Overview
Every PI, the Art needs some time to get refreshed, innovate, add learning goals and plan their upcoming PI objectives and all of these can be done in the last iteration of a PI, which is called Innovation & Planning iteration.
Various Ways of Doing This:
- Hackathons
- Team building activities, etc
Key agenda Items
- Skill development and training
- ART Inspect & Adapt (I&A)
- Familiarization of ART and team/squad backlog
- PI Planning
Two (2) Weeks IP
The IP is the last Iteration in the PI cadence. There are some key agenda scoped within IP Iteration. These are:
Learning & Development
- The initial move to Lean-Agile requires many new techniques and skills like Epic & user story writing, automated testing, pairing & peer review, team building, etc., hence IP iteration can be used to learn and develop these new skills. Changes in technology, as well as changes to method and practice also urges teams at every level to continuously improve their skills.
Hackathons/Innovations
- Hackathons/innovations allow the talented, creative individuals on the ART to explore their innovative ideas outside the usual constraints of their regular backlog and team construct. The learning from hackathons routinely make their way into ART Backlogs and help drive innovations that directly benefit the business.
Team building activities:
- Teams at every level get involved in team building activities like games, design workshops, etc., to explore more about each other and build a healthy working environment.
ART Inspect & Adapt (I&A):
- This event allows all the ART teams to discuss and highlight what went well in the last PI and what can be improved in the upcoming PI. This gives a list of work items to Team coach to work on and predict & remove the impediments that the teams might face in the future.
Prepare & execute PI Planning:
- Performing the PI planning during the IP iteration avoids a reduction in the velocity of the regular iterations. More importantly, since these events are held on a regular cadence and can be scheduled well in advance, their occurrence is better guaranteed.Also, ART and Solution Train backlog refinement and epic and capability elaboration during this period can significantly increase the productivity of the upcoming planning session.
