Agile Best Practice

The days of 'doing Agile' are over. As we enter 2025, organizations’ relationship with agility continues to evolve.

Economic pressures, technological advances, and hard-learned lessons are pushing organizations to rethink their approach to agility. While many companies still struggle with meaningful transformation, clear patterns are emerging that signal where agile practices are headed this year.

Drawing on insights from Agile experts and practitioners, here are eight key trends that we see defining how we work this year.

1. The Return to Agile Fundamentals

Key Highlights:

• Movement away from heavyweight frameworks back to core Agile principles and values
• Emphasis on simplicity and delivering customer value rather than ceremonial processes
• Integration of Agile practices into daily work without drawing attention to them

While large organizations continue to rely on structured frameworks to drive consistency across teams, we're seeing a growing groundswell of support for getting back to basics. This isn't about abandoning structure entirely - it's about finding the right balance. 

Teams are increasingly focused on streamlining processes, embracing continuous improvement, and maintaining an unwavering focus on delivering real customer value.

The pendulum is swinging back from scaled frameworks to fundamental engineering practices. Teams are incorporating agile practices into their daily workflows without the overhead of excessive ceremonies. Delivering with feature toggles, continuous integration, and trunk-based development are becoming more important than analysing burndown charts and a calendar full of unproductive ceremonies.

Expert take:

“Rather than telling people how to do their jobs, work with them to set the goals for a process that would make them and the company more successful. Measure success based on improved team behavior rather than adherence to a set of rules. Instead of Agile, push for agility. In that sense, Agile is never really over. It’s just transforming into what it should have always been.” 

- Jeff Gothelf, Product Management Author, Speaker, Trainer, and Coach

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2. The Evolution of Agile Roles

Key Highlights:

• More emphasis on technical leadership within teams rather than process-focused roles
• Shift from dedicated Scrum Master positions to embedded agile leadership
• Product management roles evolving to incorporate stronger business analysis capabilities

The job market for Agile roles is undergoing a significant transformation. Pure Scrum Master positions are evolving into hybrid roles that combine technical expertise with process leadership. This isn't just semantics - it reflects a deeper understanding that effective agile leadership requires both technical context and facilitation skills.

Engineering managers are expected to understand both system architecture and team dynamics. Instead of relying on external agile coaches, they're building these capabilities within their technical leadership. The focus has shifted from process adherence to technical mentorship and delivery optimization.

Product managers are also adapting to this new reality. They're becoming what some call "super ICs" - professionals who blend product thinking with solid business analysis skills. It's no longer enough to just manage a backlog; today's product leaders need to speak the language of both business and technology.

Expert take:

“First of all, I think it needs to be said, we should not panic. You do not need to abandon your career as a Scrum Master, Agile Coach, or Agilist of any kind. But we do need to think about it differently. Some suggest broadening your skills, which can certainly make you more valuable. Become a ‘technologist who is a Scrum Master’ or a ‘manager with agile coaching skills’. 

Keep in mind, this also may not require you to actually learn new skills, but to be smarter about how you position yourself and your existing capabilities. Know that organizations are looking for agile to be ‘baked in’ to the people they hire. You should broaden the scope of the types of roles you are searching for as well, because you might be surprised. I like to find companies that mention agile skills on job boards, then go and scour all of their open postings to see where else I might be able to apply.” 

- Brian Link, Business Agility Coach, Author, and Speaker 

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3. Cross-Functional Teams Become Truly Cross-Functional

Key Highlights:

• Teams capable of handling end-to-end delivery from discovery to implementation
• Breaking down traditional specializations in favor of full-stack capabilities
• Reducing dependencies between teams through better cross-functional team structure

The definition of "cross-functional" has evolved significantly. Modern engineering teams aren't just mixing developers and testers - they're creating truly autonomous units capable of handling the entire software lifecycle.

In effect, forward-thinking organizations are breaking down the remaining silos between frontend, backend, and DevOps specialists in favor of truly full-stack capabilities. Teams are increasingly taking ownership of the entire delivery pipeline, from initial discovery through to production deployment.

The most exciting part? Teams that embrace this approach are discovering they can deliver features faster and with better quality than ever before. When you own the entire process, you naturally make better decisions at every step. Plus, this approach not only avoids handovers and dependencies but also helps those teams develop into Product teams over time - armed with both domain knowledge as well as technical expertise.

Expert take:

“The nature of work is evolving. As challenges grow more complex and the pace of innovation accelerates, cross-functional collaboration is no longer a luxury — it’s a necessity. By embracing fluid roles, shared ownership, and open input, teams can unlock their full potential and deliver solutions that stand out in an increasingly competitive landscape.

So, the next time you hear someone talk about cross-functional collaboration, challenge them to think beyond meetings and updates. True collaboration means breaking down walls, embracing diverse contributions, and working together in ways that transcend traditional boundaries. Only then can we tap into the collective intelligence of our teams and achieve greatness together.” 

- Shubham Sharma, Senior Software Quality Engineer, Qantas

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4. Lean Takes Center Stage

Key Highlights:

• Growing adoption of "NoEstimates" and forecasting approaches over traditional estimation
• Emphasis on smaller, more frequent releases with clear business context
• Increased focus on flow efficiency and waste reduction in processes

The shift toward leaner practices is revolutionizing how teams approach delivery. Organizations are moving beyond story points and velocity metrics to focus on flow efficiency and cycle time. The "NoEstimates" movement isn't about abandoning predictability - it's about finding more reliable ways to forecast and deliver value with less overhead.

This shift toward leaner practices is complemented by a focus on smaller, frequent releases that tie directly to business outcomes.

Organizations are getting better at lean principles to identify and eliminate unnecessary steps in their processes, with a singular focus on value delivery. 

Expert take:

“Asking whether Lean is still relevant in 2025 is akin to questioning the relevance of continuous improvement itself. The answer is, of course, a resounding "YES!" However, the challenge lies not in Lean’s principles but in how effectively organizations implement and sustain their improvement efforts.

While many organizations adopt Lean methodologies, a significant gap remains between intention and execution. Common pitfalls include inadequate leadership commitment, failure to integrate Lean with organizational strategy, and lack of workforce engagement. Lean’s relevance hinges on addressing these challenges head-on by embedding continuous improvement into the DNA of an organization.”

- Patrick Adams, CEO and Executive Lean Coach, Lean Solutions

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5. Quality and Technical Excellence Make A Resurgence

Key Highlights:

• Renewed emphasis on XP practices and technical craftsmanship
• Greater focus on sustainable testing strategies combining automated and human testing
• Continuous refactoring and technical excellence becoming primary concerns

Technical excellence is back in focus. While the past decade saw many organizations chase velocity at the expense of quality, engineering teams are rediscovering that there's no sustainable agility without solid technical practices.

Extreme Programming (XP) practices, once considered too rigorous for many organizations, are seeing renewed adoption. And modern tooling has made these practices more accessible, but they still require disciplined engineering culture to implement effectively.

Testing strategies are evolving too, blending automated and manual strategies to ensure robust and adaptive systems. Advancements in testing technology—including AI-assisted tools—are enabling faster and more accurate testing processes, so quality remains a priority even in accelerated delivery cycles. 

Continuous refactoring has become a primary concern, especially as organizations deal with the technical debt accumulated during rapid pandemic-era digital transformations. Teams are finding that regular system evolution isn't just about clean code - it's about maintaining the ability to respond quickly to business needs without sacrificing stability.

Expert take:

“For me, XP is at the core of Continuous Delivery, which is also the foundation on which DevOps is built.

I don't think that you can achieve Continuous Delivery without the kind of polyglot collaboration between all of the parties involved in creating software. How can you Continuously Deliver if the Ops team, security team, testing team, dev team, or product team is in a silo? You can't.

I think that both of those approaches represent a genuine paradigm shift - it's a complete change in focus, not only about how to practice software development but really what software development is. I think of it much more in terms of it being this exploratory process of discovery and part of the way in which we organize our work is to enable that - to allow ourselves the freedom to discover things, learn new things, change direction, and discard the bad things.” 

- Dave Farley, Independent Software Developer and Consultant, Founder and Director of Continuous Delivery Ltd.

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6. Business Agility Extends Beyond IT

Key Highlights:

• Expansion of Agile principles beyond software development into broader business operations
• Integration of product-oriented thinking across organizations
• Focus on measurable business outcomes and value metrics

The walls between IT and business are finally crumbling. While software teams have been practicing Agile for years, we're now seeing these principles take root across entire organizations. A significant milestone in this evolution is the recent acquisition of Agile Alliance by Product Management Institute - a clear signal of the broadening demand for agile skills and expertise across different business functions.

Teams are adopting product-oriented thinking throughout the organization and focusing on measurable business outcomes rather than just project deliverables.

The data backs this up: while IT teams lead with 70% Agile adoption, product and R&D teams aren't far behind. Even traditional business operations and marketing teams are embracing agile practices, with adoption rates of 28% and 20% respectively. This shift is driven by necessity - in a world where market conditions change rapidly, no department can afford to operate in quarterly planning cycles anymore.

Consider Unilever's experience: By applying agile practices beyond their tech departments into marketing and product development teams, they've reduced time-to-market for new products by nearly 30%. This agility has enabled them to respond more effectively to changing consumer demands, particularly during times of economic uncertainty.

Expert take:

“Agile innovation has revolutionized the software industry, which has arguably undergone more rapid and profound change than any other area of business over the past 30 years. Now it is poised to transform nearly every other function in every industry. At this point, the greatest impediment is not the need for better methodologies, empirical evidence of significant benefits, or proof that agile can work outside IT. It is the behavior of executives. Those who learn to lead agile’s extension into a broader range of business activities will accelerate profitable growth.” 

- Darrell Rigby, Jeff Sutherland, Hirotaka Takeuchi for Harvard Business Review. 

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7. Agile Adapts to Remote and Hybrid Work

Key Highlights:

• Evolution of Agile practices to better support distributed and hybrid teams
• Development of new collaboration patterns for remote work
• Focus on asynchronous communication and documentation

Remote work has forced a fundamental rethinking of agile practices. The tools have evolved - Jira, Trello, and Slack are table stakes now - but the real innovation is happening in how teams structure their work and communication patterns to maintain the same level of engagement, communication, and velocity as in-person teams.

Distributed teams are developing new approaches to traditional ceremonies. Asynchronous standup updates combined with focused synchronous discussion time. Sprint planning split into async preparation and live refinement sessions. Retrospectives that blend individual reflection time with group synthesis.

Documentation, once seen as anti-agile, has found its place in the remote world. But it's not your grandfather's documentation - teams are using tools like Notion and Confluence to create living documents that evolve with their products. Architecture decision records (ADRs) and technical RFCs have become crucial tools for maintaining alignment across distributed teams.

Expert take:

“At one point, in-person face-to-face communication was the most effective way to communicate. This was still very true back in 2001 when Agile was defined, and this is why it was essential to document that in the Agile principles. However, the state of technology back then lacked the conductivity or capabilities to make remote possible, leaving workers desk-bound. The hardwired phone, desktop system, and limited email were what we had. So Agile worked to collocate teams and promoted in-person face-to-face meetings whenever possible in its first decade of existence. But that was 20 years ago.

For Agile, with today’s technology, we are not going against the intent of how we framed effective communications. On the contrary, the technology has helped remove the impediment that most large multinational and distributed teams were dealing with when adopting Agile — we can now have everybody face-to-face regardless of where they are in the world. Furthermore, Agile helps to give the hybrid workplace a set of values and principles to help the hybrid work environment prosper.”

• Ray Arell, Founder and Executive Director, nuAgility

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8. Economic Influences Shape Practice

Key Highlights:

• Greater emphasis on cost-effectiveness and demonstrable ROI
• Focus on T-shaped people and efficient team structures
• Renewed attention to productivity and outcome-based metrics

Economic realities are pushing organizations to rethink their agile implementations. The focus has shifted from process purity to practical outcomes. Teams are being asked not just to deliver features, but to demonstrate their impact on business metrics - aka cost-effectiveness and return on investment.

Value stream mapping has moved from theory to practice, as organizations work to understand and optimize their delivery pipelines. The most effective teams are those that can connect their technical metrics (lead time, deployment frequency, MTTR) to business outcomes (revenue impact, customer satisfaction, market share).

The investment in T-shaped individuals - those who combine deep expertise with broad capabilities - is proving particularly valuable in this environment. These team members can adapt to changing needs and help reduce the coordination overhead that often plagues specialized teams.

Expert take:

“Looking ahead, I foresee a renewed focus on certainty, optimization, and individual performance metrics. I see this because developing self-management is extremely hard, too slow for some and it'll be easier to revert back to old habits of command and control.  This shift could divert attention away from user-centric goals and outcome-based measures, a trend that could undermine the very principles that have made Agile successful. To counteract this, I believe the Agile community must remain vigilant, using tools like Evidence-Based Management to ensure that we stay aligned with our core values while providing the metrics and proof of progress for those who need it.” 

- Simon Bourk, Professional Scrum Trainer, Master Integral Coach TM

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Looking Ahead

As we move into 2025, we're seeing the emergence of a more mature, nuanced approach to agility. Organizations are moving beyond the framework debates and certification chases to focus on what truly matters: building high-quality software that delivers business value efficiently.

The most successful teams will be those that can:

• Maintain technical excellence while adapting to changing business needs
• Balance autonomy with accountability through clear outcome metrics
• Leverage automation and AI without losing sight of craftsmanship
• Scale agile practices through organization-wide adoption
• Adapt their practices to support distributed, async-first work patterns

The future of Agile isn't about choosing between SAFe and Scrum, or debating the merits of estimation. It's about building engineering organizations that can consistently deliver value while maintaining the technical excellence needed for long-term sustainability. The teams that get this right won't just survive the next wave of change - they'll lead it.

Exciting times indeed.

Picture this all-too-common scenario: Your teams have been working diligently across multiple departments. They've successfully developed an MVP following perfect agile practices. The burndown charts are beautiful. The collaboration was seamless. The code is clean, tested, and ready to ship.

There's just one small problem – when you release it to your users... crickets. No one uses it. No one cares.

Sound familiar? You're not alone.

The Build Trap: A Silent Killer of Agile Success

Many agile teams find themselves trapped in a cycle of building features that don't deliver real value to their customers. They've fallen into what product strategy expert Melissa Perri calls "the build trap" – focusing on outputs (like features shipped) rather than outcomes (like solving real customer problems).

As Charlie Hill, VP of Strategic Design at IBM, explains:

"The most important question for you to ask is, can you accomplish an outcome that a user would recognize as better than the other options available? And can you get it to that user before your competition does? Because if you can't, it's going to be a struggle. If you spend too much time measuring internal velocity, you risk falling in love with a very efficient process but losing sight of the market."

Understanding the Value Exchange System

At the heart of successful agile development lies a fundamental concept: the Value Exchange System.

It works like this:

1. On one side, customers have specific problems, wants, and needs
2. On the other side, businesses create products or services to resolve these problems
3. Customers realize value only when their problems are genuinely solved
4. Only then do they provide value back to the business through loyalty, revenue, and advocacy

This reciprocal relationship forms the foundation of customer-centric agile. When teams focus on solving real customer problems rather than just shipping features, they create a virtuous cycle benefiting both the customer and the business.

Why Traditional Agile Often Misses the Mark

Agile methodologies were born from a desire to be more responsive to change and deliver value faster. But somewhere along the way, many teams lost sight of the ultimate goal – delighting customers. They became more focused on:

• Sprint velocity over customer impact
• Story points over solved problems
• Feature completion over user satisfaction
• Process efficiency over market success

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, puts it perfectly:

"There are many ways to center a business. You can be competitor focused, you can be product focused, you can be technology focused, you can be business model focused... But in my view, obsessive customer focus is by far the most protective of day one vitality."

The Six Pillars of Customer-Centric Agile

To embrace truly customer-centric agile development, teams need to adopt these fundamental principles:

1. Empathy First

• Get out from behind your desk and observe customers in their natural environment
• Listen to their frustrations and celebrate their wins
• See the world through their eyes before attempting solutions

2. Outcomes Over Outputs

• Focus on the impact your features create, not just their completion
• Measure success by customer problems solved
• Ask "How does this improve our users' lives?" before "How fast can we ship it?"

3. Continuous Discovery

• Make learning about customers an ongoing process, not a one-time event
• Regularly conduct user interviews and analyze usage data
• Keep testing assumptions and validating decisions

4. Experimentation Mindset

• Embrace uncertainty and be willing to test assumptions
• Use prototypes and MVPs to validate ideas before full commitment
• Learn from failures as much as successes

5. Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Ensure everyone on the team has access to customer insights
• Break down silos between product, development, and user research
• Make customer understanding everyone's responsibility

6. Rapid Iteration

• Be prepared to pivot quickly based on customer feedback
• Maintain technical practices that enable fast response to learning
• Value adaptation over following a plan

Getting Started with Customer-Centric Agile

While the principles are straightforward, implementing them requires careful thought and systematic approach.

