Mastering PI Planning - Leadership Beyond the Framework

"PI Planning is where the framework meets reality—it’s a test of alignment, collaboration, and leadership." - Stephan Neck

In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, hosts Stephan Neck, Niko Kaintantzis, and Ali Hajou explore one of SAFe's cornerstone activities: PI Planning. The trio leads an engaging discussion about how SPCs can elevate their organizations’ PI Planning sessions from mere rituals to transformative events.

The conversation illuminates the evolving role of SPCs in guiding teams through successful PI Planning while balancing the need for structure, adaptability, and human connection.

Key Highlights:

• PI Planning as a Leadership Opportunity:
  • The hosts emphasize the critical role of SPCs in facilitating alignment, fostering collaboration, and addressing potential bottlenecks before they escalate.
  • Niko describes PI Planning as “a mirror for the organization,” reflecting its culture, communication, and leadership dynamics.
• Preparation is Key:
  • Stephan outlines best practices for pre-PI Planning preparation, such as ensuring backlog readiness, clarifying team goals, and engaging with stakeholders early.
• The Art of Collaboration:
  • Ali discusses how SPCs can act as mediators during the session, ensuring cross-team dependencies are identified and resolved while encouraging open dialogue.
• Adaptability in Action:
  • The trio highlights the importance of remaining flexible when things don’t go as planned, sharing real-world examples where improvisation saved the day.

Practical Advice for SPCs

• Start with Clear Objectives: Define what success looks like for the PI Planning session and align teams around shared goals.
• Focus on Dependencies: Encourage teams to identify and address cross-team dependencies during breakout sessions.
• Create Psychological Safety: Foster an environment where everyone feels comfortable voicing concerns or challenging assumptions.
• Leverage Metrics: Use relevant metrics to track progress and ensure alignment throughout the session.

Conclusion

PI Planning is more than a meeting—it’s a dynamic space where vision becomes actionable, alignment is tested, and SPCs have the opportunity to lead by example. This episode offers practical insights to help SPCs elevate PI Planning from a framework activity to a transformative event.

References

• "Team of Teams" by General Stanley McChrystal
• "The Phoenix Project" by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford

Transcript

Mark Richards: 0:01

You're listening to SPC's Unleashed, a shaping agility project that emerged from the 2023 Prague Safe Summit. The show is hosted by Swiss SPCT Stephan Nick and Nico Kaintances, Dutch SPCT Ali Haju and Aussie safe fellow Mark Richards. We're committed to helping SPCs grow their impact and move beyond the foundations taught during Implementing safe. Each week we explore a dimension from the Framework's competencies. We share stories about our journeys, the secrets we found, and the lessons we've learned the hard way.

Ali Hajou: 0:32

Ladies and gentlemen, good day. Good, good day. Welcome back to the next episode of Shaping Agility, or actually SPC Unleashed. And we're today in episode four of season two. My God, time flies. And today we're here with. Actually we're four people. But Mark is feeling a little bit down and just has been here to basically press the record button. Really appreciate doing that. Of course he did. Way more. This entire infrastructure exists because of Mark's hard work. But today we're here with Nico and with Stephan and we're going to talk about making PI plannings better. I'm going to talk about making PI plannings better. The thing is, PI plannings are at the heart of safe. They're really all the way at the middle, at the center stage of skilled agile framework and potentially the most known element of this framework. So for almost 14 years since the publishing of agile software requirements in which the framework got its shape, we've gained a lot of experience. Back in the days it was called release planning and over time, the framework itself, but also everything around the framework and hence the PI planning found adjustments, tweaks and tricks to make the event better. So today we're going to talk about how to make it better. What was the context of these small adjustments that you've rolled on and what was the effect? So the thing is, with the. Amongst the three of us, we have a combined 22 years of P.I. Planning experience. That's, that's immense. 22 years of P.I. Planning experience. So we will see what this experience, the trial and errors have taught us in setting up the optimal PI planning and in which Nico will talk about how to adjust bi planning agenda to practical and cultural constraints to better match practical convenience. Stephan will talk about how to optimize preparation, amongst others. And I'll be talking about why I'm such a fan of templates. I don't know why, I don't know why. But let's just start with the true Passion, special moment, surprise challenge. And I'm going to start with Nico.

