Chapter 5: Program Planning Challenges

In this chapter, we focus on the common problems that organizations face when planning at the program level, which is considered the sweet spot of both agile at scale and Jira Align. Agile frameworks such as scrum work well for a single product development team or a handful of teams that sync up regularly via a scrum of scrums meeting. But what if you've got 5 to 12 agile teams working together on a set of features each business quarter? The general term for a group of teams delivering in this manner is a program. Now, what if you have several programs? The effort to coordinate teams has now leveled up to coordinating teams of teams. This is where agile scaling frameworks and the tools that support them come into play. Regardless of the scaling framework you choose, Jira Align helps solve this coordination challenge.

While a team delivers stories in sprints, a program delivers features within business quarters. Features are the middle...