"PI Planning is where the framework meets reality—it’s a test of alignment, collaboration, and leadership." - Stephan Neck

In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, hosts Stephan Neck, Niko Kaintantzis, and Ali Hajou explore one of SAFe's cornerstone activities: PI Planning. The trio leads an engaging discussion about how SPCs can elevate their organizations’ PI Planning sessions from mere rituals to transformative events.

The conversation illuminates the evolving role of SPCs in guiding teams through successful PI Planning while balancing the need for structure, adaptability, and human connection.

Key Highlights:

• PI Planning as a Leadership Opportunity:
  • The hosts emphasize the critical role of SPCs in facilitating alignment, fostering collaboration, and addressing potential bottlenecks before they escalate.
  • Niko describes PI Planning as “a mirror for the organization,” reflecting its culture, communication, and leadership dynamics.
• Preparation is Key:
  • Stephan outlines best practices for pre-PI Planning preparation, such as ensuring backlog readiness, clarifying team goals, and engaging with stakeholders early.
• The Art of Collaboration:
  • Ali discusses how SPCs can act as mediators during the session, ensuring cross-team dependencies are identified and resolved while encouraging open dialogue.
• Adaptability in Action:
  • The trio highlights the importance of remaining flexible when things don’t go as planned, sharing real-world examples where improvisation saved the day.

Practical Advice for SPCs

• Start with Clear Objectives: Define what success looks like for the PI Planning session and align teams around shared goals.
• Focus on Dependencies: Encourage teams to identify and address cross-team dependencies during breakout sessions.
• Create Psychological Safety: Foster an environment where everyone feels comfortable voicing concerns or challenging assumptions.
• Leverage Metrics: Use relevant metrics to track progress and ensure alignment throughout the session.

Conclusion

PI Planning is more than a meeting—it’s a dynamic space where vision becomes actionable, alignment is tested, and SPCs have the opportunity to lead by example. This episode offers practical insights to help SPCs elevate PI Planning from a framework activity to a transformative event.

References

• "Team of Teams" by General Stanley McChrystal
• "The Phoenix Project" by Gene Kim, Kevin Behr, and George Spafford

"A facilitator lights the spark of collaboration, then steps back to let the fire grow" - Stephan Neck

In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, hosts Mark Richards, Niko Kaintantzis, and Stephan Neck delve into the art and science of facilitation—a skill often confused with coaching yet distinct in its purpose and impact.

Mark kicks off with a surprise question, challenging Niko and Stephan to identify the greatest difference between coaching and facilitation. Stephan's response lays the foundation for a rich discussion: facilitation, he suggests, is about sparking action and empowering others to take the lead.

Key Highlights:

• Facilitation as a Catalyst: Stephan describes facilitation as a role that ignites movement and fosters collaboration without imposing control.
• Contrasting Coaching and Facilitation: Niko shares how facilitation emphasizes creating the space for others to solve problems, while coaching often involves guiding individuals to personal insights.
• Practical Techniques: The hosts explore tools and methods for effective facilitation, from structured workshops to adaptive approaches tailored to group dynamics.
• Challenges of Facilitation: Addressing common obstacles, such as resistance or lack of clarity, they offer strategies to maintain focus and drive outcomes.

Insights for SPCs

The episode provides actionable advice for SPCs (SAFe Program Consultants) and other leaders:

• Create Psychological Safety: A safe environment encourages participation and innovation.
• Embrace Neutrality: Effective facilitators prioritize the group's goals over personal opinions.
• Adapt to Context: Every team and challenge is unique; flexibility is key to success.

Conclusion

Facilitation is more than guiding discussions—it's about empowering teams to take ownership of their outcomes. The hosts highlight that the best facilitators enable others to shine, stepping back once momentum is achieved.

References

• Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making: Sam Kaner
• "The Art of Facilitation" by Dale Hunter
• "Facilitation at a Glance!" by Ingrid Bens

“Coaching isn’t about being the answering machine; it’s about giving space for people to find their own answers..” - Niko Kaintantzis.

In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, Nikolaos Kaintantzis, Mark Richards, and Stephan Neck explore coaching—its essence, techniques, and the subtle distinctions between Agile coaching, systemic coaching, consulting, and mentoring. Packed with real-world anecdotes and thought-provoking metaphors, this discussion dives into what truly makes a great coach.

