Anti Pattern For Ip Iteration

Inertia is the rest of past innovation efforts. Left unmanaged, it consumes the resource required to fund next-generation innovation.

—Geoffrey Moore

100% utilization drives unpredictability.

—Don Reinertsen

Innovation and Planning Iteration

The Innovation and Planning (IP) Iteration occurs every Program Increment (PI) and serves multiple purposes. Information technology acts every bit an estimating buffer for meeting PI Objectives and provides dedicated fourth dimension for innovation, standing education, PI Planning, and Inspect and Adapt (I&A) events.

SAFe has an intense focus on continuous customer value delivery, and people are decorated working on the Features they committed to during PI planning. Every Iteration counts and the teams are mostly heads down, delivering near-term value. Ane iteration later on another, the Solution marches closer to market. The attention to solution delivery is intense and unrelenting.

Of course, a focus on one thing—delivery—can pb to a lack of focus on another—innovation. Given the constant urgency for delivery, at that place'southward a adventure that the tyranny of the urgent [ane] volition override any opportunity to innovate. To address this, Safety provides dedicated innovation and planning iterations which are a fundamental attribute of the Lean Enterprise's broader innovation civilisation.

Details

Understand the IP Iteration Activities

Innovation and planning iterations provide a regular, cadence-based opportunity, every Programme Increase (PI), for teams to work on activities that are hard to fit into a continuous, incremental value delivery pattern. These may include:

Fourth dimension for innovation and exploration, beyond the iterations dedicated to commitment
Work on technical infrastructure, tooling, and other impediments to delivery
Education to support continuous learning and improvement
Cross training to develop skills in new domains, evolution languages, and systems
Dedicated time for the Inspect & Accommodate (I&A) event, backlog refinement, including final prioritization of Features using Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF), and PI planning

IP iterations fulfill some other critical role by providing an estimating buffer for meeting PI objectives and enhancing the predictability of PI performance.

Agile Release Trains (ARTs) typically written report that their overall efficiency, velocity, and job satisfaction are enhanced by regular opportunities to 'recharge their batteries and sharpen their tools.'

Allow Time for Innovation

One of the pillars of the SAFe Lean-Agile Mindset is innovation, simply finding time for ideation and change in the midst of delivery deadlines can be hard. To this cease, many enterprises use IP iterations for research and design activities such as hackathons. In that location are two unproblematic rules for hackathons:

People can work on whatsoever they want, with whomever they want, so long as the piece of work reflects the mission of the company
The teams demo their piece of work to others at the stop of the hackathon

The learnings from hackathons routinely make their manner into Program Backlogs and often help drive innovation. They're fun, too!

Dedicate Fourth dimension to PI Events

Performing the I&A and PI planning during the IP iteration avoids a reduction in velocity of the regular iterations. More importantly, since these events are held on a regular cadence and can be scheduled well in advance, their occurrence is better guaranteed.

Besides, it's likely that some merely-in-time, last-responsible-moment program and solution excess refinement and feature and capability elaboration during this period can significantly increase the productivity of the upcoming planning session.

Integrate the Complete Solution

The PI Arrangement Demo occurs at the cease of each PI. Information technology is the integrated presentation of the piece of work of all teams on the train, washed in a staging environs which emulates production every bit closely as possible. For ARTs that are part of a Solution Train, the PI organisation demo feeds into the aggregate Solution Demo, which also takes place for during the IP Iteration. It'due south a more than structured and formal thing, as it demonstrates the accumulation of all the features and capabilities developed over the grade of the unabridged PI for a Solution Railroad train.

When a solution includes hardware (and other components), it'south harder to integrate end-to-end continuously and full integration may be viable but during the IP iteration. In these cases, information technology's merely common sense to plan for that.

Still, the IP iteration should not exist the only endeavor to integrate the avails into the system. Total or fractional integration happens over the form of the PI, with a total solution integration occurring at least in one case per PI. This arroyo validates the assumptions early enough to be able to respond to significant bug and risks within the PI.

Advance Development Infrastructure

Lean delivery puts increased force per unit area on the evolution infrastructure: new continuous integration environments require provisioning, new exam automation frameworks must be implemented and maintained, Active project management tooling adopted, upgrading or enhancing cantankerous-team and train communications systems, and the list goes on. Many times, the comeback stories are from the team's Iteration Retrospective or Enablers.

Nosotros all understand that nosotros take to sharpen our tools from fourth dimension to fourth dimension; Agile teams are no dissimilar. Indeed, they have an even college dependency on their working environments, so time must be spent continuously improving them. It's often more efficient to improve infrastructure or perform a migration at a time when the teams aren't in the midst of disquisitional work.

Enable Continuous Learning

Employees at every level are lifelong learners. Changes in engineering, as well as changes to method and practice, are routine; opportunities for continuing instruction, notwithstanding, are far less frequent. Too, the initial move to Lean-Agile requires many new techniques and skills, including:

Characteristic and Story writing
Building in quality
Automated testing
Collective ownership
Agile Architecture
Continuous Integration
Pair work
Mastering Product Owner and Scrum Master roles
Team edifice

Practitioners are also challenged to keep their technical skills current. New technologies are existence introduced more frequently than ever earlier. Investing in people who tin can work across multiple systems, domains, and languages creates a 'T-shaped' (deep skill in one area, working knowledge in multiple other areas) and fifty-fifty 'Eastward-shaped' (deep skill in more one surface area) workforce. This provides the organization with maximum agility and flexibility to deliver the virtually of import backlog items. However, information technology is difficult to find fourth dimension for this type of growth alongside the drive to constantly deliver new features. IP iterations are a perfect time for this investment.

Making time for standing didactics gives teams and leaders a welcome opportunity to acquire and master these new techniques. It can also be used to launch and support Communities of Exercise devoted to these and other topics. The cyberspace results benefit both the individual and the enterprise: employee mastery and job satisfaction increment, velocity goes up, and fourth dimension-to-marketplace goes down.

Leverage the Built-In Estimation Buffer

Lean menstruum teaches us that operating at "100 per centum utilization drives unpredictable results [2]." Only put, planning everyone to full capacity, does not allow people the ability to flex when problems inevitably occur. The result is unpredictability and delays in value commitment. Every bit a countermeasure, the IP iteration offers a 'baby-sit band' (or buffer) to forestall unfinished work from the current PI from carrying over to the next PI.

During PI planning, the Fine art does not plan features or stories for the IP iteration, providing a buffer (extra time) to the teams for responding to unforeseen events, delays resulting from dependencies, and other issues, increasing their ability to meet Team and Program PI Objectives. This buffer substantially increases the predictability of the program's outcomes, which is extremely of import to the concern. Notwithstanding, routinely using that time for completing work is a failure design. Doing then defeats the primary purpose of the IP iteration, and innovation volition probable endure. Teams must have intendance that this estimating guard band does not merely become a crutch.

A Sample IP Iteration Calendar

IP iterations have on a somewhat standard schedule and format. Effigy ane provides an example IP iteration calendar. The items in orange represent Solution Railroad train events, while the blue ones are for a single Art.

Figure i. Example calendar for an IP iteration

Learn More than

[1] Hummell, Charles E. Tyranny of the Urgent. IPV Booklets, 2013.

[2] Reinertsen, Donald Thousand. The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Production Development. Celeritas Publishing, 2009.

[three] Leffingwell, Dean. Agile Software Requirements: Lean Requirements Practices for Teams, Programs, and the Enterprise. Addison-Wesley, 2011.

Last update: x Feb 2021

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