Course Taxonomy: Technology Platforms

BigPicture for Teams

Posted on October 17, 2020 by -

Part 1: BigPicture Basics

  • The building blocks of BigPicture
  • Best practices for navigating the BigPicture UI
  • Real-time synchronization between BigPicture and Jira
  • Getting comfortable with Boxes

Part 2: Fundamentals of BigPicture Gantt

  • Navigation
  • Scope
  • Column
  • Views
  • Populating the chart
  • Task Templates
  • Planning and Execution
  • Dependencies and Scheduling Modes
  • Milestones
  • Critical Path and Baseline
  • Aggregation on column views
  • Filtering and Sharing
  • Grouping

Part 3: Advanced Features of BigPicture Gantt

  • Importing and cloning data
  • Basic tasks
  • Resources
  • Infobar
  • Scenarios
  • Hierarchy builders

Part 4: Working with Teams

Part 5: Exploring the features of Teams and Resources

  • Working with BigPicture's Teams
  • Clear overview of a Resources workload
  • Allocation constraints in Resources
  • Optimizing and managing Resources
  • Skill-based planning
  • Workload and Holiday plans
  • Five ways of changing capacity

Part 6: Portfolio overview and Objectives

  • BigPicture Roadmap Fundamentals
  • Objective-driven planning

Part 7: Risk Management, Calendar Planning, and Backlog Grooming

  • Defining and managing risks
  • Using the calendar mode
  • Using the Scope module for backlog grooming

Part 8: Using Board 2.0 to scale Agile

  • Agile approach with multi-team capabilities
    • Planning
    • Execution
    • Team Capacities
    • Board Reports
    • Dependencies

Part 9: Reports and Administration

  • Security
  • Budgeting
  • Reports in BigPicture
  • Gadgets
  • Administration Features

 

Using Jira Align to Implement SAFe

Posted on October 17, 2020 by -

Section 1: Introduction to Jira Align for SAFe Organizations

The opening section will set the groundwork for SAFe and Jira Aligns support of the framework. 

Section 2: Portfolio Management

In this section we will review LPM concepts and practices from the perspective of Agile Portfolio Operations and Lean Governance as described by SAFe. Starting with a demonstration of Strategy & Investment Funding, we will look at how strategic goals and their alignment to Strategic Themes help the APMO/LACe and train leaders make decisions.

The participants will then complete the following guided exercises to understand Lean Portfolio Management concepts and how Jira Align supports each.

  • Create Portfolio Epics and associate them to (pre-created) Themes
    • Allocate portioned theme budgets to Portfolio Epics.
  • Manage Intake using the Portfolio Kanban Board
    • Students will move their Epic through the Portfolio Kanban, ensuring exit criteria Is met
  • Use the backlog to prioritize and rank Portfolio Epics – pulling rank from Themes and modifying the ranking of the Epics In the UI
  • 'Create' Roadmaps
    • Calendar View -aka 'planning view'
      • View Planned & Unplanned work, modify the views
      • Students will adjust epics and sync to the backlog
    • PI View – aka "health & reporting view' Students will
      • Update Health
      • Add Milestones
      • View by Product
      • Briefings views by customer

Section 3: Program/ART Management

In this section, we will cover the 'heart' of SAFe. Connecting strategy to execution begins with prioritized set of portfolio epics, from there our architects and product managers create the execution plans. Participants will:

  • Decompose Portfolio Epics Into Features
  • Use backlog to rank Features (Jira Epics) Pulling rank from Epics –
    • Align features to Jira Projects for the train.
    • Watch as the feature syncs to Jira
  • Backlog Management
    • Ranking – Pull rank from the Epics, Prioritize the backlog and push the new rank to Jira
    • Orphan objects – using the orphan functionality to ensure all work is estimated and aligned to a parent
    • Estimation
    • Kanban column view – pull top features – to get to "close velocity"

Section 4: PI Simulations

  • Prepare for & conduct MOCK PI Planning
    • Select top 10 most Important features (pre-defined list)
    • Program Board – Pre PI Load by PM/RTE role
  • Integration to /from Jira
    • The proper set up of Jira for SAFe
      • Class participants will be able to see stories from Jira Align, write to Jira
      • Class participants creating Feature (Jira Epics) or Stories in Jira
      • Dependencies – 2 per team
      • Risks – 1 per team
      • Objectives
        • Associate 1 to OKR (pre-existing)
        • Program Board View
        • Program Room
      • Monitor PI Progress using the Program Board
        • Show program board In flight – how to resolve problems

Section 5: Report on progress throughout the PI and across the portfolio

  • Work Tree
  • WIP
  • PIP
  • Scope Change
  • Risk report
  • Objective Report/tree
  • PI Progress Report
  • PI Clean up Report
  • Roadmaps
  • INv V Actuals
  • Investment Theme
  • OKR
  • Work Tree Strategy View