The progress being made toward
the program increment timebox.
As RTE- what does the PI Burn-
down Chart show?
As RTE, why would I care about a
Pareto Analysis?
At the end of each Iteration, the
RTE collects and aggregates the
agreed upon ART metrics to....
DevOps and Release on Demand
is the responsibility of Who?
Do NFR's occur in every
Backlog? True or False
Shows aggregated amount of
work (story points) to Iterations
within the PI
The Pareto Chart is an output of the Fishbone effort,
where Agile team(s) list all root causes statistically
on a chart (X axis) and vote for the highest causes
(y-axis). This is what is meant by the 80/20 rule or
Pareto (meaning that 20% of the root causes will
likely cause 80% of the problems). (hint: check it out
some more and really understand how you as RTE
can facilitate this)
Better understand PI progress
and ART health; Continuous
Integration; Lean Flow
accelerates delivery
All, shared responsibility
True. NFR's are associated with all backlogs
in SAFe. From the Team Backlog, up to the
Program Backlog and then to the Solution
backlog and even up to the Portfolio
backlog (keep this in mind). As RTE this is
important as it impacts the flow of the ART,
or Solution Train if multiple ARTs

During PI Planning the teams
produce a PI Plan. What is the
aim of that deliverable?
Funny comparison: If you're a
great RTE, what other 2 jobs
could you do that will be in high
demand?
How can the RTE support
Decentralized Decision-making?
How do you prepare & facilitate
for large DISTRIBUTED team in PI
Planning where large time zone
difference occur?
How is scoring assigned by
teams once Risks and
Dependencies are resolved?
1. Current capacity and load for
each iteration
2. Draft PI objectives
3. Identified Risks and
Impediments
Wedding planner!! and a Football
performance coach, edging the
team ever forward.
Empower knowledge workers to
manage the dependencies with
other teams
Hold the PI event over 2.5-3 days,
allowing for overlapping hours.
You must honour team culture
and people.
Confidence vote (hint 1-5 fingers) done
initially on their own team PI plan......then
again in the wider PI audience
"Given what you now know, how
confident are you that we as a team can
deliver on this plan together?"
 How is scoring assigned to ART Business Owners assign a
Business Value chart for Agile value between 1-10 in the various
teams, when they show the PI Team breakout rooms. Note the
Objectives? BO's are walking the rooms

How long is the Daily session? 15 min

How long is the Inspect & Adapt

0.5 day
(I &A) session?

How long is the main PI Event? 2 days

How long is the PI event for

Distributed Teams (different Time 2.5-3 days
zones)
 How long is the PO Synch
30-60min
session?

How long is the Scrum of Scrum

30 min
session?

How long is the System Demo? 2 hours

PIs are typically 8 - 12 weeks long.

How many iterations does one The most common pattern for a
Program Increment (PI) have in PI is four development Iterations,
SAFe followed by one Innovation and
Planning (IP) Iteration

If a team's vote on the

confidence level is high enough
ART Plan
the aggregate set of objectives
becomes
In order to evolve as a Leader in
SAFe, what practices can the RTE
recommend?
In what way is a Value stream
map different than a Process
flow?
List 3 types of meetings held, in
which ART representatives, come
together regularly to assess the
progress of PI Objectives
Metrics: What does the
Cumulative Flow Diagram
provide?
Metrics: What does the PI Burn-
Down chart provide?
Encourage personal
development
A value stream map measures the
FLOW OF VALUE....and identifies
bottlenecks for improvement
SoS, PO Synch, ART Synch
It shows the amount of work in the
various Kanban states (columns
such as Funnel, Analyzing etc).
One quickly can view any
bottlenecks in througput, Lead
times and WIP in the system
Shows the amount of work completed
and total work remaining in that PI
timebox. think of a visual Glide-slope
moving down. There is an X and Y axis
(story points vs Iterations) - Nice for
showing any scope creep.

Metrics: What does the Program
Predictability Measure do?
Name 3 assessment used in PI
Execution? (hint think what's in
the toolkit)
Name 3 tools to use in Problem
Solving?
on (DAY 1) PI event , what
outcomes can we expect the
Agile team breakout sessions to
produce?
The Program Board will focus on
what?
It captures actual business objectives
achieved vs planned business value in a
visual tabular manner. - It measures all
PIs at one axis and progress to
objectives on the other axis. It reflects
ALL teams variances to meeting program
objectives.
1. Agile Product Delivery Self
assessment
2. Team and Technical Agility
Self-Assessment
3. SAFe DevOps Health Radar
Ishikawa diagrams
The 5 Why's
Pareto Analysis
Create PI plan for ALL their
iterations; write DRAFT PI
objectives and identify risks and
impediments
Feature delivery; Team
dependencies & Milestones
(note: Program Board is also then
used during PI planning and after
it as well - its the visual board)