Begin by assessing your current state. Take time to understand how your team currently gathers customer insights. Look at your feature adoption rates and usage patterns. Most importantly, examine how you measure success - are you tracking outputs like velocity, or outcomes like customer impact?

Next, focus on building customer empathy across your entire team. Schedule regular customer conversations - aim for at least one per sprint. Create opportunities for team members from all functions to observe customers using your product in their natural environment. Make sharing customer insights a regular part of your agile ceremonies, not just something that happens in product meetings.

Finally, start adjusting your metrics to reflect your customer-centric focus. While velocity and story points have their place, they shouldn't be your primary measures of success. Begin tracking customer outcomes and impact. Monitor feature adoption and engagement. Pay attention to how your work affects customer satisfaction and retention.

Want to dive deeper into implementing these principles?

We've written a comprehensive guide that does just that and provides detailed frameworks for implementation.

In "Understanding Customer Value in Agile," you'll find practical techniques, real-world case studies, and step-by-step guides for transforming your agile practice. Each chapter builds on these foundational principles to help you create truly customer-centric development processes.

Get your free copy today.

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Picture yourself trying to assemble a complex piece of furniture without the visual instruction manual - just a long list of steps. Frustrating, right? That's exactly how many teams feel when working from a flat product backlog. They have lists of features and requirements, but they've lost sight of the complete customer journey.

That's where user story mapping comes in. It helps us see the forest before getting lost in the trees.

The Power of Narrative Flow in Product Discovery

User story mapping transforms how teams approach product discovery. Rather than diving straight into features, it helps you visualize the complete journey a customer takes with your product, from beginning to end. This focus on customer centricity ensures you're building features that truly matter.

As Jeff Patton, who pioneered user story mapping, explains, traditional flat backlogs are like trying to understand a book by reading a list of sentences in random order. Sure, all the content is there, but the story—the user's journey—gets lost.

"User story mapping is a facilitated, curated conversation that brings everyone along for the journey. It's an opportunity for the product manager to brain dump their insights (who is deep in this stuff day in, day out) and get it into the minds of the team who are about to deliver on it." - Nicholas Muldoon, Co-Founder and CEO, Easy Agile

Creating Your First User Story Map

Let's walk through creating a user story map for a streaming service like Netflix or Apple TV. We'll see how their teams might map out the user experience of watching a movie.

Step 1 - Start with the Big Picture

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Begin by identifying the major activities your users go through - what Jeff Patton calls the "backbone" or "narrative flow" of your story map. Think of these as the chapter titles in your user's story.

For our streaming service example, the backbone might look like this:

• Select movie
• Purchase movie
• Watch movie
• Review/recommend movie

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🎯 Team Exercise: Gather your team and ask, "What are the major steps our users take to accomplish their goal?" Write each step on a card or sticky note, arranging them left to right in chronological order.

Step 2 - Add User Tasks

Now comes the rich detail. Under each major activity, add the specific tasks users need to complete. These become your user stories.  The key is to maintain focus on user value rather than technical implementation.

In the above example, these could be your user stories for the "Select movie" activity:

• Free text search
• Browse by genre
• Browse by recent addition
• Browse by most popular
• Browse by most popular by genre
• Browse by recent addition by genre

💡 Pro Tip: Write these tasks from the user's perspective. Instead of "implement search functionality," write "search for specific movies."

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Step 3 - Master Backlog Prioritization

Here's where user story mapping truly shines compared to flat backlogs. You'll organize your stories both horizontally (in sequence) and vertically (by priority). This approach helps with both feature prioritization and sprint planning.

Horizontal: Organize stories left to right in the sequence users would naturally perform them. 

Vertical: Arrange stories from top to bottom in order of priority, by value to the user. You can identify the value through conversations with users, analytics on usage patterns, or another form of insight appropriate for your product.

Think of it like building a house. The foundation (must-haves) comes first, then the walls (should-haves), and finally the decorative touches (nice-to-haves).

Priority Framework: 

HIGH (Must have)

• Core functionality essential for basic user journey
• Critical user needs identified from research
• Example: Basic search, Movie playback, Payment processing

MEDIUM (Should have)

• Important features that enhance user experience
• Validated user desires from feedback
• Example: Genre filtering, Recommendations, Ratings display

LOW (Nice to have)

• Additional features for delight
• Potential future enhancements
• Example: Social sharing, Advanced recommendations, Multiple watch lists

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Step 4 - Identify Your Releases

With your map laid out, draw horizontal lines to slice your map into releases. Each slice should represent a complete, valuable user experience.

Facilitating User Story Mapping Sessions

Running an effective user story mapping session requires more than just following the steps above. Whether your team is co-located or distributed across time zones, here's how to make these sessions productive and engaging:

Pre-Session Checklist

• Invite the right people (product owner, developers, designers, subject matter experts)

• Prepare customer research insights and data 

• Set up physical or digital collaboration space

• Define clear session objectives 

• Schedule adequate time (typically 2-4 hours for initial mapping)

During-the-Session Checklist

• Start with customer context (share research findings, personas) 

• Keep focus on user's perspective 

• Document questions and assumptions 

• Take photos/screenshots of work in progress 

• Capture action items and decisions

User Story Mapping For Co-Located Teams

Make sure the physical space is well-equipped for the perfect user story mapping session.

• Large wall space or whiteboard
• Plenty of sticky notes in different colors
• Markers for everyone
• Space for team movement and discussion

User Story Mapping For Remote Teams

Many teams often need to conduct user story mapping sessions remotely. While the principles remain the same, the execution requires some additional consideration:

1. Digital Workspace:
   • Choose collaborative tools like Easy Agile TeamRhythm
   • Set up template beforehand
   • Ensure everyone has access and basic tool familiarity
2. Engagement Techniques:
   • Use smaller breakout rooms for detailed discussions
   • Leverage digital voting for prioritization
   • Use timer-based activities to maintain energy
   • Schedule shorter sessions with clear breaks
   • Record sessions for team members in different time zones

Making Remote User Story Mapping Work for You

During the pandemic, Lyft turned to Easy Agile TeamRhythm’s remote user story mapping to keep their teams connected and focused while working from home. This tool made it easy for their distributed teams to collaborate, visualize customer journeys, and stay on top of priorities—even with everyone apart.

The result? A 20% boost in efficiency and smoother, more aligned teamwork. It’s a great example of how the right tool can make remote work feel a lot less remote.

Ready to try it? Let’s map your team’s success with Easy Agile TeamRhythm!

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

1. "We're losing the big picture"

Solution: Keep your backbone visible at all times. Regularly step back and walk through the complete user journey.

2. "Technical discussions are derailing us"

Solution: Create a "parking lot" for technical discussions. Focus first on the user's journey, then tackle implementation details in separate sessions.

3. "Remote participants aren't engaging"

Solution: Use round-robin techniques to ensure everyone contributes. Create explicit opportunities for input from remote team members.

4. "Our map is becoming outdated"

Solution: Schedule regular review sessions. Make updating the map part of your sprint ceremonies.

Keeping Your Story Map Alive

Your user story map shouldn't be a one-time exercise that gets filed away. It should evolve as your understanding of users deepens. Keep it alive and relevant by:

1. Making it visible

• Display it prominently in your team space
• Keep it accessible in your digital tools
• Reference it in planning sessions

2. Updating regularly

• Add new insights from customer feedback
• Adjust priorities based on learnings
• Mark completed items
• Note changes in user needs or behavior

3. Using it for alignment

• Reference during sprint planning
• Share with stakeholders
• Use for onboarding new team members

Measuring Success

Finally, look for these indicators to know if your story mapping is effective. Special props to you and the team if you nail them all.

✓ Team members naturally reference the map during discussions 

✓ Customer feedback aligns with your prioritization 

✓ Releases deliver coherent user experiences 

✓ Reduced scope creep and feature bloat 

✓ Improved team alignment on priorities 

✓ Better sprint planning sessions

Remember, user story mapping isn't about creating a perfect document - it's about fostering better conversations about user needs and ensuring we're building the right things in the right order.

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Want to dive deeper into building customer-centric products? Download our free ebook "Understanding Customer Value in Agile" to learn:

• How to escape the "build trap" and focus on real customer outcomes
• Practical techniques for understanding your customers deeply
• Frameworks for capturing and acting on customer insights
• Step-by-step guidance for creating meaningful personas and journey maps
• A concrete 30-60-90 day plan to transform how your team understands and delivers customer value

Download your free copy here and start your journey toward truly customer-centric agile development.

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Weaving alignment and empathy into team dynamics can revolutionize software delivery. So why aren't we all doing that?

It's a real challenge for organizations with numerous teams contributing to complex software, to achieve real alignment and consensus on user needs. But it's one well worth pursuing. Striking a balance between alignment on business goals and customer empathy ensures that the software your teams are developing truly resonates with users and fulfills those business goals.

Why Alignment Matters in Agile Programs

Alignment is more than just goal setting across teams. It's about connecting workflows, acknowledging challenges, and crafting solutions that encompass everyone’s perspectives, including the needs of your users. As Tony Camacho shared on the Easy Agile Podcast:

"Alignment isn’t just about goals—it’s about understanding each other’s workflows, needs, and challenges to create solutions that work for everyone."

This comprehensive strategic alignment is crucial for steering teams in the same direction. In large enterprises, team alignment means that agile release trains can function cohesively, and strategic business goals are successfully translated across diverse teams and departments. Strong alignment empowers cross-functional teams to sustain momentum and unity at scale, even as the product roadmap evolves. For agile release trains, effective alignment means that everyone is doing their part, pulling in the same direction, and delivering successful software.  

Customer Empathy and User-Centric Development

Customer empathy is the cornerstone of aligning business goals with user needs and developing software that delivers a seamless user experience. It's about getting to know your users, their needs, and their experience with your product so that you can create better solutions for them.

"The key to meeting user needs is empathy. When teams deeply understand their users, every product decision naturally aligns with providing value."

Tony Comacho

This ethos fuels decision-making and design that prioritizes user needs and values over functional deliverables. It's great to build and release something, but not-so-great if nobody uses it.  Agile leaders who embed empathy within their teams cultivate a customer-driven culture, resulting in software solutions that address genuine challenges and delight their audience.

Empathy enhances the process of gathering requirements, conducting user testing, and embracing iterative design. Combined with effective agile program management, empathy aligns business goals with user expectations, and is a great way to improve engagement with your software and reduce churn, paving the way for successful software delivery and user retention.

Building Clarity for Effective Collaboration

Building impactful software at scale demands effective collaboration and clarity.

"Effective collaboration is rooted in clarity. Teams need to feel supported by having a shared vision and understanding of the product journey."

Tony Comacho

Cross-team alignment revolves around establishing a unified vision and setting clear goals and expectations across the agile release train. For enterprise agile solutions that support PI Planning and Product Roadmapping, upholding this clarity allows large teams to work independently yet cohesively, ensuring a targeted approach to addressing both business and user needs.

How to Achieve Agile Alignment at Scale

To encourage team alignment around user needs in your organization:

• Invest in User Research & Design: Start talking to your users; and keep talking to them. Implement user-focused design practices, gathering insights from users throughout the development stages to effectively align user needs and business goals.
• Share Vision and Goals: Regularly communicate with your teams about business objectives and user needs, ensuring they are central to your agile program.
• Use Alignment Tools and Frameworks: Leverage agile tools that help you track objectives and development milestones to ensure team alignment and cross-team collaboration. Make goals and priorities easily accessible for all your teams.
• Encourage Transparent Communication: Cultivate an environment where feedback crosses team boundaries, maintaining cross-team alignment and empathy.‍

The Benefits of Alignment and Empathy in Software Delivery

Better outcomes for your software start when business goals are aligned with user needs. Programs that place strategic agile alignment and customer empathy at the forefront, not only meet user expectations but improve the value they offer to their customers. With good agile program management, the outcome is a streamlined, effective agile release train that consistently delivers exceptional software solutions. Which is what we all want, right?

As you work towards better alignment in your agile program, nurturing empathy and clarity can unlock significant gains in satisfaction for your users and for your teams, which is great news for the overall success of your program.

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🎧 Want to hear more from Tony? Listen to The power of team alignment on the Easy Agile Podcast.

The 17th State of Agile Report shared that 93% of executives thought that their teams could do the same amount of work in half the time, if their teams collaborated better.

That's quite a statistic. We’ll leave it up to you to decide whether this reflects a lack of efficiency due to poor collaboration, or a disconnect between leadership expectations and the realities faced by development teams.

What we do know is that improving team collaboration has benefits and that improved collaboration is a key benefit of effective agile practices.

So if you think your team could work more effectively, here are six tips for improving team collaboration that we think will make your working life better, and help you deliver for your customers.

1. Agile Teams Are Cross-Functional

Cross-functional teams are the backbone of agile collaboration. It's Agile 101:

The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.

Manifesto for Agile Software Development

Ideally, your agile team should be able to deliver work independently. The skills and expertise of your team should allow you to handle diverse tasks without creating dependencies on other teams. You can take ownership of the software you're delivering.

The benefit of organizing into cross-functional teams is a greater shared understanding of your project, where you can each see how the pieces fit together. This type of collaboration supports the efficient flow of work and ensures that knowledge and skills are consistently shared.

2. Take an Iterative Approach

Or to put it another way, make it easier to fail fast, so your team can learn why, and correct your course. By breaking down large projects into manageable increments, your team can focus on delivering small, functional parts of working software at regular intervals. This approach goes hand-in-hand with continual feedback from users, ensuring that issues are uncovered quickly and dealt with just as fast. This shared team focus on user feedback, and the shared purpose and collaboration that comes with it, is a key benefit of agile development.

3. Maintain Regular and Transparent Communication

Daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, and planning meetings are all designed to foster regular and clear communication. You and your team should see these meetings as an opportunity to share ideas, discuss progress and blockers, and collaborate. If your daily stand-up is nothing more than a shopping list of tasks, then you're doing it wrong.

If your daily stand-up is nothing more than a shopping list of tasks, then you're doing it wrong.

Someone who has wasted too much time in shopping-list meetings.

Beyond team meetings, clear communication is important anywhere the details of your work are shared. Agile tools like Easy Agile TeamRhythm provide a central platform for prioritizing work and tracking progress. With a central source of truth that everyone can access to understand goals, priorities, and team commitment, collaboration can be more effective, keeping the team aligned and focused.

4. Conduct Team Retrospectives

Hot take: regular retrospectives are the most important agile practice your team can adopt.

Team retrospectives provide a structured opportunity to reflect on your work and discuss how it can be done better next time. This is team-led improvement because you and your team are in the driver's seat. Encouraging honest and open discussions during retrospectives helps build trust among team members and fosters a collaborative mindset. By continuing to work on processes and behaviors, you and your team can improve your performance over time and make your working life better.

5. Use Collaboration Tools

The right tools can make a big difference in team collaboration. The best tools provide a reliable source of truth that the whole team can access, in a place where the whole team will access it. It's a simple concept; a shared understanding of the work is supported by shared and willing access to the same information.

Choose a tool that makes it easy for you and your team to access information and keep it updated. If you're already working in Jira, an integration like Easy Agile TeamRhythm provides a better view of your work in a story map format, with goals, objectives, and team commitment all made clear. Team retrospective boards are attached to each sprint (or spun up as required for Kanban teams) so you have your team-led ideas for improvement tightly connected to the work in Jira.

No matter which tool you choose, make sure it will facilitate better alignment, streamline your workflows, and provide a clear picture of roadblocks and progress. By using collaboration tools effectively, your team stays organized, focused, and connected, no matter where each member is located.

6. Build a Positive Team Culture

It may sound obvious, but a positive team culture is essential for effective collaboration. Creating an environment where team members feel valued, respected, and motivated, encourages the psychological safety they need to share their great ideas, learn from missteps, and collaborate more effectively with their colleagues.

High-performing teams recognize the achievements of others, share constructive feedback, and support practices that lead to a healthy work-life balance. Make it regular, and keep it authentic. A positive culture not only improves team dynamics but also boosts overall productivity and job satisfaction.

Successful Team Collaboration

Effective collaboration can be the difference between your team achieving their goals, or falling short. By embracing agile practices like the regular communication that comes from agile planning meetings, to the learnings that come from taking an interactive approach to development, and creating time for team-led improvement with retrospectives, you can seriously boost your team dynamics.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm Supports Team Collaboration

Easy Agile TeamRhythm is designed to make your agile practices more accessible and effective, helping your team plan, prioritize, and deliver work with better alignment and clarity.

Built around a story map for visualizing work and retrospective boards that encourage team-led improvement, TeamRhythm facilitates sprint and release planning, dependency management, backlog management, user story mapping, and retrospectives.

Tight integration with Jira makes Easy Agile TeamRhythm a reliable source of truth, no matter where you and your team members are located.

Watch a demo, learn about pricing, and try for yourself in our sandbox. Visit the Easy Agile TeamRhythm Features and Pricing page for more.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm

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What is agile PI planning?

