Example data. Fieldnote is a fictional company used to fill all 61 boards, so the examples tell one consistent story.
Scale-up Fieldnote, Inspect & Adapt at the end of the first PI with all four teams, half a day, Karim as RTE for lack of one.
What the team took away
The problem-solving hour landed on one systemic cause, contracts agreed too late; the 20 % dependency reserve becomes a PI 2 rule for all four teams.
How to run it
Preparation
All teams of the train, business owners, RTE, system architect. Half a day blocked, end of the PI, before the next PI Planning.
Collect the PI metrics one week before: objectives achieved versus committed, predictability, quality numbers. Send them with the demo agenda.
Five columns on the board: PI demo, Metrics, Problems, Root causes, Actions. Book the demo environment and test it the day before.
Agenda
60 min
PI system demo Each team demos its increment in 8 minutes on the integrated system, not on a local branch. Business owners ask questions; nobody explains why something is missing.
30 min
Quantitative review RTE reads the metrics: program predictability, objectives achieved, defects, cycle time. Compare to the previous PI. No discussion yet, facts only.
30 min
Problem identification Everyone writes problems on stickies, silent, then reads them. Cluster. Vote with three dots each. Keep the top 3 to 5 problems for the train, not per team.
60 min
Root cause analysis Split into groups, one problem each. Fishbone or five whys until the cause is a process or a structure. Each group presents its root cause in 3 minutes.
40 min
Actions and owners Brainstorm solutions per root cause, vote, keep one per problem. Each becomes a backlog item for the next PI with a named owner. Read them all aloud before closing.
20 min
Close Business owners say what they will change on their side. RTE confirms which actions enter the next PI Planning as features.
Pitfalls
Do not let teams demo on slides. If it does not run on the integrated system, it is not done, and the demo must show that.
Do not do the problem-solving workshop team by team. Systemic problems live between teams; mixed groups are the point.
Do not accept actions without a backlog item. An improvement that is not in the next PI is a good intention.
Afterwards
The improvement items enter the next PI Planning as features with capacity reserved. The RTE tracks them on the program board like any other feature and reports on them at the next Inspect & Adapt.