Niko Kaintantzis: 3:14

I just thought while you were talking there's a nice saying there's no magic in SAFE except PI planning. So I really love this magic. So I, I prefer having a stressful PI planning but at the end something magic happened instead of just a pre recorded show. So really everything is clear and you're just there on stage and just doing a theater. I really prefer being less prepared or not overprepared, but still be prepared and having really kind of magic, kind of stress. Yeah. Having really this magic thing and.

Stephan Neck: 3:53

I'm picking it up. I'm really picking it up. Oli.

Ali Hajou: 3:56

Exactly.

Stephan Neck: 3:57

It's really for me where and when the magic happens. Right. Not because of tools or maybe templates, we'll talk about it. Right? Or processes. It's a social system gathering and we show how we work, how we behave. You as people, you as human being, you show your true face. Right. You can hide behind processes and whatever, but PI planning is the moment of truth and I really like it. For me that's the main reason why SAFE works. PI planning, bringing people together, getting this alignment. And always, and I must say the last eight years, always something magic happens no matter what. But we probably will talk about it.

Ali Hajou: 4:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, the thing with magic, the magic element of the PI planning is that it's such a moment to, I don't know, mobilize so many people and to really make something of it, to step away from, let's say, boring standard day to day life, you know, behind your desk, but to really, you know, have an anchor point in the quarter in which we're doing something slightly different. And so that's what I would like to kick off with because over the years we've learned what worked and what didn't work. But it's still a PI planning. So it's still, you know, we're still trying to focus on making sure that collectively somehow we can have a good result so that the PI planning is effective. So I'll my question to you gentlemen, thinking about effectiveness in how to make PI planning effective. And I think I'm going to start with pointing the finger to you, Nico.

Niko Kaintantzis: 6:05

Yeah. I would like to go a little bit broader because it's not only the PI planning. There's a lot of work before, after the PI planning, but also before. And if you want to be more effective or efficient, I think effect is more interesting at the moment is also take in the equation how much time you need in pre planning. And that's why I told the beginning it's not about the show, it's about the magic happening there. And I've seen many companies, at least in Switzerland over preparing. We having three, four days of pre planning and I think a nice balance of pre planning and PI planning itself. It's really important. Just give you one example. I was once in a PI planning with a large solution and then a team just disappeared for half a day and then just returned back and told me PI planning is boring. We finished after half a day and then I played curious. Oh wow, that's a great achievement how you made it in a half a day. What? It's really efficient and great. So yeah, we had four day pre planning. So okay, you just invested four days in pre planning just to have a smooth show. I think it's really effective having so much pre planning because imagine something happens, you have to adjust because they really talk to nobody. They just prepared everything and they had were ready after holiday. And that's what I would like to give an advice. It's a nice, we need a nice balance. I know sometimes I'm on the part of being more chaotic and saying if I have to choose over or under preparement, I choose under preparement. But yeah, in reality I choose a nice balance but I go always in direction not to prepare because I have to shock my clients a little bit because in Switzerland everything is too much prepared and I'm just going to give you the experience how it is on the other side. So yeah, choose a nice balance and then it will be effective.

Ali Hajou: 8:07

Perfect. Perfect. It's, you know, finding this balance between pre planning and the actual event itself because otherwise it just becomes a like a sprint filling exercise which is, you know, that's not what it is. Yeah. How about you Stephan.

Stephan Neck: 8:23

It's really interesting. We were talking about a framework, right? And if you teach people, if you train people, if you coach them, everyone says yes. I know the difference between a method where slavishly follow some checklists and a framework and then it comes to the preparation of PR planning. And no matter how you are set up, you might need some pre planning with other arts. You might have some important dependencies arising during the preparation time. You're looking at the features, you're looking at your art backlogs and all of a sudden people start, as Nico said, the PI planning before the PI planning. And that's one of the big pitfalls. I've learned it the hard way as A coach, but also as a member of an art not to do so. But still it needs kind of a preparation. Because if you have those dependencies, if you are aligned towards something which is much bigger than what your art is doing and you still have a portfolio, you might even have the large solution where you need that pre planning, it comes to certain questions that you should be able to answer. Like people going into a pip planning and all of a sudden in the context in the breakout session, you hear that we thought that thinking is good, right? But talking to each other and clarifying stuff before the piplaying. So there we are on a common ground when it comes to breakout sessions and finding solutions is really good. That's one of the trigger questions I throw in when it comes to pre planning. Do we have to get rid of certain assumptions to clarify what's in our art backlogs? And the second one is really more and more, I find it helpful that a dependency matrix starts arising before the PI planning, creating initial stories. We hear that, we read that in our articles. Initial stories. But what's an initial story? And sometimes I have teams. Yes, we can deliver a feature from A to Z and they start preparing all those stories so they have a smoother breakout session. I say don't do that. Just have a talk and socialize the feature within your team. But don't prepare everything because you are taking away the magic of doing it in PR planning and perhaps finding out, oh, there's other people with different perspective, bring them in. Where you have a dependency, you should start talking. Right? That's good anticipation. And therefore I like pre planning. But from an change engine perspective or an SPC perspective, sometimes you have to put the stop sign up and say, guys, stop here. Because now you're crossing the border to doing PR planning before the PR planning. That's a very thin line, right? Yeah, go for it, Nico.

