Capacity Allocation as a Cure for "Inspect and Forget"

By allocating fixed capacity to improvement and transformation tasks and treating them like development tasks, inspect and forget becomes a thing of the past.

The Problem

We often find that after a retrospective or inspect and adapt session, improvement and transformation initiatives are lost, get deprioritized or the Scrum master or RTE doesn’t have the capacity or support to execute the change. This problem is observed on all organizational levels for both large and small improvement initiatives.

The initiative ends up being dropped and the term “inspect and adapt” becomes “inspect and forget” while teams quickly lose interest in joining retrospectives.

The Solution

Capacity allocation usually focuses on the split of technical work into buckets (features, enablers, tech debt, maintenance…).

By agreeing a capacity allocation for transformation or improvement tasks and describing them in a similar fashion to features or enablers, they are treated in the same way – piggy-backing on the existing mechanisms for managing the work.

Advantages

• Improvement features or “Transformers” become a standard part of the process and are handled no differently from features or enablers.

• The process can be applied on every level that capacity allocation is used or needed – from portfolio through to team.

•  Facilitators become “responsible for capacity” in the same way that Product managers and architects are. In many cases, this increases their standing in the PM/SA/RTE triad and aligns the triad’s work.

• Transformation or improvement topics were often “dumped” on the facilitators (STEs, RTEs, Scrum masters…). With, this mechanism, they are no longer left alone with the transformation tasks but have dedicated support from the teams – this reduces their workload.

• The volume of effort placed in transformation and improvement tasks becomes transparent.

• A signal is given to the organization that transformation tasks are not only tolerated, but wanted, and capacity is ring-fenced for them.

• On portfolio and Enterprise level, the LACE and VMO (Value Management Office) become more closely integrated with the rest of the organization.

Considerations

• If capacity allocation is cascaded through the organization, start at the top of the cascade, and ensure all levels understand the new capacity allocation agreements.

•  As always, leadership must show and communicate their support for the process and abide by the capacity allocation agreements – if they break the rules, others will too.

•  Make sure that the associated persons or groups are informed of the new process.

• On higher levels (portfolio and enterprise), the transformer tasks may be more associated with organizational transformation skills and less with team improvements. It is important that the facilitators have the requisite skills.

Compatible to SAFe®

While the concept does extend existing SAFe mechanisms it remains fully compatible.

Simple to implement.

Little or no additional training or workshops are needed. The approach just includes an additional consideration to the existing capacity allocation workshops.

Immediate Impact.

Since transformation topics have a reserved capacity, they are placed directly in the backlogs and planned in sprints and in PIPs meaning that results appear directly in sprint reviews and demos.