Preparing for PI Planning (30%) Flashcards

1
Q

Who takes the lead in preparing for PI Planning

A

Product Managers

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2
Q

What does PI in PI Planning stand for?

A

Program Increment

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3
Q

What is PI Planning?

A

A cadence-based event to align the agile teams of an ART to a shared mission and vision

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4
Q

What’s the basic agenda of PI Planning event?

A
  • Business context
  • Vision – Architecture, UX, and Product
  • Team break-outs
  • Risk review
  • Retrospective
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5
Q

What are the inputs to the PI Planning event?

A
  • Business Context
  • Roadmap and Vision
  • Top 10 Features from the Program Backlog
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6
Q

Who facilitates the PI Planning event?

A

RTE

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7
Q

How long is a PI?

A

Usually 8 to 12 weeks

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8
Q

For a 12 week PI, how many iterations will usually be done?

A

5 : 2-week development iterations

1 : Innovation and Planning iteration

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9
Q

What are the 6 business benefits of PI Planning?

A
  • Face-to-face communication across teams and stakeholders
  • Aligning development to business goals
  • Identifying team dependencies
  • Provide just-enough architecture and UX guidance
  • Matching demand to capacity & eliminating excess WIP
  • Fast decision-making
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10
Q

What are the two primary outputs of PI Planning?

A
  • Committed PI Objectives

- Program Board

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11
Q

Who are the 5 attendees of the PI event?

A
  • Business owners
  • Product Management
  • Agile teams
  • Architects
  • System team
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12
Q

Why are business owners included in PI Planning?

A

Business owners provide:

  • The Business Context
  • Are an important Guardrail on budgetary spend
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13
Q

What do the architects provide for PI Planning?

A

Whether Enterprise, System, or Solution architects, they provide

  • Architecture Vision briefing
  • New Enablers for the Program backlog
  • Non-functional requirements (NFR)
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14
Q

What do the uncommitted PI Objectives help to do?

A

Uncommitted PI Objectives help improve the predicitability of delivering business value

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15
Q

Do uncommitted PI Objectives count towards calculating load?

A

YES, they count towards load

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16
Q

What do the uncommitted PI Objectives represent?

A

These used to be called “stretch” ojectives like in OKRs but are not “just in case you have time”

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17
Q

How are PI Objectives different than Features?

A

The PI Objectives are business and technical goals the team intends to achieve during the PI. The focus should be on understanding the intent of the business owners on the features being delivered stated as outcomes not output (features).

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18
Q

How do business owners assign business value (BV) to PI Objectives

A

Subjective rating from 1 to 10 for each objective

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19
Q

What does the SMART goals anonym stand for?

A
S  -  Specific
M -  Measurable
A -  Achievable
R -  Realistic
T -  Time-bound
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20
Q

What is the hierarchy to roll-up PI Objectives?

A
  1. Solution
  2. Program
  3. Team
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21
Q

When you don’t have a historic velocity as guide , what is commonly used heuristic for initial capacity planning?

A

8 points per developer + tester

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22
Q

What’s the standard color scheme for features (post-its) during PI Planning?

A
Green - story
Violet - Maintenance (defect)
Yellow - exploratory enabler
Orange - infrastructure enabler 
Red - Risks and Dependecies
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23
Q

Who creates the vision for an ART?

A

Product Management

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24
Q

What is the source for creating the ART vision?

A

Customer feedback and learnings from the ART teams

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25
Q

What guides an ART and provides the feedback loop?

A

Vision guides the ART –> forward

Release feedback evolves the vision <– feeback loop

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26
Q

What is a Solution/Product vision?

A

A description of the future state of the product or solution

  • What problem does it solve?
  • For whom does it provide benefit?
  • What NFR does it deliver?
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27
Q

What the time horizons differences for Solution vs PI Roadmaps?

A

Solution Roadmaps are multi-year, 1 to 3 years
while
Program Roadmaps are 1 to 3 PIs (1 to 3 quarters)

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28
Q

Solution Roadmaps contain what two types of items?

A

Capabilities and Enablers

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29
Q

Portfolio roadmaps contain what two types of items?

A

Epics and Enablers

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30
Q

What influences Solution and Program roadmaps?

A

Market dynamics

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31
Q

What is an Epic?

A

An epic is a container for a significant Solution development intiative that occurs at the Portfolio level

32
Q

What is a Feature?

A

A Feature is a service that fulfills a stakeholder need

33
Q

What 3 parts does every Feature have?

A
  1. Name
  2. Benefit Hypothesis
  3. Acceptance Criteria
34
Q

When do Features need to be split?

A

When the Feature can’t be delivered in one PI

35
Q

What is a Story?

A

Stories are short descriptions of a small piece of desired functionality written from the user’s perspective

36
Q

What is an Enabler?

A

Enablers support the building of future Feature and Stories by extending the Architecturual Runway

37
Q

Which Backlogs can Enablers be found in?