PI Planning is a critical event for agile teams to set a clear direction for the upcoming Program Increment or Planning Interval (SAFe 6.0). It helps teams to identify potential risks, assess impact and effort, and benefit from coordination and alignment around priorities and milestones

PI Planning at its core promotes agility. By fostering closer alignment between stakeholders and development teams, it enables effective decision-making, promotes transparency, and encourages adaptive planning. This iterative approach empowers teams to continuously refine their strategies, ensuring successful outcomes and delivering value to stakeholders.

As a result it is necessarily a collaborative process - that ultimately optimizes the delivery of value by blending predictability and agility, while maximizing team efficiency and productivity. But we often overlook how to make the PI Planning event itself more agile.

While an important ceremony for any organization aiming to stay ahead of the competition in today's market - it can also be daunting. From figuring out the right approach to creating feedback loops that keep individuals focused and motivated, there are plenty of complexities when it comes to mastering agile PI Planning.

Additionally in today's distributed landscape, agile teams face unique challenges when it comes to effective collaboration and planning. The key to agile PI Planning agile requires a shift towards more flexible, collaborative and efficient processes and environments.

The key to agile PI Planning requires a shift towards more flexible, collaborative and efficient processes and environments.

This blog post will provide an overview on what challenges there are to agile PI Planning in Jira, and how you can overcome them using Jira together with Easy Agile programs.

Top 3 challenges of agile PI Planning in Jira

1. Collaborating across tools and timezones

Real-time collaboration is essential for agile PI planning, but it is challenging to implement in a remote or distributed environment. The pandemic accelerated the shift to a remote workforce, creating new challenges for PI planning.

Agile teams in Jira striving to effectively plan often face a version of these challenges. One of the most common obstacles teams face is the lack of a visual, intuitive platform that can accommodate the dynamic nature of agile planning. Teams end up using physical boards or switching tools, requiring manual work to implement back into Jira, which can disrupt the flow of work and lead to inefficiencies.

2. Misalignment and miscommunication

PI planning aims to break down silos and bring together multiple teams working on the same sprint. However, with so many teams involved in the planning process, it is common for teams to prioritize their specific goals or issues, leading to inefficient communication. The challenge lies in getting everyone to speak the same language, work to a shared understanding of priorities and ensuring they are all on the same page.

Another hurdle is accommodating cross-team dependencies. Agile teams often work closely with other teams across their organization, and their workstreams are often intertwined. Teams need a straightforward way to visualize these dependencies, to anticipate blockers and plan effectively. What’s more, the process of creating and managing dependencies across multiple teams can become complex and time-consuming.

3. Not being able to see the bigger picture

Lastly, long-term or bigger picture planning can be a struggle. It is easy for PI planning to become too focused on processes and lose sight of the bigger picture where we need to align our goals, objectives and capabilities. In short, it is crucial to align PI planning with the business and customer needs. The planning process should aim to deliver value to customers, build on existing success, and address new challenges. Achieving this requires collaboration, discipline, and creativity.

Teams need to be able to see the big picture and plan work in alignment with the business’ goals and strategy. to Without it, the disconnect can make it challenging for teams to align their day-to-day tasks with their long term goals. The lack of a dedicated space for capturing objectives and their business value can also lead to misalignment and missed opportunities.

So what is needed for agile PI Planning?

When looking for an add-on or additional solution to work with Jira to solve for agile PI Planning, it is key to find one that provides:

1. A shared view and understanding to maintain transparency and alignment for the ART, especially program-level visibility
2. Connection between business priorities and the work of delivery teams
3. Dependency management
4. Real-time collaboration
5. A tool that everyone can use and access to continue collaboration

Agile PI Planning with Jira and Easy Agile Programs

By using Jira and Easy Agile Programs for your PI planning, you can ensure that your agile workflows are streamlined, collaborative, and in line with your strategic objectives. Easy Agile Programs empowers teams to adapt quickly to changes, manage risks better, and deliver value more efficiently. What’s more, it is a native app embedded in Jira, meaning there is little to no configuration as the tool is set up using your underlying Jira data.

Read on to find out how it helps solve the challenges of agile PI Planning specifically.

1. A shared space to collaborate and iterate

The Program Board (ART Planning Board)

Remember, the key to agile planning is flexibility and collaboration, and the ability to adjust plans as necessary. At the same time, it is important to make the process as easy and intuitive as possible and to avoid wasting time on administrative tasks.

If your teams are in Jira, the first place to start is by creating an environment in Jira so there’s less manual overhead and cognitive load for everybody to be able to participate and for planning to translate into delivering. Easy Agile Programs digitises the SAFe Program Board (ART Planning Board for SAFe 6.0) which provides transparency to all members of the ART.

It is built using native Jira issuse and boards, and acts as a single source of truth during and beyond planning. It’s here we have a holistic view of the work we’ve committed to as an ART and an indication of whether we’re on track to achieve it, with the flexibility of making adjustments without leaving the tool should we need to.

The digitised Program Board in Easy Agile Programs is highly visual and also filterable, allowing you to focus in on specific teams, status of issues, or features/epics for focussed ART, PO and coach syncs during the Program Increment/Planning Interview.

The Team Planning Board

Unlike other tools, teams have a dedicated Team Planning Board for team breakout sessions. Here teams can break down features into stories and schedule them within sprints, estimate capacity and plan work collaboratively within and across teams. Given that teams have access to their own backlog and are scheduling work onto their own board in Jira, there is no downtime or double handling.

2. Anticipating and visualizing dependencies

Visualizing and managing program risks and dependencies is not only crucial for effective Planning - but it is also a clear indicator of how well we stay aligned as teams within the ART. Easy Agile Programs is a powerful way to visualize dependencies, enabling teams not only to create, identify, and understand the health of dependencies, but also to resolve dependencies across multiple teams. This fosters collaboration, breaks down siloes and mitigates potential roadblocks to progressing the work.

On the Team Planning Board

When teams are at the stage of breaking down features into stories or epics, they can easily create and understand dependencies within and across teams.This means that work is never created without understanding how it aligns or conflicts with other teams in the ART to maintain alignment. Creating dependencies is easily done through drag and drop:

On the Program Board

Identifying dependencies and potential risks to scheduling work is a critical part of PI Planning. Aside from visible dependency lines, Easy Agile Programs also visualises the health of those dependencies. Green means the dependency is healthy, orange means it is at risk, and red indicates a conflict. Black dependency lines indicate dependencies external the PI or Program - critical for the Release Train Engineers to address between ARTs.

This is all visible on the Program Board where we can also filter by dependencies:

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3. Bigger picture planning and alignment

Third level hierarchy

Connecting the work of the teams to what the business cares about is instrumental in the delivery of value. Easy Agile Programs provides the connective tissue between higher level business priorities and initiatives with third level hierarchy, making it easy to understand what is scheduled to deliver against business priorities and how it is progressing.

PI Objectives

From the Team Planning Board  can easily create draft PI Objectives and link them to Jira issues, ensuring alignment and transparency with business value. This is a critical part of linking what the team is working on to broader business objectives, and Easy Agile Programs literally links the issues to these objectives so that we can filter the work by objective.

Agile planning is iterative, and plans often require adjustments.

Can I still use Easy Agile Programs for planning if I'm not practising SAFe?

Absolutely. Easy Agile Programs is not just for teams practising the SAFe methodology.

The tool is flexible and adaptable, making it equally beneficial for any agile team that values interactive, visual planning. Regardless of the specific framework you use, Easy Agile Programs facilitates clear communication, makes it easier to manage dependencies, provides a shared view of team capacities and progress, and aligns teams with overarching business objectives.

This way, whether you're practicing Scrum, Kanban, or your own unique blend of agile methodologies, you can still leverage the power of Easy Agile Programs to foster a more collaborative and efficient planning process.

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Many organizations, especially those in highly regulated industries, struggle to manage large-scale projects. SAFe, or the Scaled Agile Framework, can provide a solution. (OR That's where SAFe, or the Scaled Agile Framework, comes into play.)

SAFe is a framework designed to help businesses make sustainable changes on a large scale. It offers training and guidance for implementing agile practices across the enterprise, whether it's at a small team level, department level, or throughout the entire organization.

In this blog post, we will delve deeper into the benefits of implementing SAFe, focusing specifically on how it can be utilized within the financial services industry to create a lean enterprise.

Benefits of SAFe for financial services

SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) is an incredibly valuable approach for organizations looking to enhance their operations. By adopting SAFe, financial services firms can achieve numerous benefits that are specific to their industry.

1. Business Agility: SAFe enables financial services firms to become more adaptable and responsive to market dynamics. By adopting SAFe practices at an enterprise level, organizations can foster a culture of continuous improvement, allowing them to quickly adapt to changing customer demands, regulatory requirements, and emerging technologies.
2. Enhanced Customer Experience: In today's competitive financial services landscape, providing exceptional customer experiences is paramount. SAFe promotes customer-centricity by encouraging regular feedback loops with customers throughout the development process. This allows financial institutions to gather insights, identify pain points, and rapidly iterate on their products and services, ensuring they meet the evolving needs and expectations of their customers.
3. Accelerated Time-to-Market: Time is of the essence in the financial industry. SAFe empowers organizations to speed up their time-to-market by breaking down silos and fostering collaboration between departments. By leveraging agile practices, financial services firms can respond quickly to market opportunities, launch innovative solutions faster ensuring they are first to seize market opportunities
4. Risk Mitigation: Compliance and risk management are critical considerations for financial services organizations. SAFe provides a structured governance framework that incorporates compliance requirements into the development process. This ensures that products and services adhere to regulatory standards.
5. Improved Operational Efficiency: Financial services firms deal with significant complexity, from managing intricate financial systems to addressing regulatory demands. SAFe helps optimize operational efficiency by promoting transparency, communication, and continuous improvement. By implementing Lean principles and agile practices, organizations can eliminate waste, optimize processes, and enhance overall operational performance.
6. Employee Engagement and Empowerment: SAFe emphasizes the empowerment of teams, fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous learning. This approach leads to increased employee engagement, as team members feel more involved in decision-making processes and have a sense of ownership over their work. The result is a motivated and empowered workforce that drives organizational success.

Visualizing Dependencies for Seamless Collaboration and Timely Delivery

In the intricate world of SAFe, covering every aspect can be overwhelming. For the purpose of this blog, let's focus on a specific use case.

The financial services industry often deals with complex projects involving multiple teams and stakeholders. In such scenarios, visualizing and understanding dependencies among teams becomes critical. This is where the SAFe program board comes in. It acts as a centralized space for teams to effectively visualize, manage dependencies, and progress transparently.

Consider the example of Easy Agile Bank, preparing to launch its self-service banking platform. Various teams, including software, marketing, and customer success, collaborate to make this launch successful. To ensure a seamless rollout, understanding team dependencies and efficient work scheduling are paramount. The goal is to prevent bottlenecks that could delay the launch of the new self-service banking app.

Let’s take a closer look at what this might look like. Below you can see the Team Planning board in Easy Agile Programs for the Software team. The red, yellow, green and black lines indicate dependencies. Some dependencies exist within the software team, while others are cross-team dependencies with the marketing team.

The color of the dependency lines reflects their health status. A red dependency represents a conflict, yellow indicates at risk, green signifies a healthy state and black indicates external dependencies outside the current view, such as work in the backlog or in an other Program Increments. To avoid bottlenecks, you need to address the red dependencies and the yellow where possible.

With Easy Agile Programs, visualizing dependencies becomes effortless. Teams can act swiftly and adjust plans accordingly to prevent delays in the app launch. For instance, the software team identifies a red dependency with the marketing team regarding the live chat system. While the software team plans to set it up in Sprint 2, the marketing team don’t plan on mapping out the live chat experience and messaging until Sprint 3. The dependency line serves as a visual indicator, prompting teams to discuss and reschedule work.

After a brief discussion, the software team decides to reschedule the live chat setup to Sprint 4. As a result, the dependency line turns green, indicating a smooth progress and successful avoidance of a potential bottleneck.

“When I would ask colleagues how long it would take to untangle and understand dependencies, they would suggest a week. With Easy Agile Programs, it took us three minutes”.

Stefan Höhn, NFON

Harness the Power of the SAFe Program Board

Overall, the program board can help teams prioritize their work and make informed decisions about resource allocation. By visualizing dependencies, teams can identify critical path items and focus their efforts on the most important tasks that need to be completed first. This ensures that teams are working in a coordinated, transparent manner and reduces the risk of unnecessary delays or conflicts.

The SAFe program board acts as a valuable tool for teams to effectively manage dependencies, promote collaboration, and achieve alignment in large-scale agile projects.

Easy Agile Programs allows teams to identify and create dependencies effortlessly, empowering teams to navigate the complex financial services landscape with ease.

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When I first began working as a Scrum Master, I quickly became focused on the world of metrics. I believed that for my teams to succeed, they needed to have a continuously improving velocity, a stable cumulative flow diagram, or a perfect burn-down chart.

Sound familiar?

The problem with these metrics is that they are efficiency, not value focused.

It doesn't matter if a team builds one hundred new features rapidly if none of those actually deliver value to the customer. Efficiency metrics also have a habit of being misused and misunderstood, and this can breed malcontent.

Rather than focusing heavily on the data in retrospectives, I aim to focus on the people. The Agile Manifesto after all is about enabling people and their interactions.

Each of us are beating hearts behind our devices

Making time for human interaction...has resulted in far better outcomes than any beautifully constructed burndown chart.

Through embracing a human-first approach, a team I once worked with learned that they as a group were avid gamers. They'd been working together for years but hadn't known. This team was under a lot of pressure to deliver to difficult timescales and retros had fallen by the wayside.

This was the first thing I focused on; getting them believing in retrospectives again. Taking a human-centred approach, I melted the ice with some unfettered time to talk about non-work stuff “What was your favourite childhood video game”.

Just a few minutes of idle chatter about Sonic, Legend of Zelda, and Mario kicked off a chain of events that started with a few of them arranging to game together that evening, and before long, we had weekly video game-themed zoom backgrounds and retrospectives always had a gaming twist. Think Dungeons & Dragons, Tetris, Pokémon & Among Us.

Another great sign that a team is on the right track is how much they laugh together. This team was noticeably happier as a consequence, the change was drastic, almost tangible.

We aren't just avatars on our screens, each of us are beating hearts behind our devices, with passions, likes, dislikes, and aspirations. Making time for human interaction and building retrospectives that focus on our human side, has resulted in far better outcomes than any beautifully constructed burndown chart.

Why embrace a People-Centred approach?

Let’s delve a little into why you should focus on the human side. What’s in it for you?

• Increased Team Engagement and Participation: When retros are people-centered, team members will feel more connected to their colleagues, they’ll feel more comfortable actively participating, and have an increased sense of ownership of the team's successes and challenges.
• Improved psychological safety: With a people-centric approach, you can more easily create a safe and inclusive environment for team members to share their thoughts and experiences openly, without fear of judgement. This can foster a sense of belonging and increase the overall morale of the team.
• More enjoyment: We spend 8 of our waking hours working and half or more of our adult lives working. We owe it to ourselves to have a bit of fun in the process. A people-centric approach can result in people looking forwards to the next retro. More enjoyment, more engagement, and better outcomes. Simple.
• Better profitability: Oh, and it’s also better for the bottom line. A study by Gallup found a clear link between engagement and profitability in companies. Why are highly engaged teams more profitable? Teams that rank in the top 20% for engagement experience a 41% decrease in absenteeism and a 59% decrease in turnover. Engaged employees come to work with enthusiasm, focus, and energy.

The perfect conditions for continuous improvement.

Looking to get started with a few people-focused retrospectives?

Try a few of these free templates;

Psychological Safety Retro

The Aristotle project led by Google, found that the presence of psychological safety was the biggest factor in high performance for teams. Use this format to build the foundations of psychological safety with your teams, baseline the current levels and develop actions to improve.

Healthy Minds Retro

You wouldn’t let your car go without a service, and I bet your phone battery rarely goes below 10%. Why don’t we place the same focus on looking after our own needs, individually or collectively? Use this retro to narrow in on improvements that improve your team's health.

Spotify Health Check Retro

Famed for the agile framework that was never intended as a framework, some coaches at Spotify also released a team health check format which is great for measuring and visualising progress as a team. The simplicity of this format and its ability to highlight areas of focus as well as progress over time is particularly powerful. The best bit? It’s the team's perspective, not any external maturity model or arbitrary metric.

Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose Retro

Based upon the book ‘Drive’ by Dan Pink which highlighted the surprising things that motivate us, this retro helps teams to investigate the areas of their work which amplify or dampen our sense of autonomy, mastery & purpose. This book was a game changer for me and this retro could change the game for your teams.

5 Dysfunctions of a Team Retro

Another format based upon a highly acclaimed book, this retro builds upon the works of Patrick Lencioni and his 5 dysfunctions of a team. Using this retro, you can highlight the dysfunctional behaviours in your team and collectively solve those challenges together. One team, our problems, our solutions.