Release Train Engineer (RTE)?
The RTE is a servant leader who
displays which two actions or
behaviors?
RTEs collaborate to ensure
strategy alignment with?
Situational Question: What could
you typically expect after being
in an RTE role, say after say 1
month?
Situation Question: During PI planning,
the RTE sees the excitement of the team
quickly decline as Product Management
starts making sudden changes to
Priorities - including the Top 10 Features
- in the Program Backlog! What do you
think is the cause?
The RTE facilitates Agile Release
Train processes and execution.
The RTE escalate impediments,
helps manage risk, helps ensure
value delivery, and drives
continuous improvement.
1. Creates an environment of
mutual influence
2. Listens and supports teams in
problem identification and
decision-making
System Architect/Engineering
and Product and Solution
Management
It's a personal journey, when I joined, the focus was within the
Scrum level, the team level, while jumping into the SAFe
framework and getting ready for the PI planning event, getting
up on stage in front of many people and building the program
boards & objectives. It did not take long until we had a team of
excellent Scrum masters and a community of practice, on top of
our Agile Comm of Practice. And now after many PI events later,
our challenges are still there in many forms, but everyone can
now feel the change as we drive value down the ART and what
we now call the new normal
1. Lack of Training, and;
2. Preparation for PI Planing
Situation Question: The RTE has recently facilitated a
session to bring people from different teams d. Norming (why: the team has
together on the ART to discuss updating Engineering
practices. What stage is the team likely in?
likely already establish internal
a. Teaming agreement about their roles and
b. Storming
c. Forming responsibilities, individuals are
d. Norming
e. Virtual
adapting to it)

The Teams DRAFT plan review consists

of which three items at the end of the 1st
DAY of the PI planning event, (choose 3) Risks and Impediments; Capacity
a. Risks and Impediments and Load Estimates and Draft PI
b. Capacity and Load Estimates Objectives
c. Agile team assessment
d. Draft PI Objectives

The Work in Progress (WIP) limits are

What are Kanban WIP Limits?
(hint: think of the visual board
and sticky notes)
displayed above each column. there are
limits how many cards are in each column.
They adjust demand to capacity and hep the
flow through the board. The implementation
of WIP limits allows you to complete single
work items faster, by helping your team to
focus only on current tasks.

For me, an RTE is a Scrum master at Program level; a

Principle Scrum master if you ask me. Someone who can
look at all the different Scrum teams that compose an
ART and is able to track and coordinate all
What are my personal dependencies, risks, goals and features that compose it.

Observations on being a RTE?
But more than that - The RTE should champion the Agile
culture and promote it through the Scrum masters while
enforces a second layer of communication and
relationships between team members, Scrum masters,
Product owners and Stakeholders.

Non-Functional Requirements define system

attributes such as security, reliability, performance,
maintainability, scalability, and usability. They serve as
constraints or restrictions on the design of the system
What are NFR's? across the different backlogs.

Proper definition and implementation of NFRs is

critical
 PI System Demo; Quantitative
What are the 3 parts of Inspect &
Measurement ; Problem Solving
Adapt?
workshop

The schedule is fixed, new system

What are the common principles
that ARTs operate on?
increments every two weeks, the PI timebox
is fixed, the train has a known velocity, there
are Agile Team, Dedicated people, Face-to-
face PI Planning, Innovation and Planning
(IP) iteration in the PI, Inspect and Adapt
(I&A) is held, and they Develop on Cadence.
Release on Demand

What are the three key items

Dependencies, Features delivery
communicated on the Program
dates, Milestones
Board?

What are two purposes of a To Network ; Share Knowledge

Community of Practice (CoP)? and Skills

What are two ways Program Risk

can be Categorized? (choose two)
a. Reliable
Owned, Resolved
b. Owned
c. Leaning out
d. Resolved
 A guard band (buffer) for
estimating and a dedicated time
What does the IP iterations
for PI planning, innovation,
provide to an ART?
continuing education, and
infrastructure work

What does the Program

Program Performance &
Predictability Measure provide as
Reliability
an indicator?

What does the RTE coach

Lean-Agile practices and
leaders, teams, and Scrum
mindsets
Masters in?

Help quantify overall Lean-Agile

What do the 3 self assessments
journey of the ART using the
accomplish in SAFe (PI
collective intelligence on the
Execution)?
train

What do we call multiple ARTs all

Solution Train
serving a common vision?

What is a a Scaled definition of
Done? (DoD)
What is the "5 Why's" approach?
What is the format of the PI
Objectives developed by Teams?
What is the Inspect and Adapt
(I&A) workshop?
What is the term Alignment in
SAFe?
The continuous development of
incremental system functionality requires
a scaled DoD. (note: read section 5.5 of
Scaled Agile training notes)
my observation is that there is always
confusion about what Done is Done
means - please read more on this!
It's a proven problem-solving method, used to explore cause-and-
effect relationships underlying a specific problem. You start off by
asking a simple why (example)
"We can't seem to implement SSO for our SaaS app" to which you ask
Why? "We need specific code from our internal IT team to embed
into our SaaS software" and again Why? "Well, we haven't really had
much response back from our IT department? They said it s easy
enough to do it ourselves" Why? "Well, we believed them and now t
seems we need more time to get the teams together!" Why....."I
haven't setup enough time between our supplier and IT Security SSO
department to test it out" and finally "John, can you please stop ask me
all these Whys." I now know what the problem is I need to solve
S.M.A.R.T.
A larger, cadence-based
opportunity for the ART to come
together to address the systemic
impediments they're facing
Alignment must rely on the Enterprise
business objectives. It starts with the strategy
and investment decisions at the Portfolio
level and is reflected in Strategic Themes,
Portfolio Vision, and the Portfolio Backlog. In
turn, this informs the Vision, Roadmap, and
the backlogs at all levels of SAFe.