Niko Kaintantzis: 11:28

What I really liked is the idea that in the preparation you show already some kind of dependencies. And one of my colleague once said in a training, it doesn't make you more agile just playing stupid. So when you know something, just put it there, draw the lines. Or if you know this is the feature and you have stories already in your head, just write them somewhere in a common field. We think about slicing that way and just saying, oh no. Story writing is in PI planning. I'm not allowed to write anything down. It doesn't make you more agile just following the process and playing stupid. If you know where something, write it in a comment field in Your tool set. And then later in the pipeline, yeah, you can write stories out of it, but just playing stupid and say, oh, in the process, it's later, it doesn't make you more agile.

Stephan Neck: 12:17

Absolutely.

Ali Hajou: 12:18

I, I fully am fully with you. The thing is, it's. There is this. And I wonder how, how the both of you see this. There's this tendency that's whenever, like a team of teams, a train goes through its first PI planning, then there's this pressure cooker effect in the beginning, very first time, right? It's, it's. There's a minimum amount of preparation, there's a little bit of panic, but then, you know, you go through PI planning and then you figure out, oh, this actually works pretty well. But. And that's when it happens. But the next time it might become. It might go even better if we prepare a little bit more. And then rather than using one week before the PI planning or maybe two weeks before the PIM to start initial refinement, people start way ahead or spend a huge chunk of time doing the preparation. It just, it's, it's. It's quite risky. It's quite risky. And the thing is, for me, if I, if I can add one more thing with this, let's say how to make SPI planning more effective is. I think it was you, Nico, who mentioned that you actually like a little bit of that chaos. Maybe sort of naturally you'd like to have the dynamic in an event like that which comes with a little bit less preparation and therefore the needs to walk over to each other, talk with each other. The testing assumptions which Stephan mentioned, we thought that we. I think I have something similar. I like that chaos. But then eventually it needs to come back to something that is equal for everybody in the sense of, you know, Draftland review needs to look the same for everybody. So, you know, we're all building and walking and going to the same to the sort of same end point. So I'm somehow, I am very much a fan of keeping everything as open as possible, but then having very strict templates that everybody else fills in so that everyone has their own way of getting to the template or, you know, filling the template. But then the template becomes an entity of, let's say, a stable report out or so. And I, I just, I've really found that. I found that quite useful somehow.

Stephan Neck: 14:54

I'm fully with you, Ali. Right. Because you mentioned this oscillation effect. The first PI planning being in a state where insecure we heard the structure, we've seen the structure. We did some simulation in the safe for team training with the teams. It should smooth down everything a little bit. But I remember my first PR planning. I couldn't sleep the night before, right? I was an rt, I was a coach. I should have been the best prepared person in the room. I still was nervous. And this oscillation effect, probably first PI planning, we find out, not have done enough. And then next time probably too much preparation. The third time, probably not enough preparation. It needs a calibration time like 2, 3, 4 PIs. But again, I like what you say and said regarding templates. Templates, processes, structural elements, over those two days they reduce variability. And we still have enough variability in the social system. We as people, the whole art is probably newly formed, never worked together before. It's variability, right? We have variability in our art backlog items and team backlog items. Small innovation, huge innovation. It's all variability. Because we are not in a deterministic process doing lean manufacturing, we're doing lean product exploration, product development, where there's always some kind of variability. And templates are helpful. But I would say first of all, always the question is what's the magnitude of variability and how can we help the teams? How can we help the shared services? Also the ART triad, which is new on the starting line, to have a better starting point, have a better understanding and set some boundaries so that self organization during those two days really start flying. And I'm a huge fan of templates as well and processes. But it's not probably my first question I would bring in during preparation time. What should we prepare? I would ask the question where's the insecurity risk of variability? And that triggers a different discussion during preparation time. Does that make sense?