Let’s leave you with some things to think about

The key to unlocking the true potential of your teams lies in embracing a people-centered approach to retrospectives. By focusing on the human side of our teams, we can foster stronger connections, create a safe and inclusive environment, and ultimately drive better outcomes for both the team and the organization.

Remember, the Agile Manifesto is about enabling people and their interactions, and by placing people at the heart of our retrospectives, we can build stronger, happier, and more productive teams.

Forget about chasing the perfect metrics, and instead focus on building meaningful connections and fostering a culture of continuous improvement that is rooted in the human experience.

Retrospectives integrated with your work in Jira

Hoping to improve how your team is working together? Easy Agile TeamRhythm helps you turn insights into action, to improve how you’re working and make your next release better than the last.

TRY TEAMRHYTHM FREE FOR 30 DAYS

About Chris

For ten years now, Chris Stone has been fostering an environment of success for high-performing teams and organizations through the use of agility. He has worked across a wide range of industries and with some of the largest organizations in the world, as well as with smaller, lean enterprises.

​As The Virtual Agile coach, Chris intends to enable frictionless innovation, regardless of location, and is a firm believer in enabling agility whilst working virtually. Find him online at Virtually Agile >>

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The seventh principle of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development is:
Working software is the primary measure of progress.
Not story points, not velocity, not estimates: working software.

Jason Godesky, Better Programming

Estimation is a common challenge for agile software development teams. The anticipated size and complexity of a task is anything but objective; what is simple for one person may not be for another. Story points have become the go-to measure to estimate the effort involved in completing a task, and are often used to gauge performance. But is there real value in that, and what are the risks of relying too heavily on velocity as a guide?

Agile estimation

As humans, we are generally terrible at accurately measuring big things in units like time, distance, or in this case, complexity. However, we are great at making relative comparisons - we can tell if something is bigger, smaller, or the same size as something else. This is where story points come in. Story points are a way to estimate relative effort for a task. They are not objective and can fluctuate depending on the team's experience and shared reference points. However, the longer a team works together, the more effective they become at relative sizing.

The teams that I coach have all experienced challenges with user story estimation. The historical data tells us that once a story exceeds 5 story-points, the variability in delivery expands. Typically, the more the estimate exceeds 5 points, the more the delivery varies from the estimate.

Robin D Bailey, Agile Coach, GoSourcing

Scale of reference

While story points are useful as an abstraction for planning and estimating, they should not be over-analyzed. In a newly formed team, story points are likely to fluctuate significantly, but there can be more confidence in the reliability of estimations in a long-running team who have completed many releases together. Two different teams, however, will have different scales of reference.

At a company level, the main value I used to seek with story points was to understand any systemic problems. For example, back when Atlassian released to Server quarterly, the sprints before a release would blow out and fail to meet the usual level of story point completion. The root cause turned out to be a massive spike in critical bugs uncovered by quality blitz testing. By performing better testing earlier and more regularly we spread the load and also helped to de-risk the releases. It sounds simple looking back but it was new knowledge for our teams at the time that needed to be uncovered.

Mat Lawrence, COO, Easy Agile

Even with well-established teams, velocity can be affected by factors like heightened complexity with dependencies scheduled together, or even just the average number of story points per ticket. If a team has scheduled a lot of low-complexity tickets, their process might not handle the throughput required. Alternatively having fewer high-complexity tickets could drastically increase the effort required by other team members to review the work. Either situation could affect velocity, but both represent bottlenecks.

Any measured change in velocity could be due to a number of other factors, like capacity shifting through changes in headcount with team members being absent due to illness or planned leave. The reality is that the environment is rarely sterile and controlled.

Relative velocity

Many organizations may feel tempted to report on story points, and velocity reports are readily available in Jira. Still, they should be viewed with caution if they’re being used in a ‘team of teams’ context such as across an Agile Release Train. The different scales of reference across teams can make story points meaningless; what one team considers to be a 8-point task may be a 3-point task for another.

To many managers, the existence of an estimate implies the existence of an “actual”, and means that you should compare estimates to actuals, and make sure that estimates and actuals match up. When they don’t, that means people should learn to estimate better.

So if the existence of an estimate causes management to take their eye off the ball of value and instead focus on improving estimates, it takes attention from the central purpose, which is to deliver real value quickly.

‍Ron Jefferies
Co-Author of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development
Story Points Revisited

Seeking value

However, story points are still a valuable tool when used appropriately. Reporting story points to the team using them and providing insights into their unique trends could help them gain more self-awareness and avoid common pitfalls. Teams who are seeking to improve how they’re working may wish to monitor their velocity over time as they implement new strategies.

Certainly, teams working together over an extended period will come to a shared understanding of what a 3 story point task feels like to them. And there is value in the discussion and exploration that is needed to get to that point of shared understanding. The case for 8 story points as opposed to 3 may reveal a complexity that had not been considered, or it may reveal a new perspective that helps the work be broken down more effectively. It could also question whether the work is worth pursuing at all, and highlight that a new approach is needed.

The value of story points for me (as a Developer and a Founder) is the conversations where the issue is discussed by people with diverse perspectives. Velocity is only relatively accurate in long-run teams with high retention.

Dave Elkan, Co-CEO, Easy Agile

At a company level, story points can be used to understand systemic problems by monitoring trends over time. While this reporting might not provide an objective measure, it can provide insights into progress across an Agile Release Train. However, using story point completion as a measure of individual or team performance should be viewed with considerable caution.

Story points are a useful estimation tool for comparing relative effort, but they depend on shared points of reference, and different teams will have different scales. Even established teams may notice velocity changes over time. For this reason, and while velocity reporting can provide insights into the team's progress, it must be remembered that story points were designed for an estimation of effort, rather than a measure. And at the end of the day, we’re in the business of producing great software, not great estimates.

Looking to focus your team on improvement? Easy Agile TeamRhythm helps you turn insights into action with team retrospectives linked to your agile board in Jira, to improve your ways of working and make your next release better than the last. Turn an action item into a Jira issue in just a few clicks, then schedule the work on the user story map to ensure your ideas aren’t lost at the end of the retrospective.

Many thanks to Satvik Sharma, John Folder, Mat Lawrence, Dave Elkan, Henri Seymour, and Robin D Bailey for contributing their expertise and experience to this article.

How well do you know your customers?

🧐 Well, you know they use your product…

🧑‍💻 You sometimes write user stories for them, but not based an any particular persona…

🕵️ You did talk to a customer once; it was interesting, but now you aren’t sure where those notes went…

So that you can provide value to your customers, you really do need to get to know them well. What are the goals, motivations, and pain points that bring them to your product?

This is pretty important stuff, so let’s take a look at 7 reasons why it’s good to have a healthy level of customer obsession in your agile teams...

1. Agile and customer value go hand-in-hand

Agile is all about the customer. At least, it should be.

It’s right there in the first two agile principles:

(1) Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

(2) Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.

Manifesto For Agile Software Development

If you want to take an agile approach, you’ll definitely be putting your users at the heart of your development.

2. Each sprint should deliver a better product, and more value, for your customers

One reason why agile should (in theory - we’ll expand on this shortly) benefit your customers is that every two to four weeks, you’ll ship something new. It may not be a whole new feature each time, but every update, UI improvement, and even every bug fix is delivery of incremental improvement.

This is kind of a big deal when you compare it to traditional project management approaches.

With a waterfall approach, customers could be waiting months or even years before seeing any changes. In many cases, by the time updates were released, customers, technologies, and requirements had moved on.

But by taking an agile approach, you:

• Consider and incorporate user requested updates, features, and changes at any time
• Regularly add new features to a roadmap and incrementally roll them out in weeks or months, rather than years
• Can see early on if something’s not working, because you invite your users to report issues and provide feedback right away
• Show your users how the product is developing and growing
• Keep your product moving forward, and the customer is moving forward with it
• Grow the value your product provides to your customers over time.

However, it’s important to note that all of these really awesome benefits only apply if you’re prioritising your backlog and choosing features with your customers’ best interests at heart.

3. Agile teams need to know what’s valuable to their customers

“There is a chasm between the output of a team and successful outcomes for their customers. And the success of a team is measured by outcomes, not code.”

Nick Muldoon, CEO and Co-Founder, Easy Agile

Your customers have their own priorities, and they won’t align with the priorities of your business unless you make your customers the primary concern of your business.

Your developers likely want to work on projects that they find exciting or fulfilling, so the best way to motivate your agile teams is by building empathy with the people they’re building for. The most successful teams get a kick out of delivering the features that matter most to their customers. Because if you’re not solving their most important problems, your customers will find someone else who will solve them.

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4. Customer focus leads to better quality products

When you’re obsessed with your customers, you deliver products that actually matter.

Your whole business, from leadership, to engineering, to HR and Marketing; all need to stay focussed on the people that your business is aiming to attract. When your development teams understand your customers and develop with them in mind, there’s a much better chance that they’ll build the right things at the right time for the right people. And this is critical to the success of your product and organisation.

It’s also a great way to avoid building bloated products with unnecessary features.

5. An agile customer focus is better for planning and prioritising

The worst backlogs are huge ‘to-do’ lists; task focussed and likely to be out of date. The best backlogs however, align with the customer journey, are informed by feedback from your customers, and attempt to tackle their greatest pain points.

Without a solid understanding of your customers to inform your backlog, you could end up planning sprints, versions or even entire increments that don’t deliver anything useful or move the product forward for users. And that’s a pretty costly risk.

6. Customer feedback makes agile teams better

Teams who are obsessed with customers love getting customer feedback, whether it’s via customer interviews, surveys or just having a chat about their experience.

Customer feedback is incredibly powerful because it can help you:

• Understand your customers - Know what their biggest problems are and what they care about most
• Motivate your agile team - Help your team understand the problems they’re solving, the difference they’re making, and that their work is meaningful
• Spot trends and patterns - Ensure your product adapts to what’s in demand right now and what your customers will need in the future
• Make better products - Find out what’s not working so you can fix it
• Track your progress - See whether customers are happier with your product over time
• Stay relevant - Because products and companies that solve problems stick around long-term
• Get buy in - When your customers are involved in the process, they’ll feel more committed to the product, which can reduce churn
• Improve retention - Reduce churn and keep your customers for longer when you incorporate their feedback and ideas into your product
• Make data-informed decisions - Stop relying on your assumptions and let the data drive your strategy

So customer feedback is obviously awesome, but what do you actually DO with it? How do you share it with the team and turn it into actions? Well, that’s where user story mapping comes in.

7. Agile user story mapping is all about the customer

Most agile teams run user story mapping sessions to discuss what functions and features are needed in the product. User stories maps are a visual tool for customer focused development, ensuring your customer journey stays front and center throughout development.

This is where customer feedback comes into play. When your team can access a wealth of feedback from users, they can write user stories informed by real data. This gives them a much better chance of prioritizing features that will add value to users right away. Faster time-to-value. Sounds great right?

This makes backlog prioritization and sprint or version planning so much simpler, because the whole team shares a picture of what is important to the people who use what they are building. The team knows what they should prioritise next.

Improving your customer-focus is a solid strategy.

If your team isn’t exactly obsessed with your customers, maybe it’s time to change that?

Because if you’re focusing on your customers, you’ll make more of the right decisions about what products, features, and requirements you need to work on. You may not get it right every time, but if you’re involving your customers, you’ll soon learn what doesn’t work. Your team will find it easier to make decisions, you’ll waste less time, and you’ll build a better product, that keeps getting better.

Win win.

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Ready to take your customer focus to the next level?

Get our comprehensive playbook, "Understanding Customer Value in Agile." This practical guide shows you exactly how to:

• Conduct effective customer research through proven techniques like Gemba walks
• Create actionable personas that drive daily decisions
• Build feedback loops that inform your product strategy
• Implement a 90-day plan to transform your team's approach

Download the Customer Value Playbook.

Whether you're a Product Owner looking to improve prioritization or a developer wanting to make better implementation decisions, this guide provides the frameworks and techniques you need to put customer value at the heart of your Agile practice.

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What is a Scrum Master? The Scrum Master guides the daily Scrum in projects or software development to streamline processes as much as possible. This person applies agile methodologies to guide successful project outcomes.

If you want to become a Scrum Master, learn what defines this role. Explore its duties and how the servant leadership style supports carrying out the various responsibilities it involves.

Find out how the Scrum Master's role benefits product or project development. Finally, discover what qualifications you need to become a Scrum Master and what job types you can apply to complete your studies.

What is a Scrum Master’s role?

A Scrum Master's role is dynamic. They must be flexible and adapt to various circumstances, because the Scrum Master serves a vital role in managing projects.

Every product development project needs a different approach. The Scrum Master must adapt their approach to each position and even play the role of an agile coach at times.

Whatever role the Scrum Master takes on, they play a servant leader role (we’ll review what this is later). So, their responsibilities vary when guiding the team's progress.

Some ways that the Scrum Master works with team members and product owners include:

• Sprint planning with team members and product owners to check that everyone understands what needs to be done
• Solving issues such as work estimation, scope creep and over-committing to work volumes
• Holding daily standup meetings to discuss product issues, backlogs, and any other team member concerns
• Acting as a facilitator to limit blockers that hold the team back from completing iterations on time. The Scrum Master also handles any roadblocks by improving workflows
• Having sprint reviews that ensure team collaboration and helpful feedback
• Holding retrospectives to see how team members can improve
• Monitoring the Scrum board to ensure that all cards are current and that Jira and other software works properly
• Hosting individual meetings to get to know and help team members one-on-one
• Handling portfolio planning tools such as analyzing burndown charts. They use burndown charts and other tools as inputs into what the team needs to build and the cadence levels for their work.
• Making sure that the team members use agile guidelines in their projects. These guidelines help team members meet stakeholder needs.

At the end of the day, the Scrum Master champions the Scrum process for successful project outcomes.

Servant leadership

Part of answering the question, “What is a Scrum Master”? involves looking at leadership styles. These styles include bureaucratic, democratic, transactional, and many others. One style that fits well with the role of the Scrum Master is to be a servant leader, an approach that works well with small teams.

Servant leaders:

• Support a team spirit
• Share responsibility
• Share decision-making
• Focus on achievements instead of faults

Servant leaders find solutions which promote workflows and stakeholder satisfaction.

Scrum Master according to Scrum methodology

The Scrum Guide, written by Ken Schwaber, provides an excellent outline of the diverse responsibilities of the Scrum Master. Here are some of this person’s roles:

• Adopting the role of an agile coach to lead organizational transformation using the Scrum methodology
• Planning Scrum applications to help the organization understand how the new iterative workflow process works and adapt to changes
• Guiding leaders, managers, and other stakeholders in understanding the benefits and applications of the Scrum product development methodology
• Helping increase the Scrum team's productivity
• Collaborating with other organizational Scrum Masters within the organization to help team members adopt agile principles
• Promoting positive working relationships between team members, product owners, and other stakeholders
• Guiding sprint planning, daily stand-up meetings, sprint reviews, and product backlog items

Scrum Master challenges

While the Scrum Master supports a streamlined workflow, their job is not always as simple as it sounds. Here are some challenges they may encounter:

1. Change resistance

Scrum Masters’ concepts may be new to employees, so Scrum Masters can encounter resistance. Either way, the Scrum Master must create solutions to dealing with any resistance to change.

2. Lack of understanding

Not everyone will understand or even like agile processes. A good Scrum Master must overcome this and to help teams connect principles with practical implementation to assimilate agile practices.

3. Gaining leadership support

Scrum Masters can only do their work effectively if they have the full support of leadership. Scrum processes can be pretty challenging, which initially disrupts old processes, making transformation difficult.

Managers may be afraid that the Scrum Master will usurp their authority. Departments may not want to adapt their processes, but the Scrum Master must use agile coach techniques to overcome fears and unwillingness to adapt.

Unless the Scrum Master has the full buy-in of leadership, any change initiative will derail before it even starts.

How Scrum Master positions can work

Role rotation. Agile teams rotate the responsibility of this role between members. For example, each team member does admin tasks for each Scrum meeting.

Part-time role. The Scrum Master takes on additional responsibilities.

Full-time role. The Scrum Master takes on a dedicated, full-time role. They must have the experience to do this work and skillfully show the team how to apply agile practices.

Guiding many teams. A Scrum Master guides several development teams. They monitor the work progress for several teams.

Agile coach. This Scrum Master role involves coaching teams or other Scrum Masters.

If the Scrum Master role interests you, you should know that Scrum Master jobs are common, partly due to the popularity of the agile method.

Organizations often look for ways to improve product development. They want Scrum Masters to help guide the process to get products to the market quicker.

You can look on LinkedIn for positions for good Scrum Masters. Their research shows that these positions are in high demand, so you can improve your skills with Scrum Master certifications. Your prospects are diverse as you can work in manufacturing, health, government, education, and many others.

Scrum Masters can get a Certified Scrum Master (CSM) qualification. They can also be a Professional Scrum Master.

