Sprint and release planning questions

Hi r r,

this is a scrum and not a SAFe Forum. 

Maybe you should take a Scrum Class to understand the basics Scrum, because you use Roles and Events which don't exist in Scrum. Maybe it helps you for SAFe, too.

Scale down, start with pure Scrum and then Scale up with the Framework which you like ;)

Nils

As Nils said this is a forum for scaling with Nexus which uses Scrum as defined by the scrum guide. Both guides are can be found at scrum.org

There is no release planning in Scrum or Nexus. You will always have a potentially releasable increment at the end of a sprint and the product owner will release it whenever it makes sense. 

During spring planning the teams should create a Nexus sprint backlog with all the backlog items and identify as many dependencies as possible. Much of the breakdown and dependency identification must be done during refinement which is an ongoing process during the sprint. During their own sprint planning they will break them down so that they have enough work for the first days of the spring. 

As a product owner, have the rnd or whoever asks for features come to you, who as the sole owner of the product you will choose whether to add them to the backlog at any time. Be careful as I mean the product backlog not the sprint backlog. Then the previous paragraph will happen. 

Important: The PM (you) is not necessarily the PO. It's a totally different role. 

Cheers, 

Thanos 

@Nils and @Athanasios, I respectfully disagree with your comments.  @r r never mentioned SAFe.  All that was asked about was scaled agile framework.  In reality, Nexus is a scaled agile framework so his questions can be answered in relation to Nexus. In fact there are many scaled agile frameworks besides SAFe and Nexus. However, everything you both said at the end of your responses are good advice and @ r r should take that into consideration.  Now for my opinions. 

i work at a company which wants to do agile and use scrum. I also wants to drive it using scaled agile framework . I have a couple questions about release planning  and sprint planning 

My initial reaction to that statement was is a scaled agile framework necessary?  It introduces complexity that may not be required.  That applies to Nexus or SAFe or any other scaled frameworks.  If you don't need to include the complexity in your company to deliver, I suggest you stay away from it.  It may be popular today but it isn't always needed. 

Really the question is As a product manager should I expect rnd to Think on their feet in a 4 or 6 your meeting ? Or they do their homework before ?

As a product manager that understands Scrum, you should know the answer to that question can only be found by discussing all of this with your teams and agreeing on a refinement best practice for your organization. I will suggest that if you are actually valuing and practicing Scrum, you will know that a big premise of it is that you will incrementally deliver and iterate on the problems you are trying to solve.  How do you know ahead of time that your original request is the actual solution that the stakeholders need and want?  

Nexus does not specifically discuss release planning but it does discuss Sprint Planning.  And there are various ways to handle the release planning process in a Scrum environment, all of which is really based on your own company's stakeholder base.  You will need to first work out your iterative delivery of potentially releasable increments before you can even begin to consider how to arrive at the releasable increment process.  And that process won't be covered by Scrum or Nexus because they are frameworks not processes. 

At this time I will point @r r to the Nexus pages (https://www.scrum.org/resources/scaling-scrum)  on this site. Remember that Nexus is an extension of Scrum so you will need to read and understand both the Scrum Guide and the Nexus Guide.  I suggest discussing all of this with your Scrum Masters/Agile Coaches to arrive at the best options for your organization.  It is part of the Scrum Masters/Agile Coaches duties to help the Product Owner and the organization as a whole understand Scrum and how to best interact within the framework.  Every organization will be different and Scrum does not prescribe how you do things. It is a framework that provides some guide rails to help your organization better function in an agile and empirical fashion.