More on Agile Analysis: can it be used at programme level?

Once again, I find myself working with an organisation that is trying to implement Agile...

Once again, I find myself in the position where the Story Pot does not exist...

Once again, I am given the opportunity to use, improve/experiment with the Agile Analysis concepts that I keep coming back to.

At a recent industry event, I spoke of using Agile Analysis for better Programme Management, with the direct result of enabling companies to implement Business Strategies faster and more effectively.

The presentation I used at the event mentioned above can be found here.

In the meantime, how good is it for me to say that Agile Analysis can enhance the programme decision making process if I don't use it myself?

So, here it is: my current assignment is to help a customer deliver a large programme of change before August. In a month and a half, we have managed to produce all the stories for the programme (8 projects), ran initial planning games for each and collected enough estimates that we have put in a larger Programme Story Pot.

In the meantime, we have started development on one of the projects of the project with a typical team and measured the velocity of a subset of the overall team.

Last week, we all gathered in front of an empty Programme board, and I handed over some Programme Cards (with project names, project value and estimates).

We had our first Programme Planning Game! And it was a great experience.

Here is a pic of the board after 1 hour of PPG.



That was just a warm up, some sort of education session for the IT team: it allowed everyone who took part to understand what and why we had been producing for the last few weeks... Later on this week, we will re-run the same PPG with the Business, our customers, and THEY will play with the cards.

If you are interested in the experiment, keep coming back, I will be talking about this some more I am sure.