Remote PI planning tools

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PI Plannings or Big Room Plannings are a substantial success factor for many companies to plan projects and programs and to involve the involved teams.

The execution of a PI planning requires some organizational skills, as it is important to organize the time as efficiently as possible for all involved and to optimize the event for value creation.

Are the teams, or. If the individual team members are also physically separated, the requirements for tools and communication possibilities increase enormously.

Many of our customers currently have to convert PI planning from a scheduled face-to-face event to a remote working event in a short period of time and therefore ask us about the possibilities to support this technologically. There is no standard recipe that can be applied to all situations. This article focuses on different approaches and refers to some helpful articles around the topic of distributed working.

All SAFe®?

Although PI Planning is a SAFe® discipline, the approaches described are not limited to this framework. The possibility to coordinate work in the team and to have a common working base incl. Creating dependencies and roadmaps is a very common requirement. Every team, respectively. Organization can therefore also customize and extend its appropriate setup to meet its individual needs.

Most companies already have collaboration and teamwork tools in place. As an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner, we put Jira software and Confluence at the center of our consideration. In addition, we present some solutions that can be seamlessly integrated with Jira software, or used completely independently.

Jira Apps for PI Planning

The following list is not exhaustive and focuses on the apps we have already been able to successfully deploy with our clients. Have you discovered an exciting solution for yourself?? We appreciate any feedback and would be happy to add further ideas to the list.

Programs for Jira – Easy Agile

Programs for Jira impresses with its structured design and supports cross-team coordination in a simple and tidy way. Fully integrated with Jira, projects can manage PI roadmaps and view dependencies across product increments (PI). Each team coordinates its work and dependencies to other teams in its team backlog.

Programs can be quickly and easily integrated into Jira and are thus immediately available to the teams.

Easy Agile Programs dependencies on tasks and stories

Easy Agile the vendor of Programs for Jira has created the following article on "How to prepare for distributed PI Planning" at.

Agile Hive – Seibert Media

Agile Hive can be described as a complete solution for your SAFe® approach in Jira. All SAFe® disciplines and hierarchies are supported and made available in Jira. The integration of Confluence and the associated combination of task and knowledge management is also beautifully implemented.

Agile Hive Confluence Integration PI Planning

Peter Weingartner from Seibert Media described in a recent blog the procedure of a PI Planning with Agile Hive:
"Agile Hive: PI Planning in the time of Covid-19"

The latest webinar on the topic: "Remote PI Planning with Agile Hive" has been published

Big Picture – SoftwarePlant

BigPicture is a total project management solution that integrates seamlessly with Jira and supports a full range of activities such as: Portfolio Management, Roadmap, Resource Management, Risk Management, etc.

SAFe® is fully supported, which is why PI plannings are also possible.

Increment Backlog in Big Picture

The vendor SoftwarePlant describes in the blog article "How to do PI planning in Jira with SAFe in mind?", how a PI Planning can be done in the context of BigPicture.

Jira Align – Atlassian

Jira Align is aimed at larger organizations that are driving agile transformation across divisions. All levels from product/project portfolio to delivery team are supported. If you are looking for a complete solution that covers all these aspects, Jira Align will fully support you.

The following blog article from Atlassian summarizes some virtual/remote PI planning best practices and presents solutions using Jira Align:
"Virtual/Remote PI Planning Best Practices and FAQ Table of Contents"

Standalone Apps

The following tools can be used completely detached and in conjunction with Jira software. All tools have integrations to share data and avoid media discontinuity where appropriate.

PI Planning App – Rentouch

Since its inception, the Rentouch team has specialized in optimizing remote work for teams. Their expertise and experience has gone into the PI Planning App, which has allowed teams to successfully perform geographically separated PI planning for quite some time.

The PI Planning App impresses with its ease of use and real-time synchronization. All team members can thus follow all changes live. A "single source of truth" is created. Of course, the integration with Jira software is exciting for us.

Your advantage: You can immediately start using the PI Planning App. The Swiss company Rentouch provides a 30-day trial. Start your Free Trial right here.

The latest video from Rentouch sums up the current situation and explains how the PI Planning App works in 3 minutes: "piplanning app – The Solution for remote SAFe PI Plannings"

Miro used to be called real time board. And the old name says it all. Miro focuses primarily on the general collaboration of distributed teams on a common whiteboard. In addition to the possibilities of PI planning, many other creative approaches are supported, such as.B.: ideation/brainstorming, creative work and design, etc.

PI Planning with Miro

Miro has an integration with Jira, allowing Jira Issues to be managed as cards directly in a whiteboard. Changes are synchronized immediately.