How to become a certified Scrum Master

Scrum.org offers various resources, including Scrum certifications and training. So, if you want to follow a career in agile methodologies and lead a Scrum team, you can become a CSM or a PSM. You can also opt to train through the Scrum Alliance, which has been operating since 2001.

Hundreds of thousands of Scrum Masters have attained qualifications through these organizations. Both provide recognizable certifications at various Scrum Master levels, so perhaps it's time to boost your career.

You can achieve a Professional Scrum Master (PSM) certificate from scrum.org. This is available at three different levels, including:

• The PSM I certificate. This certificate shows that students understand Scrum and its applications as per the Scrum Guide.
• The PSM II certificate is proof that you can apply the Scrum principles and practices in a complex real-work situation.
• PSM III certificate. This certificate shows that students have an in-depth understanding of Scrum Values and can apply Scrum principles and practices in complex environments and situations.

Anyone who wants to improve their career opportunities can sign up with Scrum Alliance to get their CSM certification. You can become a:

• Certified ScrumMaster (SCM). This certificate focuses on servant leaders and how to help the Scrum team work together to enact the Scrum framework.
• Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO). This certificate is for anyone involved in the business aspect of projects. If you want to know more about product development, productivity, and meeting stakeholder needs, this one is ideal.
• Certified Scrum Developer (CSD). This certificate is good when you want to know how to apply techniques and tools to build great software products. You will learn how to apply iterative Scrum methods in this certification process.
• The Certified Scrum Professional (CSP) learns how to improve Agile methodology implementation in each project they guide.

Take your career up a notch.

Easy Agile provides a range of resources to help Scrum Masters achieve their agile methodology goals. In addition, you can access resources such as our learning hub and webinars to improve your skills.

Scrum Masters can also explore Easy Agile Programs for Jira to enhance the software development team’s experience. Another excellent resource is Easy Agile Scrum Workflow for Jira.

Enhance your Scrum Master role with resources that make your work easier by overcoming resistance to new learning curves.

The sprint planning meeting helps agile teams plan and get on the same page about each sprint. It’s an opportunity to decide on prioritization based on the product vision, issue urgency, stakeholder feedback, and knowledge from the previous sprint.

The goal of the meeting is to determine which backlog items should be tackled during the upcoming sprint. The team, guided by the product owner and Scrum Master, decide which items from the product backlog should be moved to the sprint backlog for hopeful completion over the coming weeks (sprint duration).

Sprint planning plays a critical role in the Scrum process. The meeting ensures teams enter a sprint prepared, with work items chosen carefully. The end result should be a shared understanding of sprint goals that will guide the next sprint.

While sprint planning should occur before any type of sprint, for the purposes of this article, we will focus on sprint planning sessions for Scrum teams. Continue reading to learn our top tips for a successful sprint planning meeting. 🎉

How does the sprint planning meeting fit into the Scrum framework?

Scrum is a hugely popular agile methodology used in product development. The process involves a series of sprints that are improved upon and adjusted based on continual feedback from customers, stakeholders, and team members.

The sprint planning meeting sees the entire team comes together to decide what work they hope to complete over the upcoming sprint. The product owner helps decide which priority product backlog items move to the sprint backlog. This is an incredibly important phase that guides the team’s goals over the next two weeks.

The Scrum Master acts as a Scrum guide. They help the development team stay on track in each sprint, ensuring everyone gets the most out of the process. The Scrum team works together to complete the amount of work decided on during sprint planning. To ensure everyone remains on track and on the same page, daily stand-ups are held each day. This provides an opportunity for team members to address any issues or potential bottlenecks that could keep work from running smoothly.

Following the sprint, a sprint review takes place, which gives stakeholders an opportunity to provide feedback. Finally, a sprint retrospective meeting gives the team an opportunity to assess and improve upon their process. The Scrum concludes and begins again with another sprint planning meeting.

Here are some tips to make sure each sprint planning meeting sets you up for success:

1. Reserve the same time for sprint planning ⏰

Book your sprint planning meeting on the same day and at the same time every two weeks to ensure your entire team keeps that time slot available. Sprint planning is vital to the success of each sprint — it’s a meeting that shouldn’t be shuffled around.

Pick a time that works for everyone involved, asking for feedback from your team about when is best. Schedule the meetings well in advance in everyone's calendar so that no one forgets about it or books other engagements.

2. Set a sprint planning meeting duration and stick to it ⏳

Sprint planning is important, but that doesn’t mean it should take forever. Set a time limit for your meeting, and do your best to stick to it. If you are well prepared with an agenda and refined backlog, you should be able to get straight to planning.

We recommend scheduling no more than 2-4 hours for sprint planning. Let the Scrum Master be in charge of ensuring the team stays on track and completes planning in the allotted time.

3. Complete backlog refinement before sprint planning begins 📝

Complete your backlog refinement ahead of your sprint planning meeting. Otherwise, you will spend far too much time adding details, estimating, or splitting work.

The sprint planning meeting should be reserved for planning and goal setting. While the backlog shouldn’t be set in stone, it should provide team members with enough details to move forward with planning instead of refinement.

4. Incorporate stakeholder feedback from the sprint review 😍

What insights did stakeholders share throughout the sprint or during the sprint review? You are designing this product for them, so incorporating their feedback is crucial to the end result.

Make sure every decision is based on customer needs. After each sprint, share your product goals and sprint goals with your stakeholders and adjust per their feedback.

5. Incorporate sprint retrospective insights 💡

Sprint retrospectives are a critical part of the agile process, providing a time for the team to discuss how they can improve. There are lessons to be learned every time you complete a sprint or iteration. Agile continually takes what a team learns and turns those experiences into actionable improvements. So, ignoring these lessons would be very un-agile of you. 🤔

How did the last sprint go? Was each team member satisfied with the process, and what was accomplished? What changes did your team decide would make the next sprint more effective? Use these insights to make each sprint better than the last one.

6. Clearly define what success looks like ✅

Set clearly defined goals, objectives, and metrics. What is the definition of done? How will the team know if they are successful? You should leave the sprint planning meeting with a clear idea of what needs to get done and what success looks like.

7. Use estimates to make decisions based on team capacity 📈

Overloading your team or any individual beyond their capacity does far more harm than good. The team will be more likely to make mistakes, and morale will diminish as goals remain consistently out of reach.

Use agile estimation techniques and story points to better understand workload and capacity. How much work and effort is needed to accomplish your goals? Ensure you set realistic and reasonable goals based on your best estimations.

8. Align sprint goals with overall product goals 🎉

Ensure you have a goal for the sprint and that all backlog items relate to the end goal. Your sprint goals should work alongside your overall product goals.

Failing to prioritize your objectives can result in a random selection of to-dos. Completing disconnected backlog items will still get work done, but it will result in unexpected outcomes and a low sense of accomplishment for the team. Each backlog item should be chosen with a clear purpose that relates to your product and sprint goals.

9. Leave room for flexibility 💫

Any agile methodology is flexible by nature, and Scrum is no exception. If there isn’t room for flexibility, something has gone seriously wrong.

It's important to acknowledge that not everything will always go to plan. You will continually find new information, stakeholder insights, and dependencies that the team will need to adjust to along the way. Ensure the team understands they need to be flexible and that they are supported throughout each sprint.

Sprint planning made easy

The effectiveness of sprint planning can make or break the coming week for a Scrum team. It’s important for the development team to take the necessary time to prepare for each upcoming sprint. This means going into the meeting with clear goals, objectives, stakeholder feedback, and a refined backlog.

Make the most of your sprint planning and do it with ease using Easy Agile TeamRhythm. Transform your flat product maps into dynamic, flexible, and visual representations of the customer journey. Story points will help your team make decisions and account for capacity while keeping the customer top-of-mind.

Learn more about the benefits of user story mapping and read our ultimate guide to user story maps.

Do your teams have a clear understanding of what needs to be done – and why?

One of the keys to being agile is to focus on the work that matters. This means working on projects that add value to the business and contribute to performance. But for many organizations, teams can get caught up on the latest feature or development, without understanding how that relates to the bigger picture of what the business cares about.

To keep your team focused on what they have set out to achieve in order to deliver value and achieve business outcomes, setting smart PI Objectives is essential. We look at why they’re so important, what makes a good PI objective, and how you can use them in your organization.

At a glance:

• PI objectives help teams understand how what they’re doing matters to the business.
• Good PI objectives are SMART – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timebound.
• Linking features to PI objectives within the same tool makes it easier for teams and stakeholders to see how work is achieving business objectives.

What are PI objectives?

When an agile team gets together for a PI planning session, there are two key outputs:

1. The Program Board (ART Planning Board in SAFe 6.0) covers big picture information such as features, dependencies between teams, and milestones. A feature is an agreed upon piece of work identified as being important to meeting business needs. For software development teams, this might be a new product feature. For marketing teams, it might be a website refresh or an advertising campaign.
2. PI objectives link the scheduled features to broader business objectives and value. This helps align work that needs to be done with broader business goals. They are then broken down into committed and uncommitted objectives.
   1. Committed objectives are those the team is confident they can deliver within the Program Increment. These objectives have been committed by the team through a confidence vote.
   2. Uncommitted objectives are those the team have low confidence in delivering but can help to build a buffer into the PI. This is because while the outcome of these objectives may not be certain, they are included in the teams capacity and plan for the PI should capacity remain after delivering on committed objectives.

The benefits of having smart PI objectives

PI objectives link what teams are working on to what the business cares about. They create alignment with business objectives by clearly connecting features to business value. As a result, teams know how their work is adding value.

Smart PI objectives provide a framework for this. They help build trust, create a shared language, and provide a clear direction. Everyone in the team can then understand what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and why it’s important.

Without smart PI objectives in place, teams can spend time on tasks that aren’t adding value to the business and impact agility.

PI objectives are essential to your ability to measure success. Completing features alone isn't enough - they must drive a business outcome. They help get teams clear on why the work they do matters and define what success looks like.

What makes a good PI objective?

We’ve talked about why PI objectives are so critical, and now we’ll explain what makes a good PI objective.

Good PI objectives:

• Allow the business to see deliverables in a set timeframe
• Provide clarity on how scheduled work  fits into the big picture
• Enhance communication between teams and stakeholders
• Include no more than 7 to 10 objectives in total
• Aligns with what the business cares about
• Are clear on why it’s important and what it will deliver
• Are understood by anyone who picks them up

Are SMART – that is, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timebound

PI objectives need to be SMART

Using the SMART goal-setting framework to write your PI objectives helps keep your objectives clear and concise. Under this framework, your PI objective needs to be:

• Specific – Clearly and explicitly state the intended outcome of your objective.
• Measurable – Describe what your team needs to do to achieve the objective and how they will quantify success. Stakeholder feedback should form part of this.
• Achievable – Ensure the objective is realistic and within your team’s control and influence.
• Relevant – Align the objective with overall business objectives.
• Timebound – Set an appropriate timeframe to achieve the objective within the PI.

Team PI objectiveEnsure Easy Agile server customers have a seamless option to migrate to cloud by implementing JCMA and site import/export by the end of Q3.

Tips for writing SMART (and smart) PI objectives

Typically, many teams will run PI planning sessions in one tool, and then use another tool (like Confluence) to record PI objectives.

But separating PI objectives from the planning sessions makes it hard for the team and stakeholders to see how the work is shifting the dial for the business.

With the Easy Agile Programs, you can directly link your features to your objectives within the same tool. You're also able to describe the objective within Easy Agile Programs and assign business value:

By connecting features to PI objectives within the same tool, teams and business stakeholders gain clear visibility of work. They can see how their work is helping to achieve business objectives.

Learn more

Using the SMART framework to define PI objectives helps your teams focus on the right work. They align projects with broader business goals while providing a shared understanding across teams. By working towards the same purpose, they help keep your teams and organization productive and agile.

You can with Easy Agile Programs

Ready to bring your PI Objectives into Jira?

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One question that often arises is, “What are the indicators of a highly effective Scrum Master?" When striving to become an exceptional Scrum Master, consider the following:

• Identify Repeated Mistakes: While occasional mistakes are expected, it is important for the Scrum Master to collaborate with the team to identify recurring mistakes. By implementing policies and practices, the team can prevent these mistakes from happening again.
• Address Systemic Issues: If the team consistently encounters the same issues, the Scrum Master must recognize the presence of systemic problems. Working with the team, the Scrum Master can establish countermeasures to prevent these issues from reoccurring.
• Measure Improvements Over Time: Are we continuously improving as a team? Assess whether the team is more effective now compared to prior periods, such as 6, 9, and 12 months ago. Similarly, consider if the team will be better in the future. If progress stalls, it may be necessary to reevaluate the effectiveness of the Scrum Master.

If your team is progressing across all three of these areas, that’s a great sign that the Scrum Master is effective and that the team is learning and improving.

To drive continuous improvement, the Scrum Master should utilise the retrospective. The retrospective is a Scrum event conducted after the Sprint Review to evaluate and adapt the process and the team's ability to deliver products effectively. During this session, the Scrum Master guides the team in celebrating successes and exploring areas for improvement.

7-step checklist used by Scrum Masters during retrospectives to address problems:

1. Discuss the Problem: In the retrospective, the Scrum Master facilitates a discussion to identify the main challenges faced by the team.
2. Assess Impact: Determine the urgency and impact of the problem. Immediate action may be required for highly impactful issues, while less pressing matters can be addressed later.
3. Identify Root Causes: Understanding the root cause allows the team to gain deeper insights and generate potential solutions.
4. Generate Solutions: Once a significant problem is recognized, the Scrum Master guides the team in brainstorming solutions to address the issue.
5. Implement Solutions: This step is carried out in the subsequent retrospective. The Scrum Master ensures that the proposed solutions are tried and tested.
6. Evaluate Initial Results: Assess the effectiveness of the implemented solution. Did it fix the problem, make it worse, or have no effect?
7. Determine Next Steps: Based on the results, decide whether the problem is resolved or if further action is needed. This may involve continuing with the current solution or pivoting to a different approach.

For example, let's consider a team struggling with high defect rates. Their defect rates surpass both the organisation's average and industry standards. Here's how the 7-step checklist could be applied:

Step 1: In the retrospective, the Scrum Master raises the issue of high defect rates for discussion.

Step 2: The Product Owner shares feedback from the help desk team, highlighting customer complaints and the negative impact on sales.

Step 3: After deliberation, the team recognizes that many defects are missed during manual testing and identifies the lack of test automation as a contributing factor.

Step 4: A team member with experience in automated testing proposes implementing unit-level automated testing practices.

Step 5: In the subsequent retrospective, the team reports applying the new unit testing practices to all their work during the sprint.

Step 6: The team acknowledges that the automated tests identified six defects that would have otherwise been missed.

Step 7: The team agrees to continue using automated unit testing practices and plans to expand to integration-level testing as more of the codebase is covered.

By utilising this 7-step checklist, Scrum Masters can effectively leverage retrospectives to address recurring mistakes, resolve ongoing issues, and foster continuous growth and improvement within their teams.

“Do or do not; there is no try.” While this is certainly Jedi Master Yoda’s most famous quote, it doesn’t exactly apply to agile development. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite of agile. If Yoda were a Scrum Master, however, the quote would look a lot more like this: “Try and again try; that is how you do.”

The Scrum Master facilitates the Scrum team, leading them to a hopeful victory. It’s rewarding, but the Scrum Master role is filled with pressure. The success of the Scrum and the wellbeing of the team falls on the Scrum Master’s shoulders.

If you’re a Scrum Master or aspire to become one, you’ve come to the right place. Master Scrum theory and your leadership skills with our six strategies for Scrum Masters.

Understanding Scrum values and the role of the Scrum Master

Scrum is an agile practice commonly used for product development. It’s based on completing a set amount of work in short bursts — called sprints — so that teams can continuously create iterations as they learn more about a product and its stakeholders.

Ken Schwaber co-created the Scrum framework in the early 1990s to help teams manage complex development projects. He also founded Scrum Alliance and established Scrum.org, an online resource for agile teams.

At the beginning of a Scrum, the product owner decides which product backlog items will be moved to the sprint backlog. From there, the Scrum Master takes over, leading the team through Scrum events, including:

• Sprint planning
• Daily Scrum or daily standups
• Sprint review
• Sprint retrospectives

The role of the Scrum Master is to guide the team through the Scrum process. They facilitate the process, helping the team to master the framework and improve from one sprint to the next.

Characteristics that define a great Scrum Master

Being an effective Scrum Master goes beyond simply following the rules of Scrum. Here are some additional characteristics that truly define excellence in this role:

1. Emotional intelligence

A great Scrum Master possesses high emotional intelligence. This means they can:

• Understand and manage their own emotions.
• Empathize with the team members' feelings and perspectives.
• Facilitate constructive communication and resolve conflicts gracefully.

2. Strong facilitation skills

It's not just about managing the daily Scrum meetings. They need to:

• Encourage open dialogue.
• Ensure every voice is heard.
• Guide the team towards consensus without being overbearing.

3. Adaptability

The landscape of a project can change rapidly. Great Scrum Masters:

• Adapt to changes swiftly without losing focus.
• Help the team pivot strategies quickly while maintaining morale.