Niko Kaintantzis: 17:27

Yeah. I want to listen to you both. Maybe the audience will misunderstand something. Loving more the chaotic way or the more the action way doesn't mean you don't prepare anything or doesn't mean you just go in and see what happens. It needs a lot of preparation to make something look spontaneous and look something good. And templates can help you. And this question, Stephan said, will help you. So from my background and I will not say many things because it's public, I don't like to tell about my story and what my back package is. I realize I really have to prepare a lot of things that I can adjust during the day or during some meetings or wherever you are. So you cannot plan it and go this path, but going this path you need enough plans, enough templates to be able to adjust and that's a skill you need to have. So I like the idea with the templates. Oli never thought of this before or expressed it this way, but it's really important to be able to react. You need enough plans and enough templates, otherwise you're doomed in the chaos. So you have to master it and it's not fun being in the chaos and nobody has any idea. So then it's really. Then he resumed.

Ali Hajou: 18:45

Yeah, yeah. Indeed, indeed. So maybe just to continue on exactly this topic, with our 22 years of combined PI planning, preparation and let's say running and evaluation experience, what kind of tips and tricks and ideas can you share with us on how to best prepare for this PI planning? And I see that Stephan has had something.

Stephan Neck: 19:15

It ties again to what we already discussed. Insecurity, not being certain, are we doing it the right way the first time or the second time? I remember many Safe for Team trainings. Sometimes you had to extend the breakout session where people learn to break down a feature into stories and the initial stories are not perfect. You just have an idea. Who do you serve with this small bit of value which contributes to the bigger one. And doing some training sessions during say for team training or in between say for team training, if you have some time left and the first PR planning, just get used to pull a feature, break it down fast, within one or two minutes. Doing brainwriting and then doing the estimation poker or planning poker over and over again. And that helps people to really not think about what is a story point. But you use it relative estimation, it becomes second nature. And if you go into the breakout session on day one and day two, it's. It's just. You just do it if like if you're a pro. And again that would be one of the hints you do it probably during Safe for team training. If you don't do Safe for team training, I can probably say you will have some problems. Don't try to save money on the people who really do the work. Only training POs, PMs and the art roles. We should train the people and we should give them an environment where they feel secure enough to do the job. Although it's the first time, that's one of my big learnings and every time I have a different art, I have different teams, I probably need a slightly different approach to master. For the first PI planning. How do you estimate, how do you break down those art backlog or team backlog items so that you can play the game. Right. Planning. Planning is then, okay, how do you come up with a good draft plan that is good enough, but it's still a draft plan. It's not a final plan.

Niko Kaintantzis: 21:40

Oh, yes, I would like to second.

Ali Hajou: 21:42

Yeah. And if we would not call the safer teams training a training, but if we would call it a dry run, then all of a sudden everyone understands. Yes, because that's exactly what you mentioned. You need to just go through the motions, ideally with real life features, so that teams can go through this activity of slicing. But yeah, the slides themselves say safer teams training. But it's actually, this is exercise, it's preparation. Yeah.

Stephan Neck: 22:21

May I quickly add to that one, Ali? I'd say, right. People have the tendency, they're good people, the busy bees, they want to collect the honey. Right. And over preparation is probably something that happens because people want to do a good job and helping them. Okay, what's a draft plan? What's an initial story giving them the outlook? Hey, every two weeks you still have refinement sessions, you still have iteration planning where you then nail it down to what you're really doing. Right. But it's still a plan. And as Mike Tyson says, a plan is a plan. You go into the ring and you find out your opponent has a different plan, reality has a different plan with you. And the plan is not there to achieve or fulfill the plan. It's. It's to achieve goals. So context is important in preparation as well. And sometimes I've seen teams writing on a flip chart what is really the context that we took out of the business, the solution and the architectural context. And they start the breakout session one with what's to consider? 2 to 3 points before we start brainwriting, brainstorming stories. Huge improvement on teams, even if they're newly formed or even if it's old teams being in the trade for years. It changes behavior drastically.

Ali Hajou: 23:53

Yeah, it's how to make it, let's say how to make sure that the event is not being perceived as some robotic process where we need to, you know, this is what we need to do then. And it was exactly the same the last time. And then we would have a moment where we need to refine. Well, we can prepare that. Right. It's actually pretty tough. It's pretty tough over the time you'd get, and I'm very sure that both of you have heard this before, over the time you get all type of suggestions of, you know, can we just, you know, it's two days, you know, can we, you know, can we make it a little bit leaner or can we maybe either prepare it a little bit more, you know, more elaborately upfront so that we don't need everyone involved. So maybe we can do this only with our product owners and our Scrum masters. You know, I'm very sure that you heard that before. So what would your response be? If you would hear statements like, can we do this PI planning in one day? And I'm going to start with.