Mural

Mural also primarily addresses remote collaboration and offers many possible applications for distributed teams. Various templates give a good impression of the wide range of applications of Mural, as this project management example shows.

Mural can also be connected to Jira and prevents media discontinuity.

For those who are familiar with the Atlassian Playbook, we would like to point out the Atlassian Playbook Template. The Playbook helps teams to improve continuously. Especially for distributed teams this approach helps to drive the topic forward.

More Remote Work Tips

There are currently countless tips and tricks for dealing with Remote Work everywhere. Therefore, we would like to limit ourselves to a few highlights here:

Atlassian provides many of its products for free to smaller teams. You can find all the info here:
https://www.atlassian.com/remote
Slack enables efficient and targeted conversations. Oh yes, the mailbox is also greatly relieved:
https://slack.com/intl/en-ch/

How can we help?

At Swarmit, we want to help you make distributed work as efficient as possible. We know all the solutions presented from practical experience. In addition, our certified SAFe® Program Consultants (SPC) are familiar with the methodological challenges.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. Suggestions and additions, respectively. We gladly accept reports of experiences. We can also present all the solutions in more detail.

Road trip through California: What to plan ahead?

Since a few days I am back in Germany, the road trip through the western USA is over, and I have time to reflect a bit, look at photos and videos and think about Travel Diaries. But first, let's talk today about the preparations I made for the road trip.

Road trip through California: What to plan ahead? - Road trip through California 1024x683

Generally, when you go on a road trip, you usually have spontaneity and not really planned routes in mind – but unfortunately this is not always possible. Because especially if you want to do a lot, have a limited period of time and want to stay in places where many other tourists want to stay, it is not always possible to book everything spontaneously.

Determine time periods

I knew when we would arrive in San Francisco and when we would fly from Los Angeles to Hawaii – and thus the time period for the road trip was automatically fixed. Together with my friend, I then went through what exactly we want to see, and approximately how long we want to stay where, depending on the sights or tours that we can or want to do from the respective stop. After we put together a (more or less) logical route from these stops, we were able to estimate how it would fit into our set time frame.

Should you book accommodations beforehand?

If you want to be spontaneous on a road trip, it's best to just go for it – we also met people at our first accommodation who did just that. However, with a converted van, in which they also slept, and then partly just several days without shower and so on. That wouldn't really have been an option for us, mainly because we just didn't want to rent a motorhome.

We have inquired and seen directly: just in Las Vegas, partly in LA and in the national parks that we wanted to visit so, you have to book in advance to get safely something that 1.) is in the budget, 2.) is not completely far away from the route and 3.) is not the crappiest motel you can find. In addition, we had to follow two friends we wanted to visit and who were kind enough to accommodate us (thank you again at this point)!). That's why we have booked many things in advance.

The accommodations, which we have booked finally, were a completely multicolored mixture. Partly we slept in Airbnb apartments, sometimes in hotels, sometimes with friends and sometimes in motels. Especially when booking motels, we relied on the reviews of other guests, which you can find on various comparison portals, such as Jahn Reisen. For round trips the website is not optimal, but you can find good offers here – and depending on the destination it can really be worth it. It is also easy to compare the reviews of other travelers as soon as you take a closer look at a hotel or offer. My tip: my friend and I always search on German and Dutch websites, because especially if vacation periods are different, there can be some differences in prices.

My conclusion: it depends!

I would have liked to plan the road trip a little more spontaneously, but especially if you have certain routes and destinations in mind, it is worthwhile to compare and possibly book beforehand. Especially if you want to stay near the national parks in California, you should check the location beforehand – the same goes for cities like Los Angeles. However, you get online usually relatively quickly an insight into how fully booked the hotels in a particular area are about and possibly still decide spontaneously and book nothing in advance.

But especially in California, if you want to travel stress-free and maybe even in the high season, you should definitely book in advance. But also outside the high season (for all of you who are on the road in September like we were) it is worthwhile to look beforehand. Many motels for example are more expensive if you decide to stay there only spontaneously on the spot…

How do you guys feel about? Would you have booked a lot beforehand or just go for it??

Here are the stops of our road trip and the respective accommodations:

A paradise for old women? For adrenaline junkies? Or for wine fans? There are probably few places where everyone can really be happy. Tripsdrill is such a place – just outside Stuttgart.

On this autumn Sunday at 9 a.m., cars are already filling the parking lot quite nicely. Most of them seem not to be here for the first time. The groups of visitors, many of them families, spread out from the entrance in all directions of the adventure park. In the morning you don't have to queue anywhere, free ride on more than a hundred rides.

We start small: spinning giggling in coffee cups, curving in wine buckets through the Merry Vineyard with old vines and letting the centipede hurl us around the "Michaelsberg".