4. Lifelong learner

The world of Agile is always evolving. Exceptional Scrum Masters:

• Commit to continuous learning.
• Stay updated with the latest practices, tools, and methodologies.

5. Servant leadership

At the heart of a Scrum Master's role is servant leadership. This involves:

• Placing the team's needs above their own.
• Removing obstacles that hinder the team's progress.
• Empowering team members to take ownership and make decisions.

6. Analytical thinking

A great Scrum Master should be able to:

• Analyze the team's processes and identify bottlenecks.
• Use data-driven insights to foster continuous improvement.

7. Motivational skills

Keeping the team motivated is crucial for sustained productivity. They excel at:

• Recognizing and celebrating small wins.
• Encouraging a positive, collaborative team culture.

8. Excellent communication

Communication is key. They need to:

• Convey ideas clearly and concisely.
• Ensure that all stakeholders are on the same page.

By embodying these characteristics, a Scrum Master not only facilitates effective project management but also fosters a thriving team environment that encourages innovation and success.

Six strategies to become a great Scrum Master

Here are six strategies for Scrum Masters to improve their skills or prepare for their future roles.

1. Don’t forget to be agile yourself

Do you live by agile principles yourself? How agile are you in your leadership style?

Effective Scrum Masters know that they also need to continually improve based on new experiences, successes, and failures. It’s important to learn from your mistakes so that you don’t make them again, but it’s just as important to learn from your successes. Take the time to review your process, including what went well and what didn’t, so you know how you can improve as a leader and facilitator.

2. Get to know your team

Your ability to lead your team is tied to how well you know them. You should continually get to know your team’s strengths and weaknesses. How well do they work together? Who brings out the best in one another, and who doesn't work so well together? Dig deep to truly understand the root dynamics of the team.

Learn more about each individual on the team as well. What do they need help with? What do they excel at? What feedback can you provide to help them grow in their role? How can you help them succeed? Build rapport with your team members by asking how they’re doing, giving and receiving feedback, and finding common ground.

3. Foster a culture of continuous feedback

The agile methodology is based on continuous improvement. How will the individuals on your team improve if you don’t provide them feedback? Likewise, how will you improve if you don’t ask for, and accept, feedback from the team?

Feedback is a two-way street, and it only works if it’s constructive and continuous. Don’t wait until you have something negative to address — you need to regularly provide both positive and negative feedback. Doing this on a regular basis will help you and your team become accustomed to hearing feedback, so it won’t be jarring or off-putting when you do.

As the Scrum Master, you should foster an environment in which all members give and receive constructive feedback.

4. Hone your communication skills

Being in charge doesn’t mean you’re always doing the talking. The opposite is true: Great leaders are great communicators. As a leader, you need to constantly listen to your team, keeping both ears open for any issues your team or the individuals on it may be dealing with.

Actively listen to the concerns of the development team, and consider how each individual on your team prefers to communicate. Do they prefer bold and to-the-point interactions? Or do they need time to ease into a conversation? Everyone communicates a little differently, and understanding your team's preferences will help you make the most of each interaction.

Scrum Masters need to hone their communication skills in order to be effective leaders for their teams. Regularly assess your communication style and its effectiveness, and ask your team for feedback on how you are doing.

5. Make the most of every retrospective

The retrospective is the final event of a Scrum. They are an incredibly important part of the Scrum process, and they should not be overlooked, rushed, or underutilized. As the Scrum Master, you need to take responsibility for making sure retrospectives are effective and occur after each Scrum. Go in with a plan to make the most of every retro meeting.

That doesn’t mean you need to take charge of everything. It’s helpful to let your team run the occasional retrospective. Everyone involved should continually contribute their own ideas to improve the meeting.

Collect regular feedback from your team on how they think your retrospectives are going. Ask for ideas on how they could improve, and change things up. Repeating the exact same questions and retrospective activities will bore your team and lead to reduced engagement.

For more retrospective perspective, read our five steps to holding effective sprint retrospectives.

6. Become a certified Scrum Master

A Scrum Master certification can take you from simple Scrum Master to masterful Scrum Master. While certification isn’t required to become a professional Scrum Master, it certainly helps.

Scrum.org, the website founded by the co-creator of Scrum, offers a three-part certification program called The Professional Scrum MasterTM. The program has three assessment levels that validate your knowledge of the Scrum framework and practical application of Scrum theory.

• The Professional Scrum MasterTM I (PSM I)
• The Professional Scrum MasterTM II (PSM II)
• The Professional Scrum MasterTM III (PSM III)

We’re also big fans of Pretty Agile’s SAFe training programs:

• SAFe Scrum Master SSM Certification
• SAFe Advanced Scrum Master

A certification is a great addition to your resume, and it will help you fine-tune your facilitation skills and Scrum knowledge.

Easy Agile for Scrum Masters

“Try and again try; that is how you do.”

The beauty of agile is that regardless of how many certifications or years of experience you have, there’s always more to improve. Agile is an iterative process in which learning continues from sprint to sprint and project to project. As a Scrum Master, it’s up to you to continue learning the craft and perfecting your facilitation skills, the Scrum Master role involves life-long learning.

Easy Agile builds products designed to help Scrum Masters and agile developers work more efficiently and effectively. Our tools are specifically designed for teams that use and love Jira but need more functionality in order to prioritize customer needs.

Try Easy Agile TeamRhythm to support your team agility from planning through to review. TeamRhythm supports user story mapping, backlog refinement, sprint and version planning, and team retrospectives, building a continuous cycle of improvement right in Jira. It’s a win-win-win for Scrum Masters, development teams, and customers. Try our products absolutely free for 30 days.

Business agility alone is no longer enough to succeed in today’s rapidly changing digital age. To compete and thrive, companies need to deliver value at speed and remove anything that gets in the way of seamless workflow. SAFe® flow accelerators can be the key to unlocking this momentum – but how do you successfully apply them to consistently deliver value?

SAFe methodologist Rebecca Davis sat down with Easy Agile's Jasmin Iordanidis to reflect on the concept of flow and business agility. In this article, we share their tips on how to accelerate flow in your organization. You'll learn:

• Why you need a flow mindset for flow accelerators to be successful
• How improving flow improves customer outcomes
• How to work with flow accelerators

Why flow begins with having the right mindset

Under the SAFe® framework, flow is present when a company can quickly, continuously, and effectively deliver quality products and services that deliver value. This requires all individuals and teams in the value stream to be working optimally with minimum delays and rework, an approach that is significantly different to the traditional ways of work.

“Mindset is big when it comes to working in this way,” said Rebecca. “Rather than simply following policy or the way things have always been done, people need to have conversations and ask questions to find ways to improve. And that means everyone in the company, whether you’re at the team or solution or executive level, needs to really understand and live these principals”.

This makes cultivating a flow mindset of open communication and information sharing across all teams and levels essential. It helps pave the way for accelerated feedback loops that help identify blockers early, rectify issues fast, and facilitate continuous, seamless workflow.

How improving flow improves customer outcomes

SAFe® flow accelerators help work flow through the system without interruptions so your company can deliver continuous value in the shortest amount of time as possible. They do this by helping to remove interruptions, progress work quickly, and create a smooth workflow, which together improve productivity across the value stream. “Accelerators are tangible levers you can pull to improve flow,” said Jasmin. “You can apply metrics to each accelerator so you can quickly assess whether it’s working and adjust accordingly”.

This improved productivity generally leads to improved output from your people. “By removing blockers, you can give people in your business more time to do the work that makes them happier and that makes a difference,” said Jasmin. “They can do more deep work - in whatever form that looks like for them – and ultimately, this leads to improved customer outcomes”.

What are the eight SAFe® flow accelerators?

The SAFe® framework includes eight flow accelerators, with each designed to address a specific activity that interrupts value flow.

1. Visualise and limit WIP: Too much WIP confuses priorities, overloads people, and reduces productivity. Continually adjust WIP to better match demand to capacity and help increase flow through the system.
2. Address bottlenecks: Bottle necks cause the value stream to operate well below capacity. Focus on eliminating dominant bottlenecks by adding additional skills, people, or other resources.
3. Minimise handoffs and dependencies: Excessive handoffs and dependencies can cause rework and delays. Create teams and ARTs with all the knowledge, resources, skills, and decision-making authority to create an end-to-end flow of value.
4. Get faster feedback: Fast feedback helps speed up learning and improvement. Build mechanisms and processes to collect, analyze, and evaluate data early in the development process.
5. Work in smaller batches: The smaller the batch size, the faster teams can collect and evaluate feedback and adjust. Optimize size by balancing the trade-offs between holding cost and transaction cost.
6. Reduce queue length: Long queues lead to waste, delays, and information decay. Start tracking queue length and keep backlogs short to create flexibility to work on new high priority tasks.
7. Optimise ‘time in the zone’: People and teams in the zone demonstrate higher creativity, productivity, happiness, and fulfillment. Focus on creating an environment where workers have time and space free from interruptions.
8. Remediate legacy policies and practises: Legacy policies can become part of the culture and inhibit flow, even when they are no longer fit for purpose. Take steps to identity these policies then eliminate, modify, or mitigate.

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‍4 steps to winning with  SAFe® flow accelerators

1. Build a hypothesis

The first step is to build your hypothesis. Clarify what you believe will change and think about when you might first see if flow is moving in a different way to how it was before.

TIP: Start conversations and gather insights from the teams that will be directly impacted by these changes.

2. Choose high-impact accelerators

When choosing which accelerators to focus on, you’ll need to start with reading, digesting, and understanding them all. You can then take these learnings and start conversations with people on the ground to get an idea of where improvements can be made. “There are no sequential steps to follow when it comes to the accelerators,” said Rebecca. “Once you’ve found areas of improvement, you can self-select which accelerators you think will have the most impact and start working with those”.

TIP: Remember if you can’t see it, you can’t accelerate it. So, if you don’t know where to start making improvements, look out for any friction points or gaps in the value stream.

3. Decide when to check progress

“There’s no one-size-fits all answer as to when to check whether an accelerator is improving flow,” said Rebecca. “How long you need to wait depends on the action and the insights you gathered when building your hypothesis”. This means that for some actions, you can check whether flow has improved the next day while others may take a few weeks to see results.

TIP: Identify the earliest moment you can look back and see that something has changed and note this as your time to check in.

4. Use flow metrics correctly

It’s important to remember that flow metrics are not to be used as punitive measures but instead as a marker to measure whether an accelerator has improved flow. For many people, this requires a mindset shift away from thinking that if something goes wrong or if it fails, it didn’t work. And that means that sometimes, there may be a risk that the metrics may be used in a negative way.

“It helps to understand that sometimes people fall back on old behaviours when things get hard – and that includes people in leadership positions,” said Rebecca. “So be honest and courageous if you see metrics used in a negative way. This can help the team get back to the reasons why the metrics are being used in the first place”.

TIP: Build and maintain trust by clarifying how each metric helps improve outcomes and deliver value. If there is no clear link, then consider dropping it.

Accelerating flow helps teams focus on delivering value

Creating time and space for teams to focus on producing value can help your organization respond more quickly to changing customer needs and business conditions. SAFe® flow accelerators can help remove unnecessary work and blockers to create an environment of continuous improvement, optimization, and consistent value creation.

To improve flow across your organization, learn how Easy Agile Programs empowers your organization to visualize where you may have conflicts or risks to work not progressing and to easily unblock these so teams can maintain momentum and continue to deliver value.

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If you have been running retrospectives for some time prior to 2020, you may be familiar with the follow agenda for a 1 hour session:

It is quite possible that as your team transitioned to working remotely from 2020 onwards, that retrospectives were still run in realtime but in a virtual setting using Zoom/Teams/Meet rather than in person.

Here at Easy Agile where we have flexible work arrangements, most team members usually spend 1-2 days a week in the office, though we now also have team members working interstate who are 100% work from home. As a result, all our teams really value their F2F meeting time whether it be in person or virtual, so we try to maximise that F2F time as much as we can for those important debates and conversations where the entire team can listen and participate in real time.

How Easy Agile uses TeamRhythm retrospectives to maximise team time

1. Team members can add items to the retrospective board anytime during the sprint

The team is reminded and encouraged to add items to the retrospective board at any time during the sprint, whenever it is top of mind. This can be done asynchronously without any time constraints. Items added like this tend to be worded better because it has not been rushed within the timebox of a traditional retro setting. Capturing the item when it’s top of mind ensures that these items are less likely to be forgotten when the team sits down together to run the retro at the end of the sprint.

2. The team self reviews the retro board during the sprint

The team can review the items on the retro board during the sprint and ping the author of a particular item if they are unclear as to the content of the item. With this feedback and over time, Easy Agile teams have learnt to write in a more specific manner where the item is less likely to be incorrectly understood.

3. Facilitators categorize items before the meeting

Grouping and sorting retro items during the meeting itself can often be a rushed and sometimes stressful event, especially if it is left to just the facilitator to do it while running the meeting at the same time. At Easy Agile, the nominated retro facilitator looks at the items of the board ahead of time and uses categories to label and group like-minded items together.

4. Face to face time are primarily for debate and action setting

Easy Agile retrospective meetings now mainly focus on reviewing and discussing those retrospective items already pre-labelled into specific categories, and deciding on what actions need to be taken in order to improve on future sprints.

The timing of a retrospective at Easy Agile now typically looks like this:

Wrapping it up

By encouraging the team to capture any lessons/thoughts they would like to share during the course of a sprint by capturing it as soon as it comes up on that sprint’s retro board, the majority of the time spent during the retrospective meeting at the close of a sprint focuses on meaningful conversations, ideation, candid feedback and debates and more thoughtful actions.
Less time is wasted with the team sitting silently trying to recall what worked or didn't work during the last two weeks and then having to type it out quickly and have it make sense to the rest of the team.

Just one more thing…

By the time you read this, we will have provided users with the ability to add items to a retrospective board directly from the Jira issue viewer, so now the friction to add a retrospective item is reduced by one less step.

And we also plan to provide the option to display any outstanding retrospective actions from previous sprints on the current retro board.

How do you and your teams run retros? Do you have any tips that you would like to share with us? We would love to learn from you as well. Please email us at hello@easyagile.com with subject: Retro tips.

Software development is incredibly dynamic and results-driven, with rapid innovation and technology changing all the time. So if you want to keep with it all – just like you do with the Kardashians – you need a flexible way of working that suits your organisation. If you’re struggling to work out how to coordinate multiple agile teams and scale agile transformations, Scaled Agile (SAFe) might be for you.

But what exactly do we mean by SAFe, and how can it help your enterprise work better together and more effectively serve your customers?

Read on as we discuss the differences between SAFe and agile and how you can use SAFe within larger companies. Below, we’ll cover why agile is still best for small teams and why enterprises should consider scaling up.

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What is SAFe?

Scaled agile framework, or SAFe, makes it easier for large enterprises to implement lean agile practices to improve their product and meet stakeholder requirements.

SAFe is a body of knowledge that has structured guidance on roles and responsibilities, work planning and work management, and core values.

SAFe is a combination of different agile practices, but it introduces one unique aspect: lean thinking.

Lean thinking should ensure no resources go to waste during the software development process. Trust us, your thrifty side will thank you. #ZeroWaste 💃🏼

SAFe also encourages people to apply systems thinking to three crucial areas: solutions to pain points, workflow management, and revenue streams.

Here, solutions refer to products, services, or systems that are delivered to the customer. Large solutions have several interconnected parts, so managers need a broader approach to see how they fit into the bigger picture.

People who follow the SAFe framework should think about the involved stakeholders and processes. If any organization wants to optimize how their teams work, they need to become cross-functional, remove silos, and make new working arrangements with suppliers and clients.

This can be a big change for many large companies with poor cross-functional collaboration.

The enterprise also has to define how value flows from concept to cash in the solution department value streams, which is a series of steps used to create value in SAFe. Plus, it's management’s job to maximize value flow across organizational as well as functional boundaries.

People often confuse agile to be the same as SAFe, but they have some key differences.

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SAFe vs. agile: How do they differ?

Agile is a repetitive product development method that helps ensure the continuous delivery of tasks assigned. In other words, it's like Monica from Friends. She’s reliable and good at what she does.

In agile, cross-functional development teams work off a single backlog and break work into sprints, which means breaking down tasks into time-defined, smaller groups. This makes every person aware of what is expected of them, which, in turn, promotes productivity and increases the likelihood of better results.

That said, agile is mainly designed for smaller teams. Think 10 or fewer people. But if you’re an enterprise, don’t start sweating yet. In its simplest form SAFe is an agile framework for businesses that operate on an enterprise level. Enterprises are usually corporations that have hundreds, if not thousands, of employees and teams. So the number of people engaged is definitely larger.

The benefits are different as well.

Agile provides project managers, leaders, sponsors, and customers with various benefits, including faster turnaround time, resource wastage reduction, improved strategic focus on customer needs, better team collaboration, and feedback.

