Virtual PI Planning - Keys to Success

The reality of social distancing limits the valuable in-person coordination and collaboration an Agile Release Train receives during PI planning. However, it doesn’t mean all hope is lost!  We recently conducted a large PI planning virtually and the results exceeded our expectations.  Our team found that effective PI planning can be conducted virtually given proper preparation, an established common virtual workspace, and coordinated communication.

Preparation

A virtual PI planning event can’t be put together overnight, it’s a large operation and requires a large amount of preparation.  It is important all participants are familiar with the tools being used and understand how to use them during the event.  We conducted prior training sessions with each development team to ensure the focus of PI planning is actually on planning and not the logistics of planning.  Training events should demonstrate the technology being used, highlight the location of important information, and articulate expected deliverables with a timetable for their delivery.  These sessions are an opportunity to answer questions and address concerns prior to the event, so your teams can focus on delivering value instead of figuring out logistics.

The importance of a well-groomed Feature backlog becomes amplified during virtual PI planning.  It is essential that Features are prioritized and ready to be planned.  Product Managers need to ensure each Feature has a high-quality description, acceptance criteria, and priority discussions should be negotiated prior to the start of planning.  Digital barriers to communication and lack of accessibility make these important details difficult to coordinate in the condensed timeframe of PI planning.  This effort takes more work upfront, however the benefit of a clearly defined and prioritized backlog makes the whole event run more efficiently.

Common Virtual Workspace

A common virtual workspace is a key component for successful virtual PI Planning.  This workspace should be living documents which facilitate PI planning and contain the deliverables that will be reviewed by the key program stakeholders.  It should be user friendly, easy to navigate, and simultaneously accessed by all team members.  During our planning event, we utilized a common OneNote application to facilitate the event and it worked extremely well.

Our OneNote contained common ART pages for information relevant to all participants and team-specific pages to populate specific PI information. The list below provides examples of information that should be included in each section.

• Common Information: Detailed agenda and timeline, Program risks, Directory of teleconference rooms and dial-in information, FAQ and Troubleshooting
• Team Information: Deliverables (business objectives, risks, help needed, team capacity and load), Links to digital planning board, SAFe planning checklist, Historical velocity tracker 

The main deliverable in PI planning event is an integrated Program Board and this visual information radiator should be created in a virtual setting.  Our program used Team Plans view in Azure DevOps and it proved highly effective.  More manual methods like PowerPoint or electronic sticky notes can be utilized, but we recommend staying in the task management system used during development.  It will likely require time and preparation for teams to build proficiency using the tool in this manner, but the cost is made up in efficiency and alignment.  In addition, this effort reduces the common pain of transferring planning data to a task management system after the planning event. 

Communication

Effectively managing communication channels is the most difficult obstacle of executing a virtual PI planning event.  Trying to coordinate a large group in a single teleconference channel is not practical.  We found it effective to have numerous breakout channels which were coordinated prior to the event.  These breakout channels should include a schedule of discussions and required attendees.  We utilized a prepopulated schedule with SME and key stakeholders staying in a dedicated channel and letting teams come to them. This allowed multiple teams across the ART to get time with key individuals that are usually difficult to get a hold of.

Despite how well you plan for the event, unseen roadblocks will magically appear causing the plan to continually change.  We created a hotline coupled with a help needed OneNote page, managed by the RTE, to alleviate these issues.  This can be a Teams, WebEx or Zoom channel, or it can even be a thread in either Teams or Slack.  Regardless of the technology, having a dedicated hotline to reach the RTE will help manage communication flow.  In addition, we recommend assigning owners that are responsible for monitoring communication channels with responsibility to follow up on key issues.  Everyone needs to be clear on what tools and methods are being used, and the more familiar the team is in advance, the higher the likelihood you will mitigate communication issues during your event.

Conclusion

Virtual PI planning is not ideal, but it is also not a dead end.  Your team can succeed and have a successful event if you make the right preparations, are able to educate on the logistical plan and implement the best practices that make the most sense for your team.  Just because you are unable to meet in person doesn’t mean you can’t have a successful PI Planning event…good luck!