Program leadership

Leadership

During Program Leadership, the program leadership team can leverage checklists and job aids to map their new approach to operations and governance into their user experience across Atlassian products. These checklists and job aids can be leveraged in training and in communities of practice to accelerate the changes and adoption. Each area is further defined as a set of jobs (usually three jobs for each activity) performed by one or more members of the leadership team. In most companies, these operations and governance areas are transforming as the leadership team pursues new ways of working.

Program leadership activities

Program Leadership sections describe the operations and governance of a typical program leadership team. It outlines the key behaviors that add value for a team-of-teams.

Operations describes the day-to-day focus of the program leadership team.
Governance describes the ceremonies/meetings where decisions are made.

Legend

Arrows [Operations activities] - Actions leaders take (at a cadence) to prepare guidance for teams
Dark Grey boxes [Governance activities] - Meetings where leaders review info and make decisions

Operations and governance: leadership activities

For each of the 12 operations and governance activities of the program leadership team, there are three “jobs-to-be-done” that further define the activity. More information about these activities can be found in the corresponding paths on Success Central.

Weekly/Bi-Weekly	Monthly	Quarterly
09: Sprint Review Run Sprint Demo Address Cross-Team Needs Review Team Retrospectives	05: Describe Needs Identify Needs Describe Feature Move Feature to Backlog	01: Adjust Program Mission Update Vision Review Strategic Intent and Guardrails Aligns Teams to Mission
10: Check Market Fit Assess Delivered Value Review Customer Needs Revisit Feature Estimates	06: Target Value Delivery Target Items to Timebox Target Items to Completion Sprints Target Items to Delivery Dates	02: Planning Prep Check Strategic Alignment Target Features to Teams/Sprints Identify Needs Outside Program
11: Review Program Progress Review Progress by State Review Progress by Epic Review Spend by Theme	07: Build Roadmap Prioritize Feature Backlog Update Program Capacity Balance Demand vs. Capacity	03: Planning Meeting Validate Team and Program Loads Commit to Objectives Review Risk Mitigation
12: Scrum of Scrums (PO Sync) Remove Impediments Address cross-team needs Manage risks	08: Review Roadmap View Roadmaps by Quarter View Roadmaps by Release View Progress by Program	04: Program Demo (Inspect & Adapt) Hold System Demo Close Out the Planning Period Hold Retrospective

The Program Leadership team performs these recurring activities and meetings to make decisions, provide governance and oversight, and improve business agility. For example, here is how the cadenced operations and governance could be scheduled on the calendar over the first three months of the year:

For each job in each activity, we offer three options in Jira Align, with increasing degrees of agility.

Loosely speaking, the levels of agility can be defined as:

Crawl: Program leadership team is still transitioning away from a project-based approach and just seeks improved visibility into the work-in-process.
Walk: Program leadership team is adopting new behaviors based on industry standards and curriculum (e.g. SAFe ARTs, S@S scrum-of-scrums, etc.)
Run: Program leadership team is transforming to a leaner, product-led, outcome-oriented, value-driven, decision-making behavioral model.

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Program leadership

Leadership