Agile Team Delivery
Agile Team Delivery
The Agile Team Delivery capability’s enablers include Team Backlog Management, Team Execution, and Team Integration. Each capability within the Planview Capability Framework has a distinct set of features and functionality, business processes, best practices, and analytics and reports that deliver value to customers in the form of specific business outcomes.
Enablers and Business Outcomes
Team Backlog Management
Provides a structure for agile teams to manage their backlog. This allows them to visualize, prioritize, and plan work activities that align to strategic priorities. Resulting business outcomes include:
- We can visualize planned and unplanned work on a team Kanban board.
- We can break down agile work into smaller increments to add to the team backlog, estimating size as appropriate.
- We can dynamically prioritize and sequence work by size, value, and team capacity considerations.
- We can ensure teams stay aligned with strategic priorities by connecting work on team boards to program and portfolio Kanban boards.
Team Execution
Supports agile teams to deliver on their team plans using Kanban boards that match their preferred work methodology and processes. Resulting business outcomes include:
- We can customize Kanban boards to reflect a team’s existing process or preferred work methodology, including Scrum, Kanban, Scrumban, and more.
- We can see if planned work is tracking with completion goals, the impact of any unplanned work, and the likelihood of achieving planned delivery dates.
- We can track progress and assess efficiency with lean and agile metrics, including flow, velocity, throughput, and cycle time. These metrics can enact a culture of continuous improvement by adjusting boards to reflect any required process changes.
Team Integration
Supports connecting multiple agile team tools into Planview AgilePlace, including multiple affiliated instances of a given tool. This enables agile teams to visualize, plan, coordinate, and deliver their work together no matter where their work is tracked or how it’s managed. Resulting business outcomes include:
- We can give teams the flexibility to keep using agile execution tools they prefer or that are already tailored to support their processes.
- We can connect agile teams’ tools of choice into a program or teams-of-teams board, creating visibility into workflow, cross-collaboration, and alignment with portfolio priorities.
Best Practices
Center on continuous improvement
One of the main benefits of agile methodology is the understanding that incremental steps in the right direction will lead to vast improvement over time through an iterative, emergent process. Remember that change can be difficult, and results will not happen overnight, but driving with continuous improvement and sticking to the process will pay dividends over time.
Aim for Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Remember that the first iteration will never be perfect, and that’s intentional, as future iterations will leverage the team’s continued experience and feedback to optimize the improvement process. MVP lets teams quickly bring deliverables to the table, which enables the feedback, experience, and improvement processes.
Use what works
Different teams may need different tools or methodologies, and that’s encouraged within the agile framework. Some teams may need different timeboxes, others may not need any. Let teams work in a way that is most effective for them, whether that is Scrum, Kanban, Scrumban, or another method.
Integrate tools
However your teams work, it’s important they are equipped with tools that support them and that organizational leaders still have line-of-sight into the work they are doing. Make sure your tools are integrated, making use of dashboards and onboard reporting, so that data is communicated and visualized in a single source of truth that is easy for all parties to use and understand.
Create cross-functional teams
Silos break down communication and cause delays for organizations. Eliminate silos altogether by implementing cross-functional teams that are grouped not based on similar job roles but instead on working together towards creating a specific value for the organization.
Limit Work-in-Progress (WIP)
Agile is not about fast, it’s about focus. Assigning team members too much work causes everything to be delayed. Team leaders must ensure tasks are broken down into small, achievable chunks, and that work-in-progress stays within a certain threshold, so that team members are not bogged down but can instead focus on one small task at a time.
Visualize work and blockers
The ability to quickly decipher what each team member is working on and determine the cause of unexpected delays is critical to on-time delivery and optimizing working processes. Use a work visualization strategy such as Kanban to be able to easily show work progress and identify bottlenecks.
Measure delivery time
Flow, throughput, scope, lead and cycle times are all different ways of measuring delivery time. Tracking these metrics can show where inefficiencies are occurring so that you can adjust accordingly, allowing the team to anticipate or eliminate these issues and bring value faster.
Processes and Reports
Agile team delivery empowers teams to view and execute planned work through the use of customizable Kanban boards. Teams create discrete user stories to describe and categorize their work, then estimate the effort needed to complete the work. Stories are prioritized and scheduled into an appropriate timebox, such as a sprint, and as work progresses, team members move cards across boards towards review or completion. Planview's agile integration capabilities allow organizations to integrate multiple agile team tools into Planview AgilePlace, so teams can work using their preferred methodology and processes.