The biggest advantage of SAFe is it’s suited for enterprise problems. It keeps the size of the teams in mind as it helps increase productivity, make efficient project framework planning, and quicker codification of agile practices.

Having said that, SAFe and agile aren’t exactly on different planets.

The essential SAFe and agile core values are similar – but they aren’t exact. SAFe principles prioritize the following four:

• Alignment
• Transparency
• Built-in quality
• Program execution

Whereas, the core values of agile include:

• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Faster response to change over a plan
• Working software of work comprehensive documentation
• Individuals and interactions related to processes and tool

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So, SAFe inspires lean-agile decision-making across large product management projects, while agile development promotes self-organizing, autonomous teams..

Organisations operating on a larger scale should consider scaling agile – which is exactly what SAFe is. Keep reading as we discuss this in more detail.

Why enterprises should consider scaling up from agile

Before discussing SAFe further, you have to understand what happens to relationships and communication when teams get larger.

The larger the team, the greater the number of relationships. Every new person adds some individual perspective to the team, but they can also increase overhead communication.

Let’s explain things from a mathematical point of view.

Imagine a team that consists of seven members. The total number of one-on-one relationships within the team is 21. But when you increase to nine members, the relationships between every individual becomes 36. Yep, that's the difference it can make! *mind blown*

How does SAFe serve larger teams better?

You may already be familiar with Scrum and Kanban – both of which are agile frameworks and are most effective at the individual team level in sectors primarily born out of software development, including DevOps and portfolio management.

It also means that adopting these perspectives when multiple teams are involved won’t be useful. #Frustration 😔 Although large-scale scrum is a possibility, product owners and product managers often look for other solutions.

SAFe goes beyond the team level, which, in turn, results in better alignment across teams and workload visibility. You're also able to make better predictions related to dynamic market conditions and ever-changing customer expectations.

*enter PI Planning or program increment planning*

PI Planning within SAFe can ensure better collaboration and decision-making between teams. Team leaders can decide on features to work on next, identify dependencies, and develop a new plan for program increment in a much more effective and efficient manner.

So teams work with each other and not against. #Win 🥳

A full SAFe adoption can solve enterprise pain points and boost competencies

Keep reading as we discuss how SAFe solves large enterprise pain points in a way agile alone cannot.

Make processes configurable and scalable

Implementing SAFe for larger teams isn’t difficult – all you need to do is add a layer to the process map. And take your patience levels up a few notches. These changes can help the team visualize how the different teams can continue to work together harmoniously after any change.

In other words, business agility won't have to be compromised.

The Agile Release Train (ART)

An ART enables Scrum and Lean teams to experience the benefits of proper process alignment that the Program and Portfolio processes expand upon as the team starts to grow.

Clearly defined processes and roles

It’s normal for teams to face problems, but with SAFe, they'll get a better idea of how to solve them by improving their thought processes and utilizing specific tools.

What's more, the SAFe website has an in-depth explanation of concepts along with process maps that serve as visual aids to understand the said concepts and processes.

Scaled Agile improves team collaboration

SAFe helps large organizations carry out large-scale, mission intensive projects better. The combination of existing lean and agile principles can play a very positive role in facilitating better communication and control between multiple teams.

As a proud Scaled Agile Platform Partner, Easy Agile Programs enables Release Train Engineers and Program Managers to effectively manage programs at a ‘team-of-teams’ level to deliver alignment at scale.

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If you want to learn more about agile teams and frameworks, we have plenty of guidance that can help you ensure better results for your organization.

You’ve come to the end of your sprint. Your team planned and prioritized the most important tasks and executed them as well as possible. It’s just almost time to begin planning again, and jump into the next sprint...

BUT — there’s a critical step you've overlooked.  The team retrospective meeting.  

What went well? What didn’t go well? What do you need to improve upon for next time?

We built this guide based on years of agile training and software development experience. Our ultimate guide to retrospectives has everything you need to run effective retrospective meetings, including the benefits of retrospectives, how to run them well, and extra resources.

An intro: what is agile?

But first, a review of agile. If you’re already familiar, feel free to skip ahead to the next section on retrospectives.

One of our favorite ways to differentiate the agile methodology from traditional, waterfall project management is to compare the approaches to jazz vs. classical music.

In classical music, a conductor brings a piece of music to an orchestra. The conductor guides the group through the piece, dictating exactly what happens where and when based on their own previously decided ideas. It’s a lot like traditional project management. A project manager creates a plan, brings it to their team, and tells them how to carry it out. Each step plays out as it was designed to, under the careful observation of the project leader.

Now, consider jazz music. Jazz is collaborative, with each bandmate feeding off of each other in a flexible environment. The band doesn’t go in completely blind. Everyone is working off of a piece of music — but it’s not strictly adhered to, allowing for new directions to be discovered in the moment. The band, just like an agile team, works together to create music flexibly and iteratively, with each iteration a little different — and hopefully even better — than the last.

💡 Learn more: Agile 101: A Beginner's Guide to Agile Methodology

Traditional project management isn’t flexible. Instead, team members must work in a sequential order that’s dictated by the original plan and project manager. Think of an assembly line. The same steps are followed from project to project. The linear structure means that if one piece of a project stalls, the entire project stalls.

Agile, on the other hand, is non-linear. It focuses on collaboration between team members, flexibility, and delivering consistent value to stakeholders throughout the development process. Each new iteration yields actionable insights about what’s working and what isn’t. This multidimensional way of working eliminates the bottlenecks and dependencies that are common with traditional project management.

What is a retrospective?

Retrospectives are a staple of many agile processes. They can be a critical moment for teams to come together and provide feedback about how processes can improve. Retrospectives keep the agile process — well — agile and encourage continuous improvement. No matter how well the last sprint went, there is always something that can be improved upon for the next iteration.

Agile retrospectives help agile teams gather data and feedback from those involved in the Scrum process. In Scrum, a retrospective is held at the end of every sprint, which is generally every two weeks. The retrospective is a chance for all team members to share what went well, what didn’t, and what could be improved upon for next time. The insights are taken into account in the next planning session to ensure teams learn from their mistakes, successes, and each other.

How retrospectives fit with Scrum

Retrospectives are conducted in a variety of agile methodologies, but for the purposes of our Retrospectives Guide, we’re going to discuss retrospectives within the Scrum process. It’s one of four critical meetings used in Scrum, coming at the conclusion of each sprint. So, how are retrospective meetings utilized in Scrum?

Scrum artifacts

Artifacts are the pieces of work the team completes over the course of the sprint. The product backlog is a compilation of tasks that the team believes need to get done in order to complete a product or iteration of a product. The product backlog is large and not very refined.

Items from the product backlog get moved into the sprint backlog when it’s time for them to be completed. The sprint backlog represents everything the team hopes to accomplish over one sprint, which generally lasts for two weeks. The sprint backlog is more refined — it focuses on the current state of the product, stakeholder feedback, and customer needs.

Scrum roles

There are three Scrum roles, and each has different duties within the Scrum framework. The product owner prioritizes the work that needs to be completed over the course of each sprint. They refine and prioritize backlog items, moving the necessary product backlog items into the sprint backlog.

The next role is the Scrum Master, who guides the team during the two week sprint, ensuring the Scrum framework is adhered to. This person is an expert in all things Scrum and can act as a facilitator during daily stand-ups and other important meetings. The Scrum Master tends to play a key role in leading retrospectives.

Lastly comes the development team. They make up the bulk of the team and complete the work set out in the sprint backlog. The development team participates in planning, attends daily stand-up meetings, and delivers work to the client and stakeholders.

Stakeholders and customers, while not directly on the Scrum team, play important roles in the Scrum process. Stakeholder and customer needs must always be at the forefront of development decisions. Stakeholders should be brought in early and often to provide critical feedback as a product is being developed.

Scrum ceremonies

The Scrum ceremonies are the events that take place within the Scrum framework. First comes sprint planning to set the stage, then daily Scrums or standup meetings, followed by a sprint review and a sprint retrospective.

The sprint planning meeting is when everything gets set up for the next sprint. Sprint planning meetings are opportunities to prioritize backlog items and get the entire team aligned on their goals for the upcoming two weeks. Without planning, the team won’t have clear goals, and they won’t know what tasks to tackle next.

The daily stand-up, sometimes called a daily Scrum, occurs every day of the sprint. The entire team participates in this daily meeting that updates everyone involved in the sprint. During the meeting, team members update each other on what they accomplished over the past 24 hours and what they hope to accomplish over the next 24 hours. This time also serves as an opportunity to discuss any issues that occurred or potential roadblocks that could prevent work from moving forward smoothly.

The sprint review meeting happens at the end of the sprint and is an opportunity to discuss the success of the sprint based on what tasks are considered “Done.” The sprint review can also bring stakeholders into the Scrum process to ensure everyone still aligns on where the product is going and what should happen next. Stakeholders provide invaluable insights that ensure the team stays on track to meet customer needs.

The last ceremony in the Scrum framework is the shining star in our guide. The sprint retrospective meeting arrives at the end of every sprint. It’s a critical meeting that helps the team improve from one sprint to the next. It allows team members to share what went well, what didn’t go so well, and what could be improved upon for next time.

We’ll dissect the elements of a good sprint retrospective throughout the rest of this guide.

💡 Learn more about the differences between these four meetings in our article: Agile Ceremonies: Your Guide to the Four Stages.

The benefits of retrospectives

Retrospectives put the iterative in agile. They provide a focused time for teams to learn from the past and each other so they can constantly improve the development process. Retrospective benefits are vast, and they trickle down into all areas of development. The insights from a retrospective can improve productivity, team dynamics, team trust, customer value, and the overall Scrum process.

Retrospective benefits include:

• Documenting feedback in real-time after each sprint
• Exposing issues from the previous sprint that are holding the product or team back
• Aligning the team around the most important issues
• Giving everyone involved an opportunity to express ideas, thoughts, and experiences
• Informing leadership of potential roadblocks
• Bringing the team together around common goals and action items
• Establishing a safe space for sharing positive and constructive feedback
• Encouraging a continuous improvement mindset
• Helping product owners make decisions for the next sprint
• Setting the team on a positive path for the next sprint

6 Effective retrospective techniques

Now that you know why retrospectives are so important to the agile process, it’s time to dig into how to run them effectively. Use our 7 retrospective techniques for a smooth meeting that keeps everyone engaged and always results in quality insights.

1. Choose a time that works for everyone and stick to it

It’s important that every member of the Scrum team participates in the retrospective. This means holding it when everyone is available, whether that’s in-person or virtually.

Get feedback from your team about the best time to set this meeting. It should take place right after the sprint ends but before the planning meeting for the next sprint. This can be a tight window, which is why it helps to schedule this meeting at the same time every two weeks.

Consistent meeting times help ensure the meeting actually happens and that an optimal number of team members can attend.

2. Find new and creative ways to acquire feedback

The Start, Stop, Continue format can take many forms, but the general process is the same. The team discusses what they want to start doing, what they want to stop doing, and what they want to continue doing in the next sprint. It’s a simple framework that addresses both what went well with the previous sprint and what could be improved for next time.

This is a tried and true method, but it’s also important to change up your format and ask different questions to keep the team engaged.

You are trying to acquire similar information each time (what to start, stop, and continue), but the way you gather that information can change and evolve. Add variety to your Scrum retrospective and mix things up every once in a while to keep everyone engaged.

Find new ways of asking similar questions, and bring in new ice-breakers that help the team feel comfortable discussing the past two weeks with honesty and clarity.

Other versions of “Start, Stop, Continue” include the Rose, Bud, Thorn exercise, where team members discuss something positive about the experience, a “budding” opportunity that can be expanded on for next time, and something negative about the experience that should be improved upon. Another alternative is the Anchors and Sails exercise. What about the last sprint weighed or anchored the team down, and what positives put wind in their sails, so to speak?

Boring retrospectives will make team members dread the meeting and will lower participation significantly. If participants aren’t engaged, they won’t contribute as openly, and they won't take ownership over the process.

Mixing things up is also a good way to uncover insights the team hasn’t considered before. New questions will spark new ideas, issues, and solutions that otherwise would not have been discovered.

3. Ensure all voices are heard

All voices need to be heard in the retrospective. It’s the responsibility of the meeting facilitators to make sure everyone has a chance to speak during the meeting and that loud or dominant personalities don't overtake the conversation. They have to be heard too, but not at the expense of more introverted team members.

If you notice some members of your team do not participate, start asking them direct questions. If this only makes them retreat further into their shell, take them aside at the end of the meeting for a one-on-one conversation. How can you make the meeting environment more comfortable for them? What will best enable them to collaborate effectively? Ensure this is framed in the right way so it doesn't sound like they're in trouble but rather like you value and appreciate their input.

4. Establish a comfortable environment

Ensure the retrospective feels safe and comfortable for everyone involved by instilling trust, collaboration, and open dialogue. Each team member should feel like their voice is important. It should be a place of positivity, not a chance for team members to dunk on one another. It’s up to the facilitator to ensure everyone is comfortable.

There should be room for everyone to speak. The whole team should feel like they can express their thoughts and opinions about what happened over the course of the sprint. If people feel uncomfortable or think their voice won't be appreciated or heard, they will hold back and not actually express their honest feedback.

This is detrimental to the process, as it can leave recurring issues to fester and worsen over the course of future sprints. It is in everyone’s best interest to be open and honest and to hear everyone out. The goal of a retrospective is to solve issues, prevent roadblocks, and improve the team’s processes. If team members are silent or dishonest about how they feel things are going, nothing will be solved.

Comfort plays a big role in how honest everyone will be. Ensure everyone is respectful and that speaking time is shared across the team. Take time building trust and allowing the team to get to know each other. A team that trusts one another can work together and build each other up — and you’ll be able to manage issues before they begin to hinder productivity, team wellness, or the Scrum process.

5. Document everything and create clear action items

If you don’t document it, it didn’t happen. Don’t rely on memory alone after the retrospective. Document the feedback team members provide, and ensure any important ideas or issues are brought to the next planning meeting.

Turn important insights into action items to make sure ideas are not lost. Ensure action items are specific and clear and that the whole team understands what “done” actually means for each task. Once an action item is created, make sure there is follow-up, ideally at the beginning of the next retrospective. Determine who is responsible for the action item and how important it is in the grand scheme of your product backlog.

6. Review your action items at the next retrospective

So, you’ve collected your and your team’s insights and made those insights into action items. The final step is addressing those action items during the next retrospective. Were they resolved, or did the same issues keep occurring?

It’s best practice to review your previous retrospective action items at the beginning of the next retro. Did the team make progress on the task? What else needs to happen? Do you need to follow up again at the next retrospective meeting?

What happens after the retrospective?

The retrospective may be the last meeting of the sprint, but it doesn't end there. Take those insights into the next sprint.

After the retrospective, the product owner reevaluates the product backlog and chooses what will go into the sprint backlog for the next round of work. They should consider past mistakes, successes, stakeholder feedback, and retrospective insights as they make decisions.

The sprint planning meeting comes after the retrospective and will help the team regroup and align on what they need to accomplish next. With each sprint, you will gain more information about the product, your customers, how the team works together, and your overall process. These lessons are taken into account to make improvements from sprint to sprint and product to product.

For better sprints, read our sprint planning guide, which includes everything you need to run efficient and effective planning meetings. ➡️ The Ultimate Agile Sprint Planning Guide.

Turn an action item into a Jira issue in just a few clicks, then schedule the work to ensure your ideas aren’t lost at the end of the retrospective.

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Retrospective mistakes to avoid

Collecting feedback may sound simple, but there are many ways a retrospective can go wrong — from overpowering team members to asking repetitive questions to failing to capture insights effectively. Read our list of common retrospective mistakes to make sure your team doesn’t drop the ball.

❌ Skipping or delaying the retrospective

Due to a lack of time or resources, teams may consider skipping the retrospective. This is a costly mistake.

Do not, under any circumstances, skip a sprint retrospective. This is a critical time when the team has a chance to improve their processes. Skipping a retrospective enables the status quo and encourages complacency. The agile process is about continuous improvement — without the retrospective, you lose a critical opportunity to learn about the strengths and weaknesses of your team and its processes.

Delaying the retrospective can also be detrimental to your progress as a Scrum team. It’s important that you gather insights right after the sprint ends — while the ideas and issues are still fresh.

Delaying the retro could result in team members forgetting how the process actually went, leading to bland feedback that lacks the kind of detail that can create positive changes. And if delayed too long, something else could come up that takes priority over the retrospective, meaning the meeting may never occur at all.

❌ Always asking the same questions

The Scrum process is repetitive by nature, but that doesn’t mean your retrospectives should be boring or unbearably dry. Sticking to the status quo is a huge mistake in retrospectives.

When you repeat the same meeting every two weeks, you need to add variety in order to keep the team engaged. As soon as you lose team attention, engagement will drop, and the quality of the feedback you receive will too.

When running a retrospective, check in with yourself and the team to make sure engagement and interest stay high. If you are losing people’s attention and find engagement is dropping, change your format or the types of questions to keep everyone awake, attentive, and on their toes. Switching up who facilitates the meeting is another way to add variety into the mix.

