SAFe® City: Portfolio and Program Planning Workshop

Upcoming workshops

Program

The SAFe City Game is a simulation of strategy and planning in SAFe. It allows you to practise:

Work prioritisation with maximum economic benefit - Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF)
Prioritisation of major initiatives, defining a concept at portfolio level
Establishing a roadmap of activities over several quarters, taking priorities into account
Joint quarterly planning of multiple team goals (PI-planning)
As well as sharing SAFe case studies and answering questions.

Aspects:

Team Breakout session - team planning sessions;
Scrum of Scrum ( SoS) - meeting to synchronise planning progress;
Draft Plan Review - presentation of team plans, goals, and risks;
Program Board Review - presentation and agreement on team dependencies and milestones.

This simulation covers the most important aspects of quarterly planning and is a great practice for anyone facing PI Planning.

Who should participate?

Product Managers, Product Owners
SPCs, RTEs and Scrum Masters
team members and subject matter experts (architects, DevOps engineers)

This simulation is a great opportunity for Scrum Masters and Product Owners as well as team members
to practise fulfilling their role within the planning framework;
to better understand what is expected of their role;
to practice formulating objectives and risks.

Organizational information

Number of participants

from 15 to 100 people
Format

Offline/Online
Duration: 4 hours 30 minutes

Coffee breaks every hour and a half.
The theory is consolidated through practice, working in small groups.
Language

English / / German

In the program

The simulation consists of 2 main parts

The first part is how to develop a company strategy using the WSJF - weighted shortest job first - prioritisation method.

The introduction to the game - the participants become the top managers of a company that builds buildings and sells them. The task of the participants is to work out a unified building strategy - what it will cost at what point to maximise profits. The marketing department has prepared a set of possible constructions - 8 epics with descriptions (what kind of construction, what it is for, how much can be earned on it).

The aim of the game participants is to work in teams and prioritize each epic using WSJF method - to evaluate independently 3 parameters: value for the user, time criticality, opportunities opened or risks removed by epic implementation, as well as take into account the duration of implementation of each epic.

Based on the WSJF data, a city realisation strategy is developed, as well as the stages of implementation.

The second part of the game is a simulation of PI Planning - quarterly planning in SAFe.

Start - introduction, what SAFe planning is and how it happens in real life. All participants are divided into groups - teams. And there are specialist and universal teams. Thus, the game simulates working with System Team - those who accompany the work of all development teams in one train.

Each team has a Product Owner and a Scrum Master. Each role has its own area of responsibility within the planning framework.
Each group gets a set of stories according to the Top 10 Fiches. The next step is to plan the 3 months of work. Most of the time is allocated for teams to form a plan for 5 iterations - allocate stories to them with capacities in mind, formulate goals, risks. Define dependencies together - Program Board. During Scrum planning, Team Masters meet at Scrum of Scrum and share planning progress with each other and with RTE.

At the end of the timebox, each team presents its results to the other teams and the Business Owner (who is usually the facilitator). And together with him, they form the final plan and goals of the Increment.

Upcoming workshops

Public format

Open Date
Waiting list is underway, as soon as the dates are fixed we will contact you!

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Corporate format

At the workshop itself, you will be able to apply the new knowledge in practice, solving problems specific to your team, project or company, using the independent expert knowledge of our hands-on trainers.

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