Program Room - How the Runway widget actually functions

[#1]

The Runway widget provides any given Program a point in time visual representation of the relative health of the backlog of work. 

• Consider how a Scrum/Kanban Team needs to have a healthy backlog of work that will allow them to progress through 4-8 Sprints, if they have too little (1 -3 Sprints) they may quickly reach a point where they don't have enough work to fill their sprints (Scrum) or keep continuous flow moving (Kanban); if they have too much work 9-24 Sprints they will be less effective due to the nature of attempting to maintain such a lengthy backlog. 

The very same is true for a Program, however the Program deals in a larger suite of work items than stories and needs a view into their work from Epics down to Stories with an appropriate timebox to understand that work. 

When a Program has too much or too little work, then that backlog is unhealthy and it should be revisited to maintain quality of delivery, balance of work across Programs in a Portfolio, and to set appropriate expectations with Leadership. 

How to use Runway

Runway represents an estimation of how long it will take for the Program to complete the estimated (and not completed) work in their pipeline.

• The Goal is set by the Program and expressed in Months for Epics, Capabilities, and Features, while Stories are expressed in Sprints.

• Percent Deviation allows the Program to set a Percentage % tolerance (above the Goal). % Deviation is meant to be a positive number of at least 1%, however entering a decimal like .1 will result in a 0% deviation (however, anytime the Goal is being altered the less than 1% value will need to be re-entered).

   Example: If the Goal is 10 months and the Percent Deviation is 20%, the bar will be green up to 12 months. If the Percent Deviation is 10% it would only be green up to 11 months.

• More work than can be completed inside the <Goal + % Deviation> results in the bar turning red and the pointer moving to the right of the center.

For demonstration purposes the goals are set more accurately with a lot of work estimated

• Less work than can be completed inside the <Goal + % Deviation> results in the bar turning green and the pointer moving to the left of the center.

For demonstration purposes the Goals were adjusted to match the estimated work

Knowing a Target Timeline and the likelihood of completing the work allocated inside that timeline is an important tool in managing a given Program. The Program should work with their Portfolio Leadership to balance out the work (adding/removing) so that proper expectations can be set with the rest of Leadership.

• Review the Goal Bi-Annually (at the most frequent), but frequently review the Runway bars to determine if the Program has a healthy backlog of work.

• Like any other goal it should be a reasonable goal with the % deviation representing the stretch goal.

Warning It is always possible to adjust the Program to have either more or less teams in order to meet the <Goal + % Deviation>, however this is not typically a short term solution as the added teams need to become part of the program and need some time to acclimate to the program and become performant.

Actual Value Calculation

PreReqs

• Work (Epic, Capability, Feature, Story) should be Estimated.

Warning Any unestimated work (regardless of being in a PI or in the Unassigned Backlog) will be excluded from the calculation.

Calculation Broken Down

• Estimate of work for Epics, Capabilities, or Features that have not started (JA Help Docs should read “are not completed”), regardless of PI.

  • Current Text in Help:  "Actual value = Estimate of work for features, capabilities, or epics in the program that have not started (in team weeks, regardless of PI) / 4 / number of teams in the program."

  • To manually calculate this (evidence its value) navigate to the Grid for the Work Item (example Epics Grid).

    • Apply 2 Filters (Primary Program = <Program in Focus> and State != Accepted)

Note The State Number will be different based upon the work item (Epic and Capability will be 3 - Accepted while Features and Stories will be 5 - Accepted)

• Depending upon your Platform → Portfolio settings for “Display Week Estimates in” value, the calculations can be simpler or more complex.

  • Team Weeks allows you to add the Column “Weeks” and do straight math to calculate the total value.

  • Member Weeks will require leveraging a calculation using the Platform → Portfolio Settings “Estimation Conversions” and convert the Member Weeks to the corresponding Team Weeks.

• Additionally if your Platform → Portfolio “Estimation System” is in T-Shirt Size you can leverage the textual values (X-Small, Small, etc…) and translate to the corresponding Team Weeks value.

Epics Grid

Note If you have more than 1 Portfolio the setting applicable will be in Portfolio Specific Configurations.

Final Calculation Explained

• Sum all of the values for these estimations to be in Team Weeks. This value will be used in the formula we will call it “TW Estimation Sum”.

• Divide by 4 (average weeks in a given month).

• Divide by “Number of Teams in the Program”.

• The final formula will be (TW Estimation Sum / 4 / Number of Teams in the Program) = Runway Actual

Reference

Working in the program room