Agile Team Events in Scaled Agile Framework(SAFe)
Let’s talk about agile team events in Scaled agile framework or SAFe. Agile team events are-
- Iteration Planning,
- Daily Stand-Up,
- Iteration Review,
- Backlog Refinement and
- Iteration Retro.
Let’s talk about each of them one-by-one.
Iteration Planning — During the iteration planning team refines the iteration plans created during p i planning. Teams usually do 5 things during the iteration planning. It starts
From establishing capacity, second story analysis and estimating, third detailing stories, Forth developing iteration goals and last bit is committing to iteration goals.
It is a time Boxing event 4 hours or less, facilitated by scrum master. During the iteration planning, the product owner defines “what” and the agile team defines “how” and “how much”. Once the process is complete and the team commits to the work. It’s the time to record the backlog items as a storyboard, kanban board or any tool like JIRA.
daily stand-up (DSU) — It is a daily 15 minutes time boxing event. during DSU agile team members answer three questions -
What did I do yesterday to advance the iteration goals?
What will I be able to complete today to advance the iteration goals?
What’s stopping us from completing the iteration goals?
Both the product owner and scrum master attend daily stand-up. Scrum master facilitate this event and and product owner clarify story intent and acceptance criteria during DSU
SAFe suggests DSU will be more effective when held in front of the storyboard..
Backlog Refinement — It’s also known as backlog grooming. It is a 1–2 hours weekly time boxing event. During the backlog refinement Product owner represents the set of stories for the coming iteration.
Agile team members discuss each story, estimate it, split it if required. Po clarify the acceptance criteria for each story and the team identifies the dependencies on the other team. This discussion also led to addition or removal of stories.
Agile team members actively engage during backlog refinement, prioritize the stories and ensure we have backlog ready for next iteration planning.
Iteration Review — It is the cadence based event. It is a 1–2 hours weekly time box event.
During the iteration review team demo a tested increment of value to the product owner and other stakeholders.
Team receives feedback on the work they have done which is the primary goal of the review process. Team members also discuss stories not completed and why.
The iteration review provides the opportunity to team members to assess progress, identify risks and impediments. Iteration review provides the opportunity to revise team backlog and team PI objectives as needed.
Iteration Retrospective — Agile teams meet at the end of each iteration for an iteration retrospective.Timeboxed to an hour or less. The iteration retrospective is used by Agile teams to look back on the iteration just completed and generate new ideas to improve the team’s process. This helps instill the concept of relentless improvement — one of the pillars of the SAFe House of Lean — within the team.
The retrospective is divided into two sections by the team: Quantitative review & Qualitative review
During Quantitative review
Team review whether they had completed all of the improvement backlog items for this iteration.
Did the team meet the iteration goals?
Collect and review the iteration metrics like team velocity, number of stories delivered, defects addressed, automated test coverage etc.
During Quantitative review team review,
What went well?
What didn’t and
What can we do better next time?
I hope this article helped you to know about the team events. I will talk about all this in more detail in my next article. Thanks for reading this article.
From, Shaily Rajwanshi ( Agile Coach and SAFe Trainer)
