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Agile Release Train (ART)

  • Refers to the group of all agile teams
  • They plan, commit, develop and deploy solutions
  • Total number of people in the whole ART: 50 - 125 people
  • Total number of teams in the whole ART: 5 - 12 teams

ART

  • Members of ART must be cross-functional. Must contain several areas of knowledge

ART Roles

  • Release Train Engineer (RTE)
  • Leader and coach for the ART
  • Facilitate program execution
  • Assist teams
  • Communicate with stakeholders
  • Manage risk
  • Relentless continuous improvement
  • Product Management
  • Building of a product
  • Vision, roadmap, new features
  • Identify customer needs (user centricity)
  • Design thinking
  • System Architecture/Engineering
  • Define the architecture of the system
  • Make sure system is developed as intended
  • Analyze technical tradeoffs
  • Business Owners (Executive)
  • Key stakeholders of the ART
  • Responsibility over the business outcomes
  • Customers
  • Buyers of the value and the solutions created
  • System team
  • Assist in building and maintaining development, integration and testing (e2e)
  • Shared Services
  • Specialists. E.g., data security, DBAs, etc
  • Cannot be dedicated to a specific train

ART Artifacts

  • 4-tier hierarchy of artifacts

  • Feature

  • Chunk of functionality that delivers business value
  • It must fit in a PI
  • Belongs to a single ART
  • Story
  • Short description of a functionality from the perspective of the end user
  • It's divided into
    • user story:functionalities
    • enabler story: exploration, architecture, infrastructure, compliance
  • As a (user role), I want to (activity), so that (business value)
  • INVEST story: Independent. Negotiable. Valuable, Estimable, Small, Testable
  • CCC: Cart (write on the cart the problem), Conversation (details as discussed), Confirmation (acceptance criteria)
  • Task
  • Further detail of stories (optional)

Capability & Features Feature & Stories

ART Events

ART Events

  • Program Increment (PI) is the timebox during which an ART delivers value in the form of tested working software
  • Consist of 8 - 12 weeks period
  • 4 Development iterations
  • 1 Innovation & Planning iteration
  • It's cadence-based (all ARTs share the same date)

PI Planning

  • Everyone must participate

  • 2 days long

  • Facilitation (RTE)

  • Business context and vision (PM)

  • Architectural guidance (System Architect)

  • The outcome of this meeting is

  • PI objectives

    • What can be delivered (prioritization)
    • Priority level (1 to 10)
    • business value (BV), action value (AV) or uncommitted objective
    • SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound

  • Program board

    • Visualize dependencies between the teams
    • Features (blue)
    • Milestone/event/demo (orange)

  • Day 1

  • Business context: presentation by the execution

  • Product/Solution Vision: presentation by the product manager
  • Architecture Vision and development practices: Architecture, common frameworks, etc. Agile tooling, engineering practices. Presentation by the architect.
  • Planning context and lunch: Facilitator explains the planning process
  • Team breakouts: identify risks and impediments. Architect and Product Manager
  • Draft plan review

  • Management review and problem solving

  • Day 2

  • Planning Adjustments

  • Team breakouts
  • Final plan review and lunch
  • Program risks: How to deal with the risks: ROAMed (resolved, owned, accepted, mitigated)
  • PI confidence vote: team and program confidence vote
  • Plan rework if necessary: planning continues until commitment is achieved
  • Planning retrospective and moving forward

Scrum of Scrums

  • Scrums + RTE
  • Visibility of progress, impediments and dependencies on other teams
  • 30-60min timebox + meetafter if necessary
  • If this event is combined with PO sync, it's called ART sync

Product Owner Sync

  • POs + RTE or PM
  • 30-60min timebox
  • Visibility of how well ART is progressing towards the PI objectives
  • If this event is combined with scrum of scrums, it's called ART sync

System Demo

  • Occurs after the completion of every iteration in all teams
  • Conducted by the Product Manager (PM)
  • Integrated view of the new features delivered by the ART
  • Provide the stakeholders a measure of progress within the PI
  • Made for the Business Owners

Prepare for PI Planning

  • Prepare for PI Planning

Inspect & Adapt

  • Happens of the end of each PI
  • Reflect, problem solve, and identify improvement actions
  • The current state of the solution is demonstrated and evaluated by the ART

  • Results in a set of improved backlog items that go to the Program Backlog for the next PI planning

  • Quantitative and qualitative measurement

  • Problem-Solving Workshop: apply root-cause analysis, identify the biggest one using pareto