How AF group closed hybrid PI planning gaps

NFON is a leading cloud-based Unified Communications (UC) provider, helping over 50,000 customers and working with over 3,000 partners across Europe. As part of their goal to create a more agile company, the business is undergoing a company-wide transformation led by Agile Transition Leader, Solution Engineer and System Architect Stefan Höhn.

A major challenge during this project was managing dependencies across a large development team. “We still have over 100 people working on designing and developing our services. This means we have around 14 to 15 teams with many dependencies, so we needed to find a way to manage this process better,” said Stefan.

Planning session filled with fun - and chaos

“Do you have any idea what we have done here?”

“Well, yes, I linked the user stories”

“But can you comprehend it? Can you visualize it?”

“No, I can’t”

Conversation between Stefan and his colleague

The difficulty in visualizing dependencies was a major sticking point for Stefan and the business. PI Planning sessions - described as ‘fun but chaotic’ - were where the teams struggled the most. “We would have around 250 people meet in a space with five-meter wide and three-meter high walls where people would add their ideas and find threads and dependencies,” he said. “But after we dispersed and went back to the office, the momentum was gone. And I would always ask - can we have somehow done that in an electronic way?”.

The problem to be solved

When Stefan began looking for a solution, he found very few options that helped visually manage dependencies. After discovering Easy Agile Programs, Stefan felt he had found the tool he was looking for.

"What we try to achieve is to really manage our dependencies," said Stefan. "If you have so many people, things get complex."

"So if you imagine you have 14 teams in a sprint. You could assume you'd have at least 140 user stories, and a likelihood that there are dependencies, many dependencies, within the team and outside of the team."

"Easy Agile Programs helps make the whole plan much more visible, and helps us prevent surprises that teams wouldn't deliver something that would've been necessary or important for other teams. I think we've seen quite an improvement there."

The solution

Creating and visualizing dependencies

“Easy Agile Programs makes it so easy to manage the dependencies. It's not only about the visualization of the dependencies, but also creating them. These are actually two things I love most about the tool."

Stefan Höhn, Agile Transition Leader, NFON

“We’re trying to use the techniques in SAFe, and that includes PI planning,” said Stefan. “During PI Planning, the teams would talk about objectives and risks. But now there's a third thing we want the teams to talk about, and that's the dependencies."

"When the business owners come around and talk to the teams and see what they've done throughout planning, one of the topics is 'can you show us your dependencies?' And that wouldn’t be possible without the tool”.

"It's not only about the visualization of the dependencies, but also creating them. These are two things I actually love most about the tool," said Stefan.

In Easy Agile Programs, teams have a dedicated planning space where they can create dependencies within and between teams, and these will be automatically added to the Jira issue.

"More and more teams are seeing the value in planning and having that support of it being visible, because it's easy to see if they're running into a problem."

"(Sometimes) you may not even be aware that you have a problem. So what I would tell you is, if you create dependencies - links within Jira - just use Easy Agile Programs and visualize it, to see whether you have a problem or not."

The colour of the dependency line in Easy Agile Programs indicate its health, and with the the help of filters, it's easy to isolate discussions to where teams need to be unblocked. If a dependency is green it's healthy, yellow it is at risk and a red dependency line indicates a conflict.

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"I encourage teams to look at the dependencies regularly, every other week to see if something has changed. And most likely it has changed."

"We even created some 'rules' or guidance to make a habit out of discussing dependencies. We basically say, green is fine, you must not have any red ones, and make sure you have as few yellow (dependency lines) as possible between the teams and none within the team."

As a native app inside Jira, Easy Agile Programs enables you to create dependencies between two native Jira issues using Jira dependency links within the tool, and these are automatically reflected elsewhere in Jira in real time.

Managing dependencies

“With Easy Agile Programs, it took us three minutes to fix our dependencies. And even that amazed us”.

Stefan Höhn, Agile Transition Leader, NFON

When Stefan shared how Easy Agile Programs could visualize dependencies with his colleague, he then asked, "How do we go about fixing this? What do you think, how long would it take to actually untangle it?"

His colleague suggested a week.

"With Easy Agile Programs, it took us three minutes to fix our dependencies. And even that amazed us."

Being able to see tasks in the correct sequence and not only understand if there would be any dependencies, but also address them, has saved time and improved the ability to plan reliably.

"You can move work around visually, and while you're moving it around you can see whether. you create new problems or make it better."

"Really the tool helps us to do things faster and much more - I wouldn't even say efficiently - but effectively."

Easy Agile Programs brings clarity to the chaos

Stefan has now embedded Easy Agile Programs into NFON’s agile practices to help facilitate their PI Planning process and better manage dependencies. “This experience shows how tools can make a difference,” said Stefan.  “It’s why I’m always telling teams to just use the tool - create dependencies, link it to Jira, and try it out”.

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‍Suncorp is one of Australia's largest financial services companies, offering a range of insurance and banking solutions across Australia and New Zealand. When the organization recently changed direction to focus on a more agile path, Scrum Master Dexter Driver quickly saw they needed to find a better way to complete the planning process.