Niko Kaintantzis: 25:12

I'm going to start with Nico, of course you can. You can also decide to kill yourself. But then I know now I was joking a little bit. If you do it, and I did it also for some clients, please respect the idea behind of it. And Jared, you well did a great Talk at the Safe Summit in Washington D.C. Which really emphasizes the meta level of what PI planning is. And he did it in such a great job that I adopted my storytelling on this. And if you look what PI planning is on the process level, the meta level, you start with alignment with the people, you show the vision, you show the next steps on the roadmap and then you go to breakout session, like in an open space, you open the room, you let people talk, find things and then you close the room again and then you have again a feedback loop alignment. You have the management review properly resolved. It's also an alignment. Next day you show the adjustments, you're again in alignment path. And then you open the room again and close it again. Feedback loop again, confidence vote. And then you have again this like swimming things. If you can do this in a day and still stay there, it's a great idea. But what I have also seen outside is that people do it in a half day and it's just a linear process. It's just. Welcome everybody. I tell you what the vision is, I tell you what we've planned before and now execute. And that's just a linear process. It's not this process here. So if you respect the meta level, you can do it in one day. Of course. And I'm also fan, by the way, when I do it in one day, do it in two half days and have the night in between. Because the night does also something with you. You shower, you run, you sleep, it does something. The lunch is not enough. In lunchtime you didn't have time that it goes down your neurons or whatever you have here or the backbone. You need this time having other parts of your brain and still of your body working on that. So yes, do it in one day, keep the night in between, respect the meta level of the PR planning, then it's doable. But most people have seen doing one, they go back again to two days because yeah, they had too much prepared preparation before.

Stephan Neck: 27:29

I would say yes and yes. Okay, why? In one of the safe for team trainings and also when I do role based training, going through the agenda, I let the people read the agenda and I say, okay, what do you see? What do you hear? And then people say, oh, we have to go through it. And as Nico said, no, you don't have to, but it probably makes sense. What's the sense of the different parts of an agenda? And sometimes people really quickly get it what I want to hear from them. And some others still look at me and say, Stephan, there's the agenda, it proposes something and we are just doing it. But just doing it is not enough understanding what you do. And if you understand what you do in those four different parts of the two day agenda, right, that allows you to then shorten it down. And if you look even in it's a framework, you can shorten the duration, you can streamline the agenda, but don't let important essential parts out of it. And as Nico said, I like a good night's sleep, right? Seeing small arts or as AIM would say, trams, right? They start in the afternoon, then they finish day one. And they also ask people, what's the goal of day one? It's a draft plan. You want to see the skeletons being transported from the cellar on our table so that we see where are the impediments, what are the clashes? What should we talk about on day two? If we have the planning adjustments. And I also, in teaching I ask them because one of the slides we had or we have in one of the sub chapters is what's the goal of day two? And then people tell me to have a plan on a team level. I say, no, it's not important. What's important? What do you commit on the confidence vote, you commit on PI objectives. So this then helps Ali to answer the question, should we shorten? Should we change certain stuff? The context is key, right? And the context will help us. The size of the art, the size of the teams, the maturity of the teams to shorten and streamline the agenda. And by the way, we have to do that if you still have the same agenda after four years. Like on day one there was no evolution. We need evolution in everything we do, right?

Niko Kaintantzis: 30:05

Something you just said, Stephan, triggered something in me. One thing that People do wrong or don't realize is the end of day one is not having the draft plan doesn't mean having the half plan, it means having the full plan just in a draft mode. So some people think, oh, I have two days, let's do the first half day in the first day and the second half day later. It's still the whole thing and that's important. And I've seen Mark writing in the back channel, the goal of day one is to create the agenda for management review. And for that it's why you need the whole plan in a draft mode and not the half plan. And the half plan, that's really something important. And thank you Stephan, for going in this direction and get the chance to explain this.

Ali Hajou: 30:54

Indeed. We're trying to feed the management review, right? We're trying to feed the management review, at least that's how sort of I call it. So you need creating an agenda for the management review. That's what we're trying to do, you know, put those managers to work. But so thanks a lot, gentlemen. I'd like to dive into sort of the most pragmatic, slash practical last question of today's podcast, which is one that I'm really looking forward to. What kind of practical adjustments are you suggesting these days? How would you adjust your PI planning or at least suggest adjusting PI planning just based on the myriad of time that you've hosted your sessions?