A

Confusingly, Enablers can be found at the Portfolio, Solution, Program, or Team Backlogs

38
Q

What are the two types of Epics?

A
  • Business

- Enabler

39
Q

What 4 parts does each Epic have?

A
  1. Lean Business Case
  2. Definition of MVP
  3. Epic Owner
  4. Approval by Lean Portfolio Management (LPM)
40
Q

What 3 primary Design-thinking tools that help PMs in Feature creation?

A
  1. Customer Journey Maps
  2. Personas
  3. Whole-Product Thinking
41
Q

What is Design Thinking?

A

A customer-centric development process that emphasizes:

  • Understanding the problem to be solved
  • Context in which the solution will be used
  • Evolution of the solution
42
Q

What are other Design-thinking tools?

A
  • Empathy Maps
  • Feature-benefit hypotheses
  • Story Maps
  • Prototypes
43
Q

What implements a Feature?

A

Stories

44
Q

When must Stories be split?

A

When they will span more than one sprint/iteration

45
Q

How big are Stories usually?

A

Stories should be relatively small so that they can be done in a few days and are easily estimatable

46
Q

What’s the preferred format for Stories?

A

The Connextra format popularized by Mike Cohn:

As a [user], I want [activity], so that [goal]

47
Q

What’s the common sizing method for Epics?

A

T-shirt sizes S, M, L, XL, XXL

48
Q

How are T-shirt sizes determined?

A

Each Portfolio determines a relevant cost range from historical data for each T-shirt size.

49
Q

What are the two types of cost estimated for Epics?

A
  • MVP Cost

- Implementation Cost

50
Q

What is an Epic MVP?

A

An MVP is an early and minimal version of a new product or solution that is used to prove or disprove the Epic Hypothesis

51
Q

What is the hierarchy for the SAFe Requirements Model?

A

Portfolio: Epics
Solution: Capabilities
Program: Features
Team: Stories

Enablers can be at any backlog level

52
Q

How are Features estimated?

A

PM can use historical data to quickly estimate Feature size in Story Points

53
Q

After T-shirt sizing, how are Epics sizing refined?

A

Break Epics into Features, size the Features and sum up for the Epic

54
Q

How are Features costed?

A

Once you have a Feature estimate in Story Points, times that number by the average cost per Story Point for the team

55
Q

How is the Average Cost Per Story Point computed?

A
               Average PI Velocity
56
Q

How are quality expectations set for an Agile Team?

A

Definition of Done prescribed for Team, Solution, and Release

57
Q

What does a Definition of Done communicate?

A

Completeness for an increment of value

Understanding of what work was completed

58
Q

What are the distinct areas of concern of a Definition of Done?

A
  1. Deliverables Validation Policies – acceptance criteria met, unit tests done
  2. Technical Practices Completed – code check-in, API documentation
  3. Product Management Tasks Done – release notes, support hand-off
59
Q

What are the SAFe 4 Backlog levels?

A
  1. Portfolio – Epics
  2. Solution – Capabilities
  3. Program – Features
  4. Team – Stories

Remember, Enablers can be at any Backlog level

60
Q

What Backlog are Features listed in?

A

Program

61
Q

What is Capacity Allocation?

A

This is the percentages allocated in each PI for Features, Enablers, Tech Debit, Maintenance (Defects)

62
Q

Who has Design Authority for the Program Backlog?

A

System/Solution Architects

63
Q

Who has Content Authority for the Program Backlog?

A

Product Manager

64
Q

Why is doing Capacity Allocation important during PI Planning

A

Need to balance new Features with improving the Architectural Runway

65
Q

What are the 4 Phases displayed on the Program Kanban?

A
  • Continuous Exploration
  • Continuous Integration
  • Continuous Deployment
  • Release on Demand
66
Q

In a flow system, what’s the KEY to improving economic outcomes?

A

Job Sequencing

67
Q

What two costs do you need to know to prioritize based upon Lean Economics?

A
  • Cost of Delay

- Cost of Implementation

68
Q

What are 3 Feature prioritization anti-patterns?

A
  • HiPPo, CEO’s vote trumps all
  • Squeaky wheel
  • ROI if used exclusively
69
Q

In general, what Features should be given preference using Lean Economics?

A

Features with the shortest duration (points) and higher Cost of Delay

70
Q

What does WSJF stand for?

A

Weighted Shortest Job First

71
Q

How is WSJF calculated?

A

Job Size

72
Q

What are the 3 SAFe components for Cost of Delay?

A
  • User-business value
  • Time criticality
  • Risk reduction and opportunity enablement
73
Q

Who are the stakeholders to calculate WSJF?

A
  • Business Owners
  • Product Managers and Owners
  • System Architects
74
Q

What does the Cost of Delay represent?

A

It’s a measure of the money of not doing something, or not doing it right away

75
Q

What design-thinking tool is mostly like to help PI deliver a solution that is differentiated from the competitive offerings?

A

Whole-product thinking