Key Takeaways:

• The Heart of Coaching: Coaching isn't about giving answers; it's about creating space for others to discover their potential. As Niko states, “You’re not important because you know everything. You’re important because you guide through the process.”
• Trust as a Foundation: Mark emphasizes the critical role of authenticity, vulnerability, and confidentiality in building trust, noting, “If you want trust, you need to be true to yourself.”
• The Balance of Roles: Stephan highlights the fluidity of coaching, comparing it to walking a tightrope—balancing precision, focus, and the right tools while navigating risk and distraction.
• Knowing When to Step Back: All three hosts agree on the importance of stepping into the background to let others shine, whether by switching hats (as Niko practices) or recognizing the right time to offer insights and guidance.
• Practical Tips for Aspiring Coaches: From mastering open questions to maintaining boundaries between professionalism and friendship, the group shares actionable advice for new SPCs to hone their coaching skills.

This episode is a must-listen for SPCs and coaches at all levels looking to deepen their understanding of coaching and inspire true transformation in their organizations.

Tune in now to learn how coaching goes beyond techniques—it’s an art of empowering others.

“Leadership is 'the art of getting people to want to do what must be done' - and this means not just the people who report to them but their peers and those they report to.” - Mark Richards.

In this episode of SPCs Unleashed, Nikolaos Kaintantzis, Mark Richards, and Stephan Neck explore Effective Onboarding of Leadership into SAFe — the essence of pivotal factors and ensuring that leaders not only understand the framework but can also adopt and champion its principles is key to driving long-term transformation.

Key Takeaways:

• The importance of effective leadership: Recognizing that the possibilities of your SAFe implementation are both created and constrained by the leaders who engage with it, and that great SAFe happens when you find a great leader and help them grab hold of the ways SAFe can support them in their intent.
• Key areas for onboarding: Finding the great leaders already present in the organization and helping them amplify their impact by addressing real pain points and challenges.
• Strategies and “The secret sauce”: Build a healthy dialogue between leadership champions and their peers, and help them build the capability of their direct reports as a leadership team to enable them to spend more time focusing up and out.
• Overcoming challenges – No leadership “satire”: Mastering the patience to wait for the right moment and the insight to recognize it.

“Strategy agility isn't about waiting for a crisis. It's about building the muscle to stop, pivot, and adapt before disaster strikes.” - Mark Richards

This episode sees hosts Nikolaos Kaintantzis, Stephan Neck, Mark Richards, and Ali Hajou conclude their exploration of SAFe’s competency framework by focusing on Strategy Agility. It's packed with insightful discussions about market sensing, organizing around value, and the need for continuous adaptation in today’s dynamic business environment.

• The Importance of Market Sensing: Ali shares a compelling story about a small electronics team that identified a market opportunity for emergency power switches. Their close collaboration with customers allowed them to innovate and adapt their strategy quickly based on real-world feedback.
• Strategic Alignment Through Market Signals: Stephan emphasizes that successful strategy agility hinges on sensing the right signals from the market. He advocates for early engagement with teams that handle market research to make informed decisions and keep strategies grounded in actual data.
• Reorganizing Around Value: Niko and Mark dive into the complexities of organizing and reorganizing teams around value streams. Mark cautions against treating reorganization as a one-time event, explaining that successful organizations constantly refine their structures to align with evolving strategies. Niko highlights that this should be seen as an ongoing process, not a major disruptive event.
• Adapting Without a Crisis: Mark and Stephan discuss how organizations often react swiftly in times of crisis, such as during COVID-19, but struggle to maintain that level of focus in normal conditions. They explore how companies can proactively build systems that allow for agile strategic shifts without waiting for external crises to force their hand.
• Advice for Young SPCs: The panel agrees that new SPCs should avoid jumping straight into enterprise-level strategy agility. Instead, they recommend focusing on smaller, more localized changes, such as helping Agile Release Trains (ARTs) adopt market sensing and lean startup techniques before tackling broader organizational strategies.

“You will cross some silos, stretch some rules, but in the end, you work together, have joy, and achieve greatness.” - Nikolaos Kaintantzis

In this penultimate episode of the SPCs Unleashed Competency journey, hosts Mark Richards, Nikolaos (Niko) Kaintantzis, and Stephan Neck dive into the dimension of Lean Business Operations within the SAFe competency model. The trio explores the critical role of leveraging value stream thinking to enhance flow in business operations and product development, emphasizing the symbiotic relationship.

Mark starts the discussion by addressing the often-confused concepts of the Operational Value Stream (OVS) and the Development Value Stream (DVS). He shares his experiences with value stream mapping and the challenges of simplifying these concepts for organizations. Niko brings a unique perspective by likening lean operations to Greek dancing, where collaboration and unity lead to crossing silos and achieving greatness.

