Last October I joined SecurityScorecard (SSC) as a Program Manager and have been part of the team helping scale Agile practices across the organization. While we’re not 100% SAFe (Scaled Agile), we borrow heavily for ceremonies like PI Planning. To date, we’ve had three successful PI Plannings, iterating each time to optimize based on feedback. It’s been a wonderful journey, and if you’re interested in learning more about the team, take a look at some of our job openings. We’re very much hiring!
But let’s talk PI Planning, and specifically, how SSC is leaning into the challenges that COVID-19 has dished out these past few weeks. SSC is, at its core, a distributed workforce. We have hubs in NYC, Prague, and Buenos Aires, but there are more people working outside of those offices than have a desk within. This enables us to tackle some of the COVID-19 challenges with grace, but not all things are remote-friendly, PI Planning being one of them.
SAFe refers to PI Planning as “Big Room Planning”, and the reason is quite clear: It’s encouraged that everyone involved in planning Quarterly work meet in a single space, for a couple of days, to plan that work out. PI Planning is a tactical, in-person experience. It’s an opportunity to see folks you normally video chat with, and brainstorm with folks you may never get to see. SecurityScorecard, for its part, has done a multi-location PI Planning, with the aforementioned hubs playing host to local teams. All of Product, Engineering, and UX, on one Zoom link, breaking out into teams as needed, and ultimately plotting out what the next Quarter will look like. It’s amazing, really.
Alas, with COVID-19, travel is discouraged, and asking folks to be in a room for a couple of days with many other people is a sure way to get nervous looks. So what’s a wto do? Well, for starters, we made sure not to panic. Not panicking is a good way to make sure nobody else panics. It also gave us an opportunity to identify some assets we have on hand that may make this challenge a bit easier to overcome:
- Zoom – we all know how to use Zoom, and proper conference call manners are always in play. These teams know how to use the mute button and chat functionality.
- G-Suite – SSC uses G-Suite, which includes Google Drawings. G-Drawings is hugely powerful for ad hoc white boarding & quickly putting together things you may have otherwise put on a wall.
- Atlassian’s suite of products – JIRA is our backlog management tool of choice and Confluence is home to our internal wiki. Everyone has SSO access, and is familiar with its functionality (and limits!)
- Finally, the team – We have a rock solid group of employees that want to invest the time and energy into making this a useful event. We knew folks would be willing to step up and monitor Zoom rooms, play facilitator, and be accountable for jobs that someone else would’ve normally had if we were all in the room together.
With those assets in mind, next steps were pretty straight forward: Enable all teams to have a Zoom room for themselves, establish Zoom rooms for when all of us need to be on the line (PI Planning kick-off/close-out sessions, Scrum of Scrums touchpoints), and ensure teams are ready with Features in mind (leaning heavily on Product to ensure said Features were good and ready.)
Our Big Room Planning is next week, and we expect it to go off without any major hitches. Zoom connectivity and the usual browser slowness may frustrate some (including yours truly), but we’ll be able to end the week with a list of committed deliverables, sized and prioritized, for Q2.
Fortunately we don’t need to deal with global pathogens on a regular basis, but by maintaining flexibility and having clear objectives in mind, SecurityScorecard has been able to set up its teams (and ultimately, its customers) for success. One of the Agile principles behind the Agile Manifesto is
Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.
This statement applies to all types of teams, our Program Management Office included. When situations change, we respond in a thoughtful manner. I suspect this will net positive results, giving at least one bright spot to this COVID-19 episode.
Happy planning!
Goscin.ski 