What periodic synchronization
meetings does the RTE facilitate?
What SAFe principle is being
applied when a RTE treats
suppiers as Partners?
What's an ANTI-PATTERN, for an
RTE, facilitating a Scrum of
Scrum?
What's an ART Synch?
What's one way to secure
Stakeholder commitment to the
ART?
ART sync at the Program Level
and the value stream sync for
Solution Trains
Apply Systems Thinking
Reviewing Individual team
Performance
Sometimes the Scrum of Scrum meeting and
PO Synch meeting can be combined and
handled together. Remember now that both
SoS and PO Synch truly keep things at a
program-level conversation. So now that
said, as denominator... we can actually
combine SOS and POPM Synch ... SAFe
calls this the ART Synch
Have them attend the Program
Increment (PI) event
 What's the best way for the RTE
to show progress in the current Use a System Demo
PI to Management?

What's the best way for the RTE

to support teams having
challenges with problem By listening to the Team
identification and decision
making?

What's the Best way to foster flow

of value, innovation and apply Implement the Lean Portfolio
Lean Budgeting in the core Competency
enterprise?

What's the duration of a

2 weeks
Iteration?

What's the duration of an ART? 8-12 weeks

 Whats the duration of an ART
1 hour
Synch? (Think carefully)

System Demo (hint: make sure

What's the only true OBJECTIVE you know difference between a
measure of an ART? Solution demo and System
demo)

5-11 people (all cross functional,

What's the size of an Agile team?
they build, design test, deploy)

50-125+ people (virtual

What's the size of an ART?
organization)

What two items should be kept under

VERSION control? (choose two)
a. SAFe tool
b. Test data
Test data; Configuration Items
c. PI objectives
d. Configuration items
 What types of potential
Risks and dependencies; escalate
bottlenecks does the RTE help
and track impediments
manage, track and escalate?

Which activity takes place during

Feature deliveries dependencies
Team Breakout #2 on the second
visualized; / SMART PI objectives
day of Program Increment (PI)
developed
Planning?

Which primary role should

emphasize LIFELONG- Lean Agile Leaders
LEARNING?

The RTE or PO can facilitate this

Which role facilitates the PO event for Product Owners or
Synch? Product Management. (hint:
occurs weekly or as needed)

RTE (done weekly) - hint: The SoS

helps coordinate the
Which role facilitates the Scum of
dependencies of the ARTs and
Scrum meeting?
provides visibility into progress
and impediments
 Which tool can the RTE use to
Kanban systems
visualize the flow of value?

Which Tool is useful in facilitating

Program Board
Scrum of Scrum meetings?

1. Distribute the PI planning

Which two actions must the RTE
Agenda to Agile teams
take when facilitating the PI
2. Ensure all Audio/Visuals are
planning event? (choose two)
setup correctly

Which two statements describe Single voice for customer and

the responsibilities of the Product stakeholders, and to own and
Owner? manage team backlog

Who's responsible for the PI

event logistics and cascading the RTE
Agenda?

Who was Charles Kettering and
why's he brought up in SAFe?
Why are Kanban Boards useful?
Why do RTE's love shopping?
Why is a Fishbone diagram so
important to an ART?
Well, he stated that "A problem well defined is a
problem half solved" -
He was interestingly enough, an American inventor, held
186 patents, and headed up General Motors back in the
day. He knew alot about problems and ways to solve
them. Given the SAFe mindset, we can learn from
people that know how to solve problems. As an RTE you
will be crucial to facilitate problem solving sessions.
Helps visualize the flow of work of Features
& Enablers through the ART. Helps with PI
planning and of course, with ongoing PI
progress. Its really great for SoS, PO Synch
and ART Synch sessions...and visually great
for problem solving. The entire ART can see
whats going on
As RTE you need to plan events very carefully. You cant say, Oh
my, we dont have any "Post-It stickies". So plan:
a. Post-Its, (multi-colors)
b. Audio visual equipment - all rooms
c. Red thread for dependencies in PI Planning
d. Markers
e. Paper roll, Boards
f. Masking tape, Scissors
g. Digital tool for capturing data
h. Cell numbers of all ScrumMasters (text them for SoS
meetings)
(Also known as Cause and Effect Diagram, Fishbone
Diagram, Ishikawa Diagram) it allows Agile teams to
conduct problem solving simulation , you agree on the
problem to solve, apply root causes to that problem,
then identify root causes - restate the problem again
and out of this allows team to then brainstorm solutions -
the result is fantastic as that output goes into improving
the Backlog list (long winded answer, I recommend
some study on how to use it)