Big Room Planning as a Service by Kaizania

Agile planning, often called “Big Room Planning,” is a cornerstone event for organizations implementing the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). This cadence-based event occurs every 10-12 weeks and is vital for aligning teams and ensuring they work towards a shared mission.

Key benefits of Agile planning include:

Teams align their sprint and Agile Planning goals/objectives at both the team and program levels.

Delivery dates, key milestones, and dependencies between teams are identified and understood.
Team capacity is matched to organizational demand, ensuring realistic plans.
Risks are identified, addressed, or mitigated.
IT, architecture, business, and other functions gain visibility into plans for feasibility assessment.

I thoroughly enjoyed each day – even though the material is challenging, the Trainer never lost my attention.

Suzie Gurschl

Vodacom

Who Needs Agile Planning/Big Room
Planning as a Service?

As teams grow and become adept at Agile practices, they often need to scale their operations. Agile planning becomes essential for:

What Kaizania Offers

Kaizania’s PI/Big Room Planning service is structured into four stages, adjustable to the program’s needs.

  • Strategy Alignment: Ensuring roles and responsibilities are clear at both program and team levels.
  • Business Alignment: Clarifying business priorities and their articulation.
  • Team Formation: Ensuring teams are formed with clear roles, including Scrum Masters and Product Owners.
  • Baseline Understanding: Surveying teams to gauge Agile maturity and mindset.
  • Planning Preparation: Creating checklists for physical or remote planning.
  • Content Understanding: Ensuring clarity from product, business, and IT perspectives.
  • Communication: Setting expectations and responsibilities for various stakeholders.
  • Delivery visualisation: Program & team board set up (Miro)
  • Agenda Implementation: Ensuring business priorities are translated into sprint and PI objectives.
  • Milestone and Dependency Identification: Clarifying key milestones and dependencies.
  • Risk Management: Identifying, discussing, and assigning program risks.
  • Commitment: Securing team commitment through capacity planning and commitment voting.
  • Coaching: Providing on-the-day coaching to achieve clear outputs.
  • Feedback Collection: Gathering feedback on event execution and Agile maturity.
  • Reporting: Providing a report with key insights, benchmarked against other programs.

Bespoke Solutions Tailored to Program Size

Kaizania offers four Agile planning service levels:

Approx. 3 Weeks

Small Agile Planning

tailored to Program Size

Teams:
Up to 3 teams (max 30 people).
Support:
One Kaizania coach.

Most Popular

Approx. 3-4 Weeks

Medium Agile Planning

tailored to Program Size

Teams:
Up to 6 teams (max 60 people).
Support:
Two Kaizania coaches.

Approx. 3-4 Weeks

Large Agile Planning

tailored to Program Size

Teams:
Up to 10 teams (max 120 people).
Support:
Three Kaizania coaches.

Approx. 4-6 Weeks

XL Agile Planning

tailored to Program Size

Teams:
More than 10 teams or 120 people
Support:
Custom solutions tailored to specific needs. Contact Kaizania for more details.

Before You Book – Read This 😊

Prerequisites for PI/Big Room Planning as a Service:

Prerequisites for Agile Planning/Big Room Planning as a Service

Teams should have Scrum Masters and Product Owners in place.

Teams should be familiar with Agile methodologies.

Leadership should articulate the short, medium, and long-term vision and deliverables.

Internal staff should fulfil Release Train Engineer (RTE), Product Manager, and Systems Architect/IT lead roles.

Exclusions from Agile
Planning as a Service

Upskilling and certification for teams are not included but can be arranged separately.

Workshops for team optimization are not included.

The service includes a robust communication plan but not a full change management process.

Not included but can be arranged separately.

If you feel stuck and need inspiration this course could be your answer! The Structure, insights, tools and invaluable learnings can be implemented in any workplace regardless of structure.

Naadhire Hoosain

Allan Gray