Stephan and Niko share their favorite techniques for effective value stream mapping, stressing the importance of involving the right people and focusing on a customer-centric approach. They highlight strategies for extending the flow of conversation beyond technology, including starting from the customer's perspective to identify triggers for change and mapping true value streams.

The conversation delves into the challenges of integrating business and technology perspectives, especially when organizations are accustomed to operating in silos. The hosts emphasize the necessity of a holistic view and mutual understanding to drive innovation and efficiency. They also offer practical advice for SPCs, such as getting help from peers, practicing new tools personally before applying them with clients and focusing on taking actionable steps to address bottlenecks.

The episode concludes with a spirited debate on the most relevant Measure and Grow metric. While opinions differ, the consensus highlights the importance of visualizing bottlenecks and promptly addressing them rather than just identifying issues.

References:

The Lean Machine - Dantar P. Oosterwal
Lean Product and Process Development - Allen C. Ward

“Without consistency and standards none of this works. With too much consistency nothing changes. You have to steer and constantly sense and course-correct.” - Mark Richards

Mark Richards and Niko Kaintantzis join Stephan Neck in this episode with Agile Portfolio Operations from Lean Portfolio Management.

We kick off by sharing our passions: Mark’s thoughts about finding the balance between consistency and standards so that it works, but not too much of it so that nothing changes; Niko’s emphasis on avoiding large solutions by mastering this dimension correctly.

In the first part, we reflect on how to ensure that decentralized ART execution is effectively coordinated across various teams and value streams to maintain alignment with the overall business objectives.
Mark elaborates on the minimum viable level of centralization and finding the value stream with the biggest contribution to an Epic so they can take ownership and lead an effective collaboration. Niko mentions “coordination” as an important element to avoid “false” large solutions, which needs facilitation by an RTE organizing a Pre-Plan meeting.

The second part sparked a discussion about emphasizing “Lean thinking principles” to foster operational excellence and innovation speed. Stephan initiated this part by stating that the speed of innovation is dependent on flow, which requires discipline for sustainable speed and space for innovation. Mark reminds us that "Without standards, there can be no kaizen"—portfolio members have to establish and agree on shared standards. Niko adds that testing business hypotheses with MVPs is crucial for innovation. Mark and Niko mention the human element - working with people and connecting people to find “pockets of excellence.”

The final part dealt with engaging and empowering the LPM function, VMO, LACE, and RTEs to actively support and enhance the value streams. The portfolio's power is to see patterns—it’s necessary to do the chores (in a disciplined way, involving senior management): get data flowing, and pre-work done by small groups of people enables informed insights and incisive actions.

The closing “just one sentence” highlights “When it comes to change, find the balance between sugar and sustainability”, “The portfolio deserves dedicated people” and “Excellence is a quality that people really appreciate because it is so hard to find”.

"If you can start talking to audit, you can find solutions that they will help you reach that nobody else would have thought about" - Mark Richards

In Episode 19, hosted by Stephan Neck, Nikolaos Kaintantzis, Ali Hajou, and Mark Richards, the focus is on Lean Portfolio Management (LPM), specifically Lean Governance. The hosts stress the importance of governance in balancing spending oversight, compliance, and alignment between agile and non-agile teams. They highlight the need for engagement from roles like Value Management Offices (VMOs), business owners, and enterprise architects.

We discuss the challenge of synchronizing agile teams with the broader organization, ensuring vertical integration, and maintaining transparency at high levels. The episode explores the value of simulations, such as Get Kanban, to teach flow and governance to senior leaders. The hosts emphasize the importance of practice fields, visual tools, and fostering environments where new behaviors can be learned.

Mark shares how a simulation game helped a CIO and leadership team better understand and commit to Lean Governance. Niko explains how the power of visualization can be a game-changer, sharing the idea of using a simple magnet to indicate blockers on a board. The episode concludes with discussions on applying these concepts in real-world scenarios, using data for transparency and accountability.

The conversation touches on unfinished work items in portfolios, caution against weaponizing data, and the importance of pattern-based problem-solving. Stephan shares a story highlighting the importance of collaboration between business owners and enterprise architects in lean governance. The hosts wrap up by offering tips for new SPCs, stressing the importance of understanding controls, collaborating with key stakeholders, and treating audits with care to avoid premature conclusions.

References:

• https://getkanban.com/
• https://scaledagileframework.com/value-management-office/

Cast:

Ali Hajou(Moderator)

Niko Kaintantzis

Stephan Neck

Mark Richards