❌ Allowing some of the group to dominate the conversation

Every voice on the team needs to be heard, but sometimes it’s the loudest ones that come through, well, the loudest. 📢 Effective retrospectives require multiple perspectives to deliver fresh insights.

Don’t let a select few voices dominate the conversation. A domineering team member will use all of the meeting’s time and limit the insights you can gather. If every voice isn’t heard, problems with the process could persist throughout multiple future sprints, severely impacting the effectiveness of your team. Plus, those who aren’t as loud will feel less involved and undervalued.

❌ Failing to empower softer voices

Along with discouraging domineering behavior, you need to amplify the softer voices.

Some people will be less likely to engage, or they may be too shy or afraid to express their opinions in a group setting. Watch out for this. If you notice it, find ways to make those underheard voices heard. It could mean asking them questions directly during the meeting, or it could mean taking a shy team member aside after the meeting to collect insights one-on-one.

If they find the group or your process intimidating, make the necessary adjustments to ensure everyone feels comfortable expressing their thoughts about the sprint. A retrospective is a collaborative process. Do what you can to engage and empower every member of the team.

❌ Jumping to conclusions without discussion

A single statement from one team member isn’t the end of the conversation. When team members bring up issues or ideas, they need to be discussed as a team. Do others feel the same way? Is it critical that this idea be implemented immediately, or can it be put on the back burner for now? How does a particular insight impact the product or customer needs specifically?

Don't jump to conclusions without having a meaningful discussion. You can gather information from your team quickly without throwing off your set meeting timeline. Don’t let any one topic throw you off course, but ensure you aren’t overlooking anything. If the team agrees an idea has merit, turn it into an action item that can be followed up on at the next retrospective meeting.

❌ Not implementing insights into the next sprint

Unfortunately, this is quite common. A team holds a retrospective meeting and does almost everything right only to fail to thoroughly record their team’s insights and put them into practice.

The whole point of the retrospective is to help your team improve. If you don’t properly document the feedback you receive from the team and don’t put those insights into action, you’re not getting the most from your retrospectives.

Turn feedback and discussion topics into clear action items you can follow up on later. Take important action items and insights into your sprint planning meeting and check in at your next retrospective. Were you able to make progress on the previous retrospective’s action items? What roadblocks did you hit? Do the action items require any further attention or follow-up?

❌ Not improving your retrospective process

Even a retrospective could use a retrospective! 🤯

Every now and again, take time to review your retrospective process. Ask your team to provide feedback on how they think the meetings are going. What do they like, what do they not like, and how do they think the retrospective meetings could improve?

You can improve on each aspect of your agile process. Go straight to the source to gather the opinions of those involved in the meeting. Do team members feel heard? Have issues been addressed to their satisfaction? Have the meetings grown stagnant?

When it comes to improving your retrospectives, your team has the data. Do not hesitate to ask.

Just because retrospectives come last in the Scrum process doesn’t mean they aren’t important. Don’t lose steam as you cross the finish line. Hold a retrospective at the end of every two-week sprint. Ensure each sprint retrospective includes insights from each team member and that insights are documented and transformed into clear action items.

📚 Additional resources

We have a wealth of free resources on the Easy Agile blog, and we continue to add to it every week. We recommend checking out our other guides as well as our top-performing agile content.

• The Ultimate Guide to PI Planning
• The Ultimate Guide to User Story Mapping
• Product Roadmaps: Your Guide To Why and How To Use Them
• The Difference Between a Flat Product Backlog and a User Story Map
• What's the Difference Between Kanban vs. Scrum?
• DEEP: The 4 Characteristics of a Good Product Backlog

Thanks for reading our ultimate retrospectives guide! 👏 If you have any questions about this guide, our other content, or Easy Agile products, reach out to our team. We love talking to teams and individuals about agile and how to work better together. We’ll continue to update this guide as we gain more retrospective insights, techniques, tools, and best practices.

Using Easy Agile to improve your Agile process

If your sprint retrospective isn’t effective, your next sprint will suffer from the same issues. It is imperative that Scrum teams gather at the end of each sprint to discuss what went well, what didn’t go so well, and what can be improved on for next time. Otherwise, you invite complacency and stagnation into your Scrum process — the antithesis of agile.

Improve your Retrospectives with Easy Agile TeamRhythm. The Retrospective features in TeamRhythm help your team stay on the path of continuous improvement. Watch the highlights tour to see how Easy Agile TeamRhythm makes sprint planning, managing your backlog, and team retrospectives easier. Visit Atlassian Marketplace to start your free, 30-day trial today.

Taking on new projects doesn't always help you achieve your business goals. When you want to grow in the direction of your goals without detours, you need to prioritize the projects that align with the path. Prioritizing begins with getting a holistic view of your business activities and objectives. Using project portfolio management (PPM), your team can focus on the big picture and align your goals with every move you make.

Keep reading as we explain what PPM is, its benefits and the five-step process you can take to implement it.

What is project portfolio management?

Project portfolio management is the process of managing a group of related projects together with the goal of improving overall business performance. Instead of focusing on projects one at a time, this centralized management process considers how prioritizing specific projects affects your ability to meet broader business objectives.

In a project management office (PMO), project portfolio managers are in charge of developing high-level strategies that help you make the most of all the resources you have. However, unlike individual project managers, project portfolio managers aren't involved with executing projects once they're selected.

Three benefits of project portfolio management

Much like stars in a constellation, individual projects and goals shine their brightest when you see how they're all connected. That's where the PPM process comes in handy. When you start practicing project portfolio management, you can experience these three benefits:

1. Improve your decision-making

PPM challenges your team to evaluate each project based on how well they align with your strategic goals. Instead of solely aiming to take on more projects — which can quickly lead to project overload — teams that use the PPM process focus on forecasting the benefits and risks of each opportunity. This way, you only commit to projects that suit your company's needs.

Whereas taking on too many irrelevant projects can lead to lots of work with little return, using the PPM process to make better decisions can help you choose high-impact projects that propel your team toward its goals. 🚀

2. Reduce your project failure rate

A lack of centralized planning can leave a lot of room for project failure. Your resources might be spread too thinly, or inefficient workflows may riddle your projects. When your organization includes project portfolio managers who look at the big picture in addition to individual project teams that focus on the details, you can better spot potential agile planning mistakes before they occur. Risks like overspending and poor scheduling are less likely to be an issue if you're considering the broader organizational strategies, budgets, and timelines that tie all of your projects together.

For your stakeholders, a lower project failure rate means more value is delivered over time. A software company, for instance, can reduce the gaps between new product or feature launches by ensuring they’re only working on projects they’ll complete.

3. Increase your team productivity

PPM allows you to see a broad overview of what your team members are working on across projects. As a result, you can better designate tasks based on which team members are best fit for each role and allocate resources based on your priorities. This optimization can help you improve your return on investment (ROI). Plus, optimizing helps avoid team member burn out by eliminating excess work.

The 5-step project portfolio management process

With project portfolio management tools projected to be a $3.2 billion market in 2021, it's clear that many agile teams are implementing PPM in their organizations. Regardless of what PPM tool you use, these five steps are key to successful centralized management.

1. Identify your business strategy

The first step in effective project portfolio management is identifying your company's strategic objectives. When you clarify what your organization wants to achieve — including key performance indicators (KPIs), which are metrics that measure success, and objectives and key results (OKRs) — your team can work toward a shared vision.

Afterwards, establish a project prioritization process. Decide what steps you’ll take to determine how well a project aligns with your goals. For example, some businesses may use a scoring model, giving projects numerical scores in key categories until they find the highest averages. Others may simply weigh the costs and benefits of each project with overall business objectives in mind.

2. Make lists of your current and potential projects

To start optimizing your project portfolio, take inventory of your current projects, as well as projects you've been considering. Take note of your project statuses, categories, and other details that can help you gauge each project's relevance to your business goals. You can also estimate the resources you need to execute each project. This estimation can further help you measure costs and feasibility, so you can effectively perform resource management.

​3. Evaluate your project portfolio

Once you finish compiling your list, you can begin using your project prioritization methodology to evaluate projects. As you determine if each project is beneficial for your business, don't forget to consider feasibility. If a project isn't feasible, then it's a no-go for your team. By the end of your evaluation, you should have a list of projects that align with your goals and provide the most value to your business.

Ideally, your portfolio should include a mix of projects that help fulfill short-term and long-term objectives. This way, you can secure the returns you need to maintain your current growth rate while leaving room for innovation that leads to exponential growth in the future.

4. Allocate available resources

As soon as you narrow down the number of projects you want to take, start with resource allocation. Divide your budget, team members, and other resources between each of your priority projects. You'll also need to create a timeline for your project portfolio that includes each project's deadline. You can include key milestones to make your timelines more detailed, too.

Risk management is another crucial aspect of this step. If you notice that you don't have enough resources to complete all the projects you’ve selected, reassess your priority projects until you build a portfolio that doesn't stretch your team too thinly. (And if you can't afford to give everyone a car like Oprah, don't. 🚗)

5. Adjust your portfolio and resources as you go

A critical component of project portfolio management is tracking your projects throughout their life cycles. Keep a close eye on your project performance, including your ROI, project failure rate, and other KPIs as you begin executing the projects you chose. If your project portfolio doesn't perform as desired, you can adjust your resource allocation in real-time, instead of addressing issues when it's too late.

Tracking key metrics can also help you improve your PPM process as you go. For example, if your project prioritization methods aren't helping you reach your financial goals, brainstorm more effective ways to evaluate each of your projects.

Zoom in on the details with Easy Agile Programs

Project portfolio management is a useful process that can help your agile team make decisions with a bigger picture in mind. Instead of hyper-focusing on individual projects, the PPM process enables you to remove roadblocks from your broader workflows and maximize resources across an entire portfolio. This way, you can keep driving a straight path toward your business goals.

Of course, the big picture isn't everything. To be a well-rounded agile team, you need to zoom in on the details every so often, too. With Easy Agile Programs, you can get more context on your projects, so you can continue maximizing your organizational growth.

Scrum teams create release plans to support successful product releases. This helps them maintain their focus on the product vision and feature deliverables.

Here, we’ll explore the definition and purpose of agile release planning and its essential template elements.

Find out what goes into creating a planning meeting and how to set your Scrum team up for successful product releases.

What is agile release planning?

Because software projects are unpredictable, release planning helps team members prioritize their workflow. A release plan focuses on getting specific product features ready for the market. It should examine the product scope, the release date for feature completion, and the resources needed for each release.

The development team then looks at the feedback from earlier product iterations to guide their planning. Product owners and Scrum teams get together to discuss the agile release plan. That’s because team members need to understand what level of product functionality must go into their work. They also need to understand work effort to plan their deadlines for each product increment.

Instead of planning for a significant product release, team members divide the project scope into short sprints or iterations. Many Scrum teams use Jira software to help them plan their sprints, as it helps everyone see the project status at any time.

Creating a prioritization list ensures that team members focus on the most vital product versions the Scrum product owner prioritizes.

What is the purpose of the release plan?

Project release planning helps software development teams plan, direct, and release each project in increments to serve the customer experience. Teams often use this methodology for short sprints of product development.

Release planning provides agile and Scrum teams with a solid direction to complete their projects. Team members also use this opportunity to use sprint feedback to create increments that align with the next release’s project roadmap.

Getting the product plan together

Release planning seems complex, but with some foresight, it can be simple. Let’s review each part of the process.

1. Who leads the release plan?

Typically, the product development team takes its lead from the Scrum master or the product owner. During the meeting, this leader will raise questions about the product backlog to ensure that sprint discussions align with the final product.

All the product stakeholders should participate in the release plan to ensure their feedback is taken into consideration. Without input from everyone involved in the product development, the team risks missing out on vital information to keep the product roadmap on track.

2. Agile release plan aspects

While the release plan is meant to be agile, it also follows a strict process to ensure that teams keep the product roadmap in sight.

Agile teams take all the sprint planning discussions and evaluate these to detail new product deliverables. Although most organizations will use various approaches in their release planning process, each sprint review should include the following aspects:

• The agreed product development releases at each stage of the sprint
• A direction for each new product release
• Specific current and future iterations due in each upcoming release
• What features and functionality should accompany the iteration
• Specific task requirements for each feature delivery to meet the release goal

By going through an in-depth release planning process, software development teams harness the value of these sprint meetings. The ability to rapidly change direction as necessary ensures the team releases the best possible product.

This constant iteration in each sprint review is also valuable in the dynamic environment of product development.

This level of planning, combined with an iterative schedule to account for the dynamic nature of software, is what makes Agile product development so valuable.

3. Sprint meeting discussions

Sprint meeting discussions revolve around user stories, product backlog, and product backlog items. Scrum release planning also considers other issues such as dependencies and product functionality. Other aspects that the team speaks about involve the next release and the number of sprints they must complete and deliver.

Essentially, team members must keep the product vision in mind for effective release planning. This vision helps team members isolate minimum market sprint feature batches and their release dates.

Sprint meeting discussions should include:

• Release plan prioritization of impending new product features and functionality
• Evaluation and inclusion of stakeholder feedback for each sprint
• Detailed descriptions of sprint deliverables and whether these fall into the category of product short-term increments or major longer-term releases
• Which product version will be ready for release and the ideal sequence of product releases to achieve each release goal

Development teams build several product versions. After creating these versions, they prioritize them to release the most important ones to users.

Part of the purpose of release planning is to ensure that all stakeholders are on the same product development page. Another element of these sprint planning meetings is to drive ownership and acceptance of the product vision.

Development of the release plan

There are four steps that software development teams follow to create their product plan.

1. Creating the vision

First, you need to define the vision for the product. Creating a clear vision produces a roadmap for the team to follow in each consecutive sprint. This vision should align with market demand and the product owner’s goals.

It also encourages team members to sift through which features they should prioritize. Similarly, the product roadmap helps teams evaluate the resources they need during the sprint review. Product planning also enables teams to be flexible. Planning reviews ensure direction changes to accommodate ongoing increments to achieve overall release goals.

2. Prioritization of the product backlog

After defining the vision, team members focus on prioritizing features in the product backlog. Here, stakeholder inputs must align with the vision to successfully implement user stories. User stories are vital to the process as they provide the background for detailing product features or functionality.

The product manager provides the team with direction at this stage to outline a viable release plan. This release plan must include the product release goals, release dates, and prioritization of user stories.

3. Set the Scrum planning meeting

The next step in the planning meeting is for the stakeholders to review the plan. Team members now have the chance to adjust deliverables in line with the vision.

Everyone must agree to the release plan at this stage before they can move forward to the next release.

Meeting agenda

Setting up a meeting agenda helps manage the release plan. The essential elements of the agenda for the Scrum framework include:

1. Product plan assessment

The Scrum team reviews the product roadmap to ensure that everyone accepts the product vision and goals.

2. Architecture evaluation

With each release, the Scrum team and product owner evaluate the previous sprint’s architecture. They examine the technical details of the product development and discuss any potential problems that can impact the product release.

Scrum teams go over the scope and estimates of their release plan. Team members determine whether their planning includes the risk of technical debt and if they can complete certain task aspects, such as documenting their work to meet deadlines. Stakeholders also review dependencies that can influence the product versions’ functionality.

3. Velocity and iteration assessment

Scrum teams go over previous iterations to review their velocity estimates. They align their estimates with the suggested iteration schedule to ensure they cover all vital elements.

The product manager controls this assessment to ensure points are assigned to user stories. Assessing user stories and assigning points demonstrate the level of effort the team must invest in each iteration. The total number of story points then represents the estimation of release dates for each sprint release.

An iteration schedule is built by the agile team to determine their velocity for the current and subsequent sprints during this assessment.

The team creates the release scope, which includes all the necessary releases. The Scrum master assigns work to each team member, and all the stakeholders agree to the plan before moving to the next step.

4. Agreement on the definition of done

The team members must now discuss what will qualify as the definition of done for each feature release. Team members must consider whether their evaluation of user stories meets all the product owner's acceptance criteria for release. Once they can prove the acceptance criteria are met in their assessment, they will know that a release completion is valid.

The definition of done must confirm that team members have completed all their assigned tasks for the user story. Team members must also record each task so that the product owner can assess their work.

5. Populate the product release schedule

The project manager can now populate and complete the release plan schedule. All stakeholders should be able to access the calendar to track progress. This release plan schedule helps everyone stay focused on product deliverables and release dates.

Get help with your release planning

Agile release planning is a vital part of the software development team’s success. Create a comprehensive agile release plan for minor or major releases, and you make your life simpler for an upcoming release.

Focus on the release plan calendar helps keep product owners and team members aware of the overall product vision.

Most Scrum teams can use a little help in creating their release plans. At Easy Agile, we offer Jira software that helps Scrum teams execute their release plans to perfection.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm supports collaborative release planning in Jira. The highly-visual story map format transforms the flat Jira backlog into a meaningful picture of work, making it easier to manage your backlog and plan your release.