“When managing our projects, we had previously used the Waterfall approach or a mix of Waterfall with Agile,” said Dexter. “After changing direction to go down a more agile path, I began looking for tools to help us with that transition.”

Building effective plans with the right level of detail

To align with the organization’s focus on agile, Dexter began looking for a solution to help improve collaboration and simplify the planning process while maintaining sufficient detail within the plan. “The goal was to be able to produce and present quarterly plans that work for us,” said Dexter. “That meant the plan had to have enough detail for the teams to collaborate while also being quick and easy to understand”.

Intuitive from the start

“From the first time we used it, it was very simple. It was very quick to understand, and I didn't need to go through any training.”

Dexter Driver, Scrum Master, Suncorp

Dexter found Easy Agile Programs was easy to use and intuitive from the very start. The drag-and-drop functionality allowed for easy organization and a clear prioritization of tasks, saving valuable time for the teams. “It does what you need in a very simple, easy way,” said Dexter. ”We can share a simplified view while improving communication and the quality of our planning”.

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By using Easy Agile Programs, Dexter found three clear benefits for the business:

Improved dependency mapping

With a clear view of inter-squad dependencies, Dexter explained that teams could better understand and manage their dependencies and reliance on each other. “For the last few quarterly planning events, it's been much easier to communicate our plan and provide a clearer timeline, especially to some of our executive managers,” said Dexter.

Streamlined communication

The integration of Easy Agile Programs into the planning process meant that teams no longer had to move between two different platforms. “The ability to look at increments while we’re planning is probably one of the biggest things that is helping us in our day-to-day work,” said Dexter.

Enhanced collaboration

The simplified view combined with the quarterly planning events has helped create clear communication between teams, executives, and stakeholders. “Not only can they see the plan, but it makes it easier for us to talk to them and explain things as we go along,” said Dexter.

Easy Agile Programs becomes Suncorp’s preferred planning tool

Thanks to clear benefits around clear planning, communication, and collaboration, it wasn’t long before Easy Agile Programs became the preferred tool to complete the quarterly planning cycle.

“Easy Agile Programs is very easy to use, and it's made communication across teams a lot easier and more effective. So, my advice to anyone interested is to just give it a go”.

Dexter Driver, Scrum Master, Suncorp

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PNI Media is a Vancouver-based digital print media company helping turn people’s memories into photo products. Partnering with some of the biggest retailers on the planet, PNI Media offers on-demand, personalized print products and shipping solutions while serving 64 million customers each year.

When the pandemic hit and health restrictions began in early 2020, the business was one month out from PI planning. PI planning was traditionally done in-person with multiple teams onsite, so they needed to find a way to make the process work online.

Planning against the clock

“We had four weeks to find a way, we needed a solution we could quickly deploy, was easy to train people on, and was easy to set up. At the bare minimum, it had to replace the program boards that teams would stand in front of to do their planning.”

Ben Pearson, Senior Product Owner at PNI Media

To find a solution fast, easy integration was a must. With the business already using Jira, the plug-in functionality of Easy Agile Programs meant the team could automatically access everything they needed.

Another key consideration was the company approval process, which saw any budget requirements take a lot of time. “The fact that there was a free trial, and we could jump on initially to see if it would meet our needs, was perfect,” said Ben.

A match made for Jira

From his first experience of Easy Agile Programs, Ben said he could quickly see how it would meet their needs. “I could make my program board just like I could in person, move tickets around simply, and edit them easily.”

To onboard PNI Media’s 200+ employees, Ben used the Easy Agile Programs tutorials for the initial set-up. He also produced a video that ran through how to use the tool, which was shared with product owners, development leads, and other senior employees. “There isn’t a complicated set-up. It just works straight out of the box,” said Ben.

Since rolling out Easy Agile Programs, the team has discovered additional benefits, thanks to the links with Jira. This includes being able to create a ticket without leaving the app, and no longer needing to go into Jira afterwards to move anything around. “When you move tickets around in Easy Agile in the sprints, they move around in Jira too, so you only have to change them once,” said Ben. “With all the planning done in one place, it just makes it easier to get things out the door.”

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100% adoption rate

Ben reports a 100% adoption rate of Easy Agile Programs, with everyone across the business using it for PI planning. It’s been such a success that he suspects the business will keep using the app even after they move back into the office.

READ: The Ultimate Guide to PI Planning

📖 READ: The Ultimate Guide to PI Planning

“I honestly don’t think we’ll go back to the traditional way, especially after our team has voted to keep PI planning in a virtual setting,” said Ben. “Easy Agile Programs takes a lot of the manual work that comes after PI planning out of the process. We can do all the mapping in Jira, while we’re doing the planning – so it’s just one and done”.

"It was so simple that a person could find out from the documentation how to set something up in 5-10 minutes" -

Ben Pearson, PNI Media

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