Iteration Goals

Clarity adorns profound thoughts.

—Luc de Clapiers

Iteration Goals are a high-level summary of the business and technical goals that the Agile Team agrees to accomplish in an Iteration. They are vital to coordinating an Agile Release Train (ART) as a self-organizing, self-managing team of teams.

Iteration goals provide the following benefits:

• They align the team members and the Product Owner to the mission.

• They align the people to the Program Increment (PI) Objectives.

• They provide context for understanding and addressing cross-team dependencies.

Whether the teams apply Scrum or Kanban, iteration goals give program stakeholders, management, and Agile teams a shared language for maintaining alignment, managing dependencies, and making necessary adjustments during the execution of the program increment.

Details

As described in the Iteration Planning chapter, the planning process produces three outputs:

• The Iteration backlog, consisting of the Stories committed to the iteration

• A statement of iteration goals, as shown in Figure 1

  

  The note is titled Iteration Goals and lists the following: 1. Finalize last name search and first name morphology, 2. Index 80 percent of remaining data, 3. Other Stories. The two points under Other Stories are: Establish search replication validation protocol and Refactor artifact dictionary schema.

  Figure 1. One team’s iteration goals

• A commitment to the work needed to achieve the team’s goals

Iteration goals often reflect the following factors:

• Features, feature slices, or feature aspects, such as research and necessary infrastructure

• Business or technical Milestones

• Architectural, infrastructure, exploration, and compliance activities

• Routine jobs and other things, such as maintenance and documentation

Iteration goals are achieved by completing backlog items, even though it may not be necessary to finish every story to meet the goals. In other words, the goals for the iteration override the concerns related to any particular story. On occasion, it may even be necessary to add new user stories to achieve the iteration’s goals.

Why Iteration Goals?

In the Agile Release Train (ART) context, iteration goals help in understanding and maintaining a larger view of what the team intends to accomplish in each iteration, and what to present in the upcoming System Demo.

Iteration goals support three of the four SAFe Core Values—namely, transparency, alignment, and program execution. Simply committing to complete a set of stories in an iteration is insufficient. Instead, the team must continually review the business value of each iteration, and then be able to communicate it in business terms to the Business Owners, management, and other stakeholders.

Although Kanban teams don’t typically use iterations in the same way that ScrumXP teams do, iteration goals still provide transparency and alignment when they are part of an ART.

Align Team Members to a Common Purpose

The execution of an iteration goes by very quickly. It’s a fast and furious process. Iteration goals help the team and Product Owner reach agreement on the initial business value they intend to deliver, align the team and program PI objectives, and ground everyone in the shared purpose, as summarized in Figure 2.

A note icon representing Iteration Goals is shown at the center. Below it, are a group of icons representing the team, along with a few separate icons for managers. The team and the Iteration Goals are connected by bi-directional arrowheads with a question ‘Alignment?’ beside them. The Iteration Goals also point to the Team PI Objectives, above it. The question ‘Alignment?’ is again asked here.

Figure 2. Iteration goals help align the team to the program PI objectives

Align Teams to Common PI Objectives and Manage Dependencies

Agile teams are not islands of agility, but rather integral parts of the broader Program Level context and purpose. As a result, the intent of upcoming iterations requires communication with other teams and the Release Train Engineer (RTE). Iteration goals facilitate alignment with the program PI objectives. In addition, they provide the necessary context for discovering dependencies and developing a resolution, as shown in Figure 3.

A note icon representing Iteration Objectives is shown at the center. To its top-left is the RTE. Two Iteration Goals are shown below it, and there may be more such Iteration Goals. Hence, after the second goal, there are dots leading to yet another Iteration Goal to the top-right of the PI Objectives. This points to the PI Objectives with a question saying ‘Alignment?’ The two Iteration Goals at the bottom also point to the PI Objectives with a question saying ‘Dependencies?’ Below each Iteration Goal, the team trying to follow it is shown. The team consists of the Dev Team, Product Owner, and Scrum Master, connected to each other in a ring.

Figure 3. Iteration goals align teams and help identify dependencies

Provide Continuous Management Information

Scaling to the program level requires the creation of a leaner, more empowered organization in which management can handle more responsibility, using organization skills to eliminate impediments and drive improvements. However, management cannot and should not relinquish its responsibility to understand what the teams are doing and why they are doing it. Managers are still accountable for the effectiveness of the development organization and the value delivery outcomes. Moreover, aggregating iteration goals for a train provides a simple two-week summary of what’s happening, as depicted in Figure 4.

A note icon representing PI Objectives is shown at the top. It points to its bottom-right to a series of note icons labeled ‘Iteration Goals: for next iteration across teams,’ which in turn points down to New iteration. ‘Iteration that just ended’ points to another set of note icons labeled ‘Iteration Goals: for current iteration across teams,’ to the bottom-left of PI Objectives. This set of goals for the current iteration points to the PI Objectives. The arrows to and from the PI Objectives ask the question ‘Alignment?’ To the left, a group of people representing the Management is shown. This area is bounded by a curve to the left and labeled ‘Full Visibility.’

Figure 4. Iteration goals provide visibility and communication with management

LEARN MORE

[1] Leffingwell, Dean. Agile Software Requirements: Lean Requirements Practices for Teams, Programs, and the Enterprise. Addison-Wesley, 2011.