Stephan Neck: 31:51

I'll start with Stephan again, you probably, when you listen to what I said so far, it's do we understand what problems should we solve or what problems does this PI planning solve? And that's why we start with the context. So for me, context is key. If the context is not done on day one and if it's not inhaled by everyone on that train, including the shared services, let's not forget there's other people around and maybe other teams in other arts. And that's why we have preparation time or pre planned meeting, whatever it is. So are we really sure that we have product innovation? And if you look on the new big picture in safe, it's about product innovation, small increments, future or bigger increments. This should be clear before we dive into the nitty gritty details. And we shouldn't drown in the sheer number of stories or maybe even features, right? Depending on if the R triad already has done a good job showing up with smaller batches, smaller features so that we can create the evidence. And for me this is really important. Is the context clear? Are we talking about the same Product the same evolutionary approach we have. And that's probably part of preparation as well. And I would adjust in general in the future. Breakout session one teams talking five to ten minutes about what's the context, not what feature should we pull and then start working like busy bees. Busy bees are only busy in a good way. Collecting the right stuff if you know where it is. You can fly around and use your energy, but you're not contributing to the overall beehive.

Ali Hajou: 33:52

Yeah, yeah. How about you? How about you, Nico? What would be sort of your practical, let's say suggestion that from now on actually are always implementing your BI platform.

Niko Kaintantzis: 34:04

Yeah, I just thought if it's. If it's dangerous what we are saying and doing at the moment because some people will misunderstand it and start adjusting like wild and yeah, wrong adjusting. Something like that. What I always say to the people is try to adjust the agenda on the culture circumstances you have. But I also got the feedback a year after for somebody who coached the train. I teach the SPCs and told me, oh, they get rid of this and this and this wasn't the idea of adjustment to get rid part of it. The first thing before you adjust, try to understand what's in the boxes that SAFE gave you. There is a meaning behind of it. So if you skip them, you have a good reason why you skip them. Not just. I was in a training with Nico and he said adjust the culture things. One adjustment I'm making is how long some blocks are and when does the PI planning starts. Because what I've seen in the States is that people usually get flight in the day before they go to a hotel, there is no breakfast. They starting the day with the vision and eating breakfast together. That's not the same in Switzerland. In Switzerland the people have eaten already. They maybe arrive with a coffee cup at the PI planning but they don't need the scrambled eggs and porridge and whatever they have already eaten. So this one hour vision thing doesn't really work in Switzerland you can try to make it more interesting, but normally yeah, it's just boring.

Niko Kaintantzis: And because if you start already later, because people have to travel by bus, by train and bus and trains work in Switzerland, by the way. Well, well. And people coming from the mountains, they have to take the first bus. They will not be able to arrive at 8 o'clock in Bel, when they live somewhere in the mountains it will be 9: 35:33

00. So you lost already one hour. So you have to adjust some things but stick on the boxes you need this vision thing because it's a huge motivation as an RTE or as an SPC coach of the rte, try to convince the C level person, the business owner, to make a great motivation speak. But it's not the same like in the States. In the States I witnessed, that's like the Oprah Winfield show.

Niko Kaintantzis: 36:16

It's like, and you're the best friend because of that and you get the car and you get this and people are always cheering and it's a great first half day. But the same thing in Switzerland, our witnesses is after the half day having only speeches and the PM is saying something, the artist saying something, and then you go to lunch, you come back and people are just sitting and not able to start working. So you have to do some adjustments depending on the culture. Because Swiss people don't like to sit long and listen. They just want to go to action fast. But still take in mind what the boxes mean, that people stay motivated.

Ali Hajou: 36:50

So if I can reword it a little bit, Nico, does that mean that we would like to have more preparation from the SBC involved, from the leadership involved, to condense things as much as possible, but less preparation or at least be careful with preparation for the teams and engineers and team members? Is that what you mean?