Team Backlog Management Process Steps
Team backlog management process flow
| Process Step | Description |
|---|---|
|
Create stories |
Break features down into discrete user stories for the team to work on. |
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Describe and categorize stories |
Clearly define a goal for each user story that team members can work toward. |
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Estimate story sizes |
Realistically assess the scope of the work that will be required to complete each user story. |
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Prioritize story backlog |
Rank the stories in the backlog to determine which stories should be worked on first. Use metrics in Card Scoring to determine what work should be prioritized. |
|
Schedule stories into appropriate timebox |
Spread story cards across the available timeboxes – such as sprints – to avoid overloading team members with work. Respect work in progress (WIP) limits. |
Team Execution Process Steps
Team execution process flow
| Process Step | Description |
|---|---|
|
Assign stories to relevant team members |
Spread story assignments across the available team members based on available team members' abilities, workloads, and schedules. |
|
Deliver stories |
Iterate on the work required to complete each user story. |
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Update card status |
As work is accomplished on each user story, assigned team members can update cards by moving them toward review or completion. |
Team Integration Process Steps
Team integration process flow
| Process Step | Description |
|---|---|
|
Deliver work using connected agile tools |
Teams use their preferred agile team tools to complete work and user stories, with status information visible in Planview AgilePlace. This is supported by Planview's agile integration capabilities which allow organizations to connect one or more agile team tools, as well as multiple federated instances of a given team tool, into Planview AgilePlace. |
AgilePlace (Connected) Process Steps
Planview AgilePlace connected to Planview Portfolios
| Process Step | Description |
|---|---|
|
Create AgilePlace board and make available for integration |
After creating your board in AgilePlace using a template or a custom setup, set the board to be available for integration with supported Planview products so real-time information about work progress can sync between AgilePlace and Portfolios. To create new work tasks in a project’s work breakdown structure (WBS) from new cards created on the AgilePlace board, define the card type and the lanes where this work will appear in Portfolios. For more information: |
|
Create project/epic in Portfolios and flag for sync to AgilePlace |
When creating a work epic or project in Portfolios, initiate the link between Portfolios and AgilePlace to begin syncing work across platforms. You will also select the default AgilePlace board for the sync. |
|
Set the appropriate tasks in the work breakdown structure (WBS) to sync to AgilePlace |
In the Portfolios WBS, designate which tasks to sync to the AgilePlace board. Set the Sync with the AgilePlace flag to create the synced card in AgilePlace. Each task will sync to the defined default board but can be changed to a different board. Here you can select the option to import AgilePlace child cards, which will automatically create synchronized tasks for child cards of the connected AgilePlace parent card. |
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Card is created on assigned AgilePlace board |
When tasks in the Portfolios WBS are synced to AgilePlace, cards are added to the default drop lane of the selected AgilePlace board. In AgilePlace, add card details and create parent-child connections to cards if needed. |
|
User story created and marked to sync to Portfolios |
Once you have synced Portfolios to AgilePlace, new cards created in AgilePlace can sync to projects in Portfolios. This creates a new task in the project’s WBS. |
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New task created in WBS |
When you create a new card in AgilePlace and set it to sync to an available Portfolios project in the Parent Card drop-down, the card creates a task in the assigned project’s WBS, complete with card details, start date, end date, and more. |
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Maintain plan; update milestone/activity status as work is completed |
Maintain the project plan by reviewing and updating milestones and activity status in the WBS. |
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Monitor project progress |
In Portfolios, review progress using data synced from cards in AgilePlace. This information is used to monitor the project progress and can be viewed within the WBS, work portfolio column sets, and Power BI dashboards. This provides the ability to assess and make real-time decisions with all available information. |
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Parent/child connectors automatically updated |
With synced tasks, you can change parent/child card relationships in AgilePlace and the connector will automatically update the parent/child task relationships in Portfolios. |
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Describe and categorize stories via users, start/finish dates, etc. |
Clearly define goals for each user story that team members can work toward. Categorize card types to reflect the kind of work in process and set start and end dates to keep track of planned deadlines. Descriptions and categorizations on AgilePlace cards will update task information in Portfolios. |
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Prioritize backlog |
Rank stories in the AgilePlace backlog to determine which stories should be worked on first. Use AgilePlace Card Scoring to prioritize work. |
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Assign stories to appropriate timeboxes |
Assign story cards to available timeboxes or sprints and set work in process (WIP) limits to avoid overloading team members with work. Once this is done, teams work toward their defined goals. |
|
Time reporting |
Users enter time via time reporting in Portfolios, or if Planview's Agile Costing solution has been enabled, the connector will automatically populate timesheet data into Portfolios using data derived from cards in AgilePlace. |
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