Flexible agenda
– Open communication
– Strong leadership
Planning and preparation
I cannot stress enough the importance of preparation and planning of the event. A timeline was in place with clear milestones.
We paid increased attention to several topics: requirements, communication, dependencies and integration.
We trained teams about what SAFe is, what PI planning involves, what success looks like, and what to focus on before and during the event.
We wanted everyone to have the same understanding.
We planned based on given priorities, taking into consideration forecasted team capacity. The product management team prepared and refined around 10 features and tech enablers. Six features made it to the integrated PI plan.
Online tools
“Individuals and interactions enabled by processes and tools” — Chris Stone, The Virtual Agile Coach
The tool that made the difference for us was Miro. Miro’s template for PI planning was very useful for real-time collaboration and synchronisation.
For tickets and documentation, we used Jira and Confluence. Later, the integration between Miro and Jira streamlined the planning.
BlueJeans provided audio-video capabilities and 20 virtual rooms were available for hot-join. We used one room for plenary sessions, others for team breakouts, retrospectives, and ad-hoc usage.
For presenting features, PowerPoint served our needs, but other online office tools can be helpful.
Slack and Microsoft Teams were available for instant messaging and group chats.
For estimates, we used the online planning poker tool PlanITpoker.
Flexible agenda
The event agenda was available online. Discussed and adjusted to meet time zone challenges and agreed with all teams. Defining the agenda was crucial for the event’s organization.
We planned for more breakout sessions and planned lunch and enough coffee breaks. We enabled the possibility to synchronise between teams and added buffers for eventual delays that could occur.
Later, we found that the agenda is a living document and we may adjust it during the event.
Open communication
Online communication tools proved to be very important. Having open communication lines for direct contact was imperative for the event success.
❗ Tip: keep close the mobile phones, you never know when the internet connections are down ❗
When you have more than 130 people working from home, you need clear communication rules to avoid chaos. The Release Train Engineer (RTE) curated those agreements during common sessions. In our case, an appointed Agile Champion acted as a local RTE for each team. This helped the online facilitation of the event. We made sure that Product Owners, Solution Analysts and Architects were available to jump in whenever needed.
Hop on and hop off principle from touristic buses applied.
Strong leadership
Constant communication and review by the governance team did offer direction and focus. There was not one, but two management review sessions, as well as plenty of, back-channel communication on Slack.
We tried to keep everyone focused on PI planning objectives. If possible, no other activities happening in parallel where our attention can span.
The event finished with a retrospective, a debrief and a virtual drink to celebrate. Don’t miss the fun part, it’s important!
August 2021
Today is my last day on the project.
Until now we held nine online PI planning events and rode four waves of Covid-19. The release train is going forward, providing value to our customers.
We had ups and downs, good days and bad days, but we learned and adapted. We gained maturity and experience. We’ve been bold. We grew together. And I am proud I was part of this amazing journey.
Special thanks to my colleagues and to everyone I worked with in the past two and a half years.
Sources
- Agile Manifesto — https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html, retrieved on August 20th, 2021
- Cockburn, Alistair (2005) “Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams” Pearson Education, Inc.
- PI Planning — https://www.scaledagileframework.com/pi-planning/, retrieved on August 20th, 2021
- The Virtual Agile Coach Youtube channel
- Agile
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