Niko Kaintantzis: 37:18

Exactly. Because preparation has for me several dimensions. If you go back to season one and dimensions, one thing is the content thing and I think this one shouldn't be over prepared. But the speeches should be rehearsed again and should be made clear. It's not just you take some PowerPoints you found somewhere and just say blah. It really has to be sharp on the point. And this needs preparation, it needs a rehearsal. Also, if I go to a different direction now, the preparation of the PI planning also has some infrastructure. Preparation, buying coffee machines, organizing coffee machine, organizing lunch, organizing monitors, organizing WI fi, organizing paper boards, whatever. This is also something you should prepare, not just go to a room and say, oh, there are no monitors here. Oh, that's a pity. Oh, we have no Internet connection. Oh, that's a pity. So some kind of preparation is really needed. I don't like the content over prepared, but I like the speeches prepared and I like the like also the room prepared because there are hundreds, 50 people there. You cannot just go in a room and say, oh, let's see what's happened. So there's a different kind of operation and that I'm insist to be prepared.

Ali Hajou: 38:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stephan Neck: 38:28

And for me that. Nico, you're sorry, Ali. Nico, you're triggering something that I use sometimes based on the context preparation of the art triad of the shared services. I also ask them what is your first action or what are your actions and guidance during breakout session one. And some look at me and say, I'm just wandering around and listening to the teams and say, no. Based on your context, you're presenting perhaps a big bunch of features that are crucial, who is affected and who gets some guidance. And that's a trigger also to adapt, adjust the agenda. Even in a breakout session, it's not only a just big time block where you have the coach sinks. It might be that after coach think one or two, you gather and collect some of the teams together for three minutes where an architect sets the tone and says, now let's talk and plan together those two to three features. So giving guidance and showing it in the agenda as well is crucial. So on the fly, adapting the agenda is an other capability. RTE and the R triad and even the business owners should learn to master over the time because as Nico says, right. Magic happens only if you master the content, if you master structural elements. And then it's the screenplay and it's about the actors on the stage. And for me that's a huge difference between a basic train and a train who is really now evolving over the time and who is initiating that, who is a catalyst for that. That's us as change agents.

Ali Hajou: 40:22

So in a way you're making sure that the, I don't know, outer boundaries of API planning. So the structure is super robust so that it allows the flexibility. Yes, the, you know, innovation, new ideas, the ad hoc connections to happen within the PI planning.

Stephan Neck: 40:47

Exactly. Probably not the first PI planning, but from second, third on, let's use it in a wise way.

Ali Hajou: 40:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I have the same. I've embracing the little bit of chaos within the PI planning. And I think by now companies that use PI planning, they've already been using PI planning for a very long time. So I've been using something that is called like a little free online tool called Chronograph IO, which is fantastic. It's a distributed timer, which basically means. Yeah, you know, Google it. You know, if the RTE or the SPC sets a central timer, then you can share a link to anyone to see the exact timer. So that means during breakout for scrum of Scrums, you can make a sort of a countdown. People are always, let's say they know when to return back to, you know, to the plenary room or when to join a scrum of scrums so that you know, you have the outer boundaries and then what happens within the time box, you know, that's completely sort of up to them as long as they maintain sort of the how. Nico mentioned the concept behind PI planning.

Niko Kaintantzis: 42:09

I see something on our Miro board. Mark put a picture of the PI planning, how he does it and also how he introduced it in the oh come on. Safe City simulation he wrote. And I see one thing I also like to adjust is the team breakouts in his case start before lunch. That's something I also do in Switzerland. I let people work before they're going to dine or lunch. It's also a cool thing. I don't know how we can share it or. Yeah, or just Google for Safe City. You see the agenda, how Mark is proposing it and the official timing of safe. And I see something similar. It starts at nine and it does the team breakouts before lunch. And that's something that works well. And I see thumbs up from Stephan that works well, at least in our area. Our area means Switzerland, Germany, Austria. In my case, I think Stephan has similar experience.

Ali Hajou: 43:02

I do having management reviewed until 9pm if needed.

Stephan Neck: 43:09

It's an open end, right?

Ali Hajou: 43:12

Yeah. No, very good. Thanks a lot for sharing your tips and tricks, gentlemen. Which brings us, I think to sort of the next section of our podcast, which is maybe my favorite because this is where all of those ideas that I don't know where they come from, but Nico comes up every time with like this completely different way of viewing something that's actually very serious, the so called jiggles. So the question is.

Niko Kaintantzis: 43:49

Exactly, Sorry, let's. Let's activate some other parts of the brain. So I realize PI planning has really many ingredients. And then I thought, okay, imagine PI planning is a pizza. Which ingredient would you like to be to make the pizza perfect? And why?

Ali Hajou: 44:06

And why? Stephan, you want to start?

