Disciplined Agile

The Guardrails During the Planning Event

The guardrails are our agreements with each other across the enterprise. In the planning event most roles come together. During the event the agreements of the guardrails coalesce into one set of working agreements.


Promise: Create psychological safety

Psychological safety is very important during planning events. It is critical that people don’t feel pressured into making promises by when they will complete something that others require.


Promise: Accelerate value realization

This is the overlying intent of the planning event – how do we select the most important work to do during the next program increment.


Promise: Collaborate proactively

The planning event is more about collaboration than planning. There are three levels:

  • stakeholders and teams
  • teams to other teams
  • individuals within a team

Promise: Make all work and workflow visible

The program board is a great example of this.


Promise: Increase predictability

Dependency management is a powerful method of avoiding surprises.


Promise: Keep workloads within capacity

Teams need to accept just the amount of work they can do over the program increment.


Promise: Improve Continuously

Challenges across teams and roles is a major cause of delay and extra work in organizations. The event itself may provide an opportunity for improvement but at the least it is an opportunity to set up conversations for the future to improve these types of challenges.