5 Ways to Spice Up Your Distributed PI Planning Session
How to foster increased collaboration during remote or virtual Big Room Planning events
There is almost a tangible energy and excitement in the room during a great PI Planning event, that can be difficult to replicate in a distributed setting, which can often feel comparatively lacklustre. Further signs of poorly facilitated online PI Planning are a lack of diverse voices (i.e. only hearing from Product Owners or Scrum Masters and not other team members), a decrease in collaboration and buy-in from the teams (i.e. the people actually doing the work), and a plan and set of objectives that nobody really commits to.
Below are 5 tips to help Release Train Engineers (RTEs) or facilitators of distributed PI Planning create more collaborative and enjoyable events with better outcomes.
01. Offer alternative ways to be heard
As a participant finding an opportunity to talk during a large-group meeting can be difficult, and if there are dozens of attendees (or more) it is probably not even possible to hear from each person individually.
Fortunately, there are online tools such as Mentimeter and Kahoot! which help give people an opportunity to participate and share their views by offering interactive questions, polls, quizzes, etc.
One of my favourite methods to gather live feedback is to generate a Word Cloud using Mentimeter. This creates a quick visual representation of a group’s collective thoughts (see screenshot below).
Miro is a popular online collaborative whiteboard, that has built-in voting functionality. It’s a simple and effective way to facilitate confidence votes (see screenshot below).
Please note that we should not only hear from the team members via these tools. Instead, use them to start conversations. Highlight interesting comments in the word cloud or outliers in the confidence vote and invite people to elaborate or ask questions.
02. Use check-ins to see how people are doing
Check-ins are a technique popular with school teachers delivering online classes. I think they are also great for remote large-scale events. I like using them as:
- It is a light and fun way to start a session (it is a good icebreaker)
- It is a good way to help familiarize your participants with tools early in the session
- It’s a great way to get everyone to participate immediately
- It helps create situational awareness
- It creates a focus on people and empathy
I tend to use animal-themed check-ins as most people seem to enjoy them and they are inclusive.
On first appearance, it may seem silly or frivolous, but I’ve learned valuable information during check-ins that directly affect the day’s work and interactions, such as “I’m distracted, as we have a live issue I need to resolve” or “I’m a bit stressed because my internet connection is bad today”. Again, these are good for starting conversations!
03. Show your participants respect by scheduling and adhering to reasonable timeboxes
PI Planning is always an intense activity but combined with ‘Zoom fatigue’, multiple time zones, and challenging timeboxes, you have a potential recipe for disaster!
Ensure that frequent breaks are scheduled and respect agreed-on timeboxes, even (or especially) when under pressure. During breaks encourage team members to take a screen break rather than doing work or catching up on their emails.
If your group is distributed across multiple time zones, make sure you reflect this in your schedule and agenda. Try to find a fair compromise for start and end times. If this is not possible consider splitting the event across multiple sessions and schedule specific times for the whole group to synchronize and align. Do not make teams work in the middle of the night, it is not respectful or reasonable, and sleep-deprived people tend not to make the best plans.
Helping groups stick to timeboxes is one of the key responsibilities of the RTE or facilitator. Some video conferencing platforms allow you to embed video backgrounds where you can add a timer. When this is not possible I like to use a technique I learned from Mischief Makers called ‘Human Timer’, which uses a virtual background (with red, amber, and green still images) to indicate to the presenter how much time they have remaining. See below for a link to the original LinkedIn post and instructions on how to replicate this.
04. Introduce some spontaneity
Sometimes hearing from the teams in a set order can make things feel monotonous. Even worse it can create a false order of priority or a situation where the same last team is always rushed. To counteract this you can use a Randomizer Wheel. I’ve found that people enjoy the game-show feel of it and the unpredictability that it brings.
05. Invite participants to turn their cameras-on
People have diverse opinions as to whether cameras-on should be an expectation when working remotely. I try to keep an open mind and not be prescriptive, but have generally found that virtual PI Planning tends to work better when people have their cameras on for the following reasons:
- It helps promote a collaborative environment where attendees are active participants rather than a passive audience
- It improves communication and allows for better sense-making, as you can read facial expressions, body language, etc
- It creates familiarity and makes people more approachable. This is important if teams are to collaborate and coordinate together
- It helps create a sense of connection amongst the group
If this is not common practice at your company (and you think it would be beneficial) then you might start by encouraging this in breakout rooms or other meetings with smaller groups and build from there.
However, it is very important to accept that not everyone will want to have their cameras on for a wide range of valid reasons (which you will often not be aware of), and this does not mean that they will not be an active participant in the event.
Additional resources
Hybrid PI Planning
If you are moving to hybrid PI Planning then check out this article I wrote with Scaled Agile
Or this long-form blog post which I wrote for Miro
PI Planning Template
If you use Miro you can use my custom Miroverse template to facilitate your PI Planning events. It was designed for hybrid events but can be used for distributed events with minimal modifications.
What are your favourite tips and techniques?
I hope that you’ve found these tips useful and that they inspire you to try something new at your next distributed PI Planning event. I’ve found over the last 2+ years that facilitating remote PI Planning is definitely a real challenge and requires considerable preparation and also experimentation.
If you have any favourite techniques, tools, or tips that you’d like to share please leave a comment, I’d love to hear them.
Please feel free to contact me at www.linkedin.com/in/tom-boswell/ or at www.tomboswell.com if you have any questions or feedback, or if you would like to connect with me.
If you want to read more of my articles about SAFe and Scrum please follow me on Medium here https://blog.tomboswell.com and/or subscribe to my newsletter for notifications.
