Spanning Palette Flashcards
What are the Spanning Palette Elements?
The Spanning Palette contains various roles and artifacts that may apply to a specific team, program, large solution, or portfolio context.
- Vision
- Roadmap
- Milestones
- Shared Services
- Community of Practice (CoP)
- System Team
- Lean User Experience (UX)
- Metrics
Vision
Spanning Palette Element
Describes a future view of the solution to be developed, reflecting customer and stakeholder needs and the Features and Capabilities proposed to address those needs.
Roadmap
Spanning Palette Element
Communicates planned ART and value stream deliverables and milestones over a timeline
Milestones
Spanning Palette Element
Used to define important events on a roadmap. SAFe describes fixed-date, Program Increment (PI), and learning milestones
Shared Services
Spanning Palette Element
Represents the specialty roles necessary for an ART or Solution Train’s success but cannot be dedicated full time to any specific train.
Community of Practice (CoP)
Spanning Palette Element
An informal group of team members and other experts, acting within the context of a program or enterprise, that has a mission of sharing practical knowledge in one or more relevant domains.
System Team
Spanning Palette Element A special Agile team that provides assistance in building and using the continuous delivery pipeline, and where necessary, validating full end-to-end system performance.
Lean User Experience (UX)
Spanning Palette Element It uses an iterative, hypothesis-driven approach to product development through constant measurement and learning loops (build-measure-learn).
Metrics
Spanning Palette Element
SAFe’s three measurement domains, Outcomes, Flow, and Competency, provide a comprehensive, yet simple, model for measuring progress toward business agility.
Name inputs into the Solution Vision
Customers – Customers provide fast feedback and have intimate knowledge of what is needed
Strategic Themes – The Strategic Themes provide direction and serve as decision-making filters
Portfolio Canvas – The portfolio canvas provides the current state and the desired future state for the portfolio
Solution Context – The solution context indicates how the solution interacts with the customer’s context
Solution Backlog – The solution backlog contributes direction and guidance to the vision
Solution Intent – The solution intent contains some of the vision and is the destination for new elements
Architect/Engineers – The System and Solution Architect/Engineers support the continuous evolution of the Architectural Runway supports current and near-term features
Agile Teams– Finally, and not to forget the obvious, the foremost experts in the domain are typically the Agile teams themselves
Product Owners – The Product Owners continuously communicate emerging requirements and opportunities back into the program vision.
How is Vision documented at the Portfolio layer?
In the Portfolio Vision
(The Portfolio Canvas documents the current state)
What characteristics make up a good Portfolio Vision?
Aspirational, yet realistic and achievable – It must be compelling and somewhat futuristic, yet practical enough to be feasible over some meaningful timeframe
Motivational to engage others on the journey – The vision must align with the Strategic Themes, as well as to the individual team’s purpose
Describe the 6 Planning Roadmap Horizons
Daily plan: Each day the team holds a Daily Stand-up (DSU) event to synchronize team members, review progress, identify bottlenecks, and discuss what the team will work on today to achieve the iteration goals.
Iteration plan: Each iteration begins with an iteration plan, where all team members determine how much of the Team Backlog they can commit to delivering during an upcoming iteration. The team summarizes the work as a set of committed Iteration Goals.
Current PI plan: Represents the plan for the current PI created during the PI planning event.
PI roadmap: The PI roadmap consists of a committed plan for the current PI and a small number of future PIs. It provides a forecast of the deliverables and milestones for the next two to three PIs. For the outlying PIs, these may be indicated as Features, Epics, and Milestones.
Solution roadmap: The solution roadmap provides a longer-term—often multiyear—view, showing the key milestones and deliverables needed to achieve the solution vision over time. While most solutions require a 1-3 year view, some larger solutions may extend this timeframe to many years.
Portfolio roadmap: Like the solution roadmap, the portfolio roadmap provides a longer-term multiyear view. The difference in the portfolio roadmap is that it illustrates the plan to achieve the portfolio vision across the value streams in the portfolio.
Which SAFe Principle is important to follow when developing a Roadmap?
Principle #6 – Visualize and limit WIP, reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths.
What Work Item Type is associated with a Portfolio Roadmap?
EPIC
What Work Item Type is associated with a Solution Roadmap?
Capabilities
What Work Item Type is associated with a PI Roadmap?
Features
What are 3 types of milestones?
PI milestones – These support the ability to objectively evaluate progress towards the technical or business hypothesis. These occur on the PI cadence.
Fixed-date milestones – Not everything, however, occurs on cadence. System building also relies on external events, third-party deliverables, and external constraints. These are often fixed-date milestones that are distinct from the development cadence.
Learning milestones – In addition, learning milestones help validate business opportunities and hypotheses.
What are some System Team Responsibilities?
- Building Development Infrastructure
- Solution Integration
- End-to-End Testing
- System and Solution Demos
- Release
What does MMF stand for?
Minimum Marketable Feature
What are the 4 stages of the Lean UX Process?
- Benefit hypothesis
- Collaborative Design
- Build MMF
- Evaluate
What are the 3 measurement domains in SAFe?
(Metrics spanning palette)
Outcomes: Do our solutions meet the needs of our customers and the business?
Flow: How efficient is the organization at delivering value to the customer?
Competency: How proficient is the organization in the practices that enable business agility?
What is used to measure Outcomes?
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
What are the 6 SAFe Flow Metrics?
- Flow Distrobution - The proportion of each backlog item type in the flow
- Flow Velocity - Number of items completed in a given time
- Flow Time - Time elapses from when an item enters the workflow to when it is release to the customer
- Flow Load - Total work-in-progress (across all steps of the flow)
- Flow Efficiency - the portion of time backlog items are actively worked on to the total time elapsed
- Flow Predictability - overall planned vs. actual business value
What 2 methods are used to measure Competency?
The SAFe Business Agility Assessment is designed for the business and portfolio stakeholders to assess their overall progress on the ultimate goal of true business agility.
The SAFe Core Competency Assessments are used to help teams and trains improve on the technical and business practices they need to help the portfolio achieve that larger goal. There is one for each of the seven core competencies.
What are the 4 critical success factors for effective measurement?
- Use measurement in conjunction with other discovery tools
- Apply metrics where they support improved decision-making
- Understand the effect of metrics on behaviors
- Interpret metrics carefully