Stephan Neck: 44:10

Yeah, let me stop because it's. What I wrote down is probably what we all discussed so far, right? It's all about the base, it's about the dough. I've seen so many pizzas in my life that wasn't a pizza. It looked nice the first bite. No, no, it's not a pizza, right? It's. It's something else. And if you ask an Italian mama what it is about the pizza, it's about not even the dough, it's about the flour. If the flour is not right, you don't get a good dough. You don't get a good pizza. So why did I put this one in? No distractions with or by garnishments. And you can be distracted in PI planning so fast in a huge way. And you miss the target on day one, you miss the target on day two, or if you shorten it down, you just miss it. Right. We've done PI plating. Hooray, we're safe. No, we're not. It's not a pizza.

Niko Kaintantzis: 45:09

Talking about not a pizza. I thought while trying to answering this question I put out myself is I would choose the cherry on the pizza Hawaii, which is not really a pizza for some people. Why? Because nobody will expect it on the first guess. But it's some kind of important. It's some kind of changes something or it's important for that kind of flavor. So really, I've chosen something exotic. And sometimes you need this exotic because it makes sense for your context. That's why it's the cherry on the top of the pizza rye.

Stephan Neck: 45:42

And I see. And I see. We've talked about the dough. We talked about the cherry on the pizza. Ali, yours is interesting. Which makes a pizza, I think.

Ali Hajou: 45:54

I think. I think Nico just upsets an entire nation. An entire nation of Italy. We're talking about pizza. Why? But maybe I can soften the blow a little bit, because if Pipeline was a pizza, which ingredient would make a perfect pizza? In my opinion, I would add, you know, quite a whole bunch of predefined slices of creamy mozzarella. One, because mozzarella is fantastic, and you can't have enough of it. Second, you know, if it's. If you have. If you have some predefined slices of mozzarella, you could always distribute them as you would like. So you could still play. But you have your mozzarella at least, and it's not too much, but yeah, at least you have your mozzarella sort of pretty to fight. And so the. The. The parallel or the how to go analogy that I'm making here is define some templates up front, and then you can still play around. You can still go left, right. And, you know, fill one half pizza completely full of mozzarella, and the other one, you know, just with the tomato sauce completely, fine, but have your mozzarella ready. It just. Yeah. At least it at least guarantees, to a certain extent, a certain outcome. That's how I would like to. How I would like to formulate that. So we've been talking about trying to make PI planning more effective. The difficulty of this adjustment trap. Yes, we can adjust but there's. It's also quite an easy statement to make. You know, like, how about we adjust things too fast? We talked about how to prepare, or maybe not over prepare. We talked about how to make the most perfect pizza and therefore also learn how to do that for PI planning. So if we sort of summarize all of this into just one key takeaway, what key takeaway would that be, Stephan.

Stephan Neck: 48:09

For me, it's simple. Do your chores. So the mission and the content takes center stage. Like you said, Ali templates, good preparation. Like you said, Nico, sometimes it needs a little bit more. A bit of blood, sweat and tears. Just do it. It's not seen, but then it really pays in what happens on the center stage over those two days in PR planning. That's my key takeaway.

Ali Hajou: 48:38

Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I think I have something very similar. I call it templatize the preparation, which basically means just have a, you know, define the end goal per. Per team breakout, which would be then the template, but then how to get there. That's completely open. But at least we're moving together even in breakout in parallel, we're moving together to the same sort of outcome. So, yeah, templatize the preparation. How about you, Nico? One key takeaway.

Niko Kaintantzis: 49:13

I somehow ended up with the Agile manifesto. Whatever I've wrote was always a sentence over this. And at the end I ended with a handle the unexpected over the perfect show. So that's my sentence, which means again, not too much preparation to having a nice show. But yeah, be able to handle the unexpected, which we learned already means some kind of preparation. So that's my sentence.

Ali Hajou: 49:40

All right, thank you so much. Well, in talking about preparation, Nico, you're going to prepare the next episode. Next week with our next episode of SPC Unleashed will be all about how to become a better LPM coach. Indeed. Hosted by the one and only Nico. So I'd like to thank all of you to with sharing your ideas, your experiences, and also your pitfalls. I would like to share. I would like to thank Mark, who has been here the whole time, sort of managing the podcast in the background, even though he's also managing probably a box of tissues and using them up in record time. I really hope that you feel better soon, Mark. And I would like to thank the audience, whomever is who tuned in to watch, listen, experience this podcast. Thanks a lot for being here. We're going to see you in the next one. I'd like to say peace out.