Using Jira Align to Implement SAFe

Leverage Jira Align to implement and manage SAFe practices effectively, ensuring project alignment and optimized efficiency.

Overview

As the SAFe framework continues to grow in popularity, more companies are discovering that they need proper tooling to become an agile enterprise. With a deep understanding of the complexities and interdependencies associated with SAFe, Atlassian has a significant objective to become the tool provider of choice for organizations practicing or pursuing agile-at-scale. This workshop showcases how Atlassian tools – specifically Jira Align – answer these needs better than any competitor.

Led by a team of veteran AgileCraft and Jira Align practice leads, you will be guided through a dynamic project which unfolds as the workshop progresses. You’ll learn how to use Jira Align to measure and manage key aspects of a complex agile initiative at scale – tracking budget, mapping to the key SAFe constructs, and integrating Jira into your organization.

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Full course details

Course outline

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
Audience / prerequisites
  • Anyone seeking to use the SAFe model to scale agile to the enterprise
  • Organizations with established agile practices at the team level
  • Organizations with more than three agile release trains that are seeking to gain strategically-aligned delivery across the organization.
  • Program and portfolio managers
  • PMO Directors
  • Transformation leads
  • SAFe leaders and stakeholders
  • Agile leads
  • Business Intelligence and reporting staff in the agile practice
  • Administrators and tooling leads
In this class you will learn how to
  • Recognize how Jira Align supports the SAFe framework
  • Apply LPM concepts and practices
  • Create roadmaps to better track progress and customer satisfaction
  • Manage backlog requests and just Jira Epics to rank priorities
  • Prepare PI simulations
  • Implement the proper setup of JIRA for SAFe
  • Utilize reports from the PI simulations to make informed decisions

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