Wine barrel ride Happy Vineyard

Lemberger& Co. from the Michaelsberg Cleebronn

The real Michaelsberg vineyard is located right next to the adventure park. Here grow Wurttemberger grapes such as Trollinger, Lemberger or Muskattrollinger, but also Riesling and Black Riesling. The Riesling berries shine greenish-yellow in the sun; the small dots on the skin make it easy to identify the variety.

Riesling is harvested late in the fall, when sweetness and acidity are best in balance. Already now the berries taste wonderfully sweet and juicy. A few rows of vines further on hang plump trolling grapes, whose color changes from purple to lilac to dark blue.

Part of the philosophy of Tripsdrill is to combine tradition and fun. You can experience this especially well in and around the Vinarium, where the wine history of the Zabergau comes alive. The open-air museum in the "Frohlicher Weinberg" with its reconstructed sheds is especially beautiful.

Michaelsberg

In the past, the Fischer family, who founded the adventure park in 1929 and are now the fourth generation to run it, also had their own vineyards in Michaelsberg. The wine is still served in the park gastronomy, but today the good drops come from the Storz winery and from the Cleebronn-Guglingen winegrowers, one of the best winegrowers' cooperatives in Germany. At a wine tasting in the Tripsdrill Vinarium you can see for yourself – with cheese and bread if desired.

Wine tasting in the Tripsdrill Vinarium

We meet employee Peter Notz in the wine cellar, who introduces us to some of the 30 wines and answers our questions with charm and expertise.

Great service: everyone can vary the tasting according to their taste, whether tasting dry or sweet wine. Children with us? They get delicious Dornfelder grape must – guaranteed promille-free. The tasting glass (unfortunately not optimal for tasting) everyone may take home as a souvenir.

Vinarium Tripsdrill

After a short tour through the wine museum (yes, there is also one in the adventure park Tripsdrill) we now head for the big attractions of the park.

With Karacho through the adventure park Tripsdrill

Mammut is the name of the wooden roller coaster, which stands like a work of art in the landscape and can be seen from far away. As slowly as the wagons jerk up the first incline, you could easily underestimate them. But as soon as you reach the top of the hill, you're hurtling down at 80 km/h and around the curves at breakneck speed – including the typical jerks.

Mammoth roller coaster Tripsdrill

On with Karacho – the big roller coaster sister lives up to its name. Loops, screws, catapult launch … I pass and send my companions to the start. Of course they don't miss "the coolest attraction" and afterwards they rave about how smooth the ride was. From zero to one hundred in 1.6 seconds – and much too fast over. But the best is the beginning: Completely unexpectedly, the car races down the road – in the dark.

Coaster fans can rejoice, by the way, the next roller coasters are already being built. Whether this is a family boomerang coaster and a suspended thrill coaster, a newly developed suspended coaster (as relevant forums are currently speculating), is something the park wants to keep secret for a while though.

Flight of fancy Tripsdrill

From homemade spaetzle to Maultaschenburgers

Time for a little break. The choice is plentiful: inn, castle tavern, factory kitchen and more. We decide on the Maultaschenburger in the Vespergarten, which was warmly recommended to us – ideal for the small hunger.

The food prices are family-friendly overall, no matter if down-to-earth home cooking or currywurst, fries and co. – Culinary everyone finds something suitable as well. Up to the hearty stop in the inn to the Altweibermuhle. There, where it all began.

As early as 1835, Friedrich Adam Fischer opened a garden restaurant at the foot of the Michaelsberg mountain. To this day, the food is cooked fresh every day, using regional ingredients as much as possible. Even the typical Swabian spaetzle are made by hand.

Tripsdrill white-water ride Mill water ride Tripsdrill Puffing Trullaner

Off into the forest: Wildparadies Tripsdrill

If you want to escape the hustle and bustle, the Schnaufender Trullaner takes you to Wildparadies Tripsdrill in just a few minutes or a ten-minute walk. More than 50 animal species live on the 47-hectare site, including wolves and bears. If you want, you can also stay overnight at the nature resort – in the Tripsdrill tree house or in the cozy shepherd's caravan.

Where the funny name Tripsdrill comes from, no one can really say. The most beautiful version: According to linguists, this describes a place that doesn't exist at all. A place where curious things happen.

Tripsdrill Adventure Park Old wives mill Tripdrill

Speaking of the old mill, the historical core of Tripsdrill. The only promise that Tripsdrill does not keep: According to an old Swabian folk belief, women slip out of the mill a lot younger than they climb in. I tried it out (like probably every visitor) – it didn't work out. Nevertheless I had more than enough fun.