Mastering Big Room Planning

Overview

Agile teams tend to have a good grip on how to deliver value inside of their own team – but challenges are often found when that is scaled beyond single teams.

• How do we manage dependencies between teams?
• How are we delivering large programmes and initiatives across teams?
• How well aligned are we in these teams to what the organisation needs strategically?

This is where Big Room Planning comes in.

Big Room Planning is an agile planning technique that is used to plan out delivery of large scale change over a specified time period – typically 3 months. This is a framework agnostic workshop – but does use techniques that feature prominently in SAFe.

The workshop offered here is ideal for those either running or taking part in these planning processes. The workshop is set up as a place for attendees to share their experiences with Big Room Planning in a supportive, psychologically safe environment – so attendees should join with this expectation in mind.

Attendees will leave with an understanding of the purpose behind these sessions – and techniques and approaches to increase the value from the sessions they are involved in.

As part of this session, we will learn core concepts through discussion and exercises – before then putting these into practice in a simulated Big Room Planning experience.

Following this, we will then reflect as a class with actionable takeaways to improve their individual Big Room Planning sessions.

Prerequisites

Participants should have:

• Foundational understanding of agile concepts (such as the Scrum framework and the agile Manifesto)
• Experience of either taking part of facilitating Big Room Planning events

Target audience

This course is designed for:

• Agile Coaches
• Agile practitioners
• Release Train Engineers
• Attendees at any quarterly planning process
• Scrum Masters
• Delivery Leads
• Delivery Managers

Objectives

By the end of this course, learners will be able to:

• understand the key elements of Big Room Planning and its place in Agile ways of working.
• master preparation techniques for effective Big Room Planning.
• learn how to facilitate a successful Big Room Planning event.
• develop actionable strategies to ensure alignment and commitment from teams.
• identify common challenges and mitigation strategies during a Big Room Planning event.

Outline

Introduction to Big Room Planning

• Explaining the concept and benefits of Big Room Planning
• Exploring an organisational set-up with Big Room Planning as its focus
• Roles and responsibilities in a Big Room Planning session

Preparing for Big Room Planning

• Stakeholder collaboration and alignment
• Refinement considerations
• Prioritisation – focussing on the Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF) technique
• Event logistics

Running Big Room Planning

• Utilising best practice in the previous 2 modules, take part in a live Big Room Planning event
• The use of feedback in these events
• Risk management in these events

Exams and Assessments

There are no formal exams or assessments as part of this course.

Hands-on learning

• Use of conversational learning – making use of the facilitator and attendees levels of experience with Big Room Planning
• Opportunity to experience a live event
• Takeaways to improve attendees own events