Core Platform Team/PET Work Processes/PET Initiative Planning

PET Initiative Planning
The Core Platform Team's Initiatives are determined by our yearly roadmap, which determines at a high level of the work that we will progress during a given year and the outline of the timeframes of the order of the work.

Once the roadmap has been created and approved, initiatives that align to it must be created and approved. The first step in the initiative planning process is the initiative check process, which takes a proposed initiative from the initial idea and vision through to its agreement to move forward as an initiative. Once that agreement exists, the team undertakes a planning process to convert the Initiative from outlines to detailed plans, user stories, and ultimately epics and phabriactor tasks, which describe the entirety of the work required to complete a given initiative.

This process run through the CPT Asana Initiative Planning board.

PET Initiative Planning Board
This board tracks the process of an initiative from initial outline description through requirements collection to decomposition of work into epics to team formation and work scheduling.

Structure of Initiative Planning Board

 * Backlog This column is populated by work from the CPT Roadmap. The team filters this work in to the Next based on priority and scheduling
 * Next This column contains the set of Initiatives, ordered by priority and dependency, that the team selects from when the tasks in the Ready start to deplete.
 * Ready These are tasks that are ready for team members to start working on and begin planning.  In order for tasks to reach this stage they should have a high level description.
 * Develop Initiative Plan The first step of the planning process is to develop an initial outline plan that breaks the high level description down into a detailed outline of what the project entails. This is governed by the Initiative Plan Criteria.
 * Design Epics Once the overarching plan for an initiative has been determined, it can next be broken down into a series of Epics that describe the complete work to be done to achieve the project
 * Develop Product User Story At this step the Product Manager will develop the User Story(ies) based on the need of the Initiative, in consultation with stakeholders. It is governed by the Product User Story Criteria.
 * Document Technical Requirements At this step the Engineering Manager and Engineering Leads will use the Product User Story(ies) to determine the technical requirements, obstacles, limitations and risks of the Initiative and identify how it can be technically implemented.
 * Team Review Once an Initiative reaches this stage the team reviews the project and gives collective feedback. The team decides on whether the current state of the Initiative is go/no-go. In the former case it proceeds to the next step otherwise the team recommends what the next steps should be for the Initiative.
 * Create Phabricator Epic At this stage the Initiative plan is translated in Phabricator Epics and tasks. These should completely describe the work to be done in order to fulfil the project. This is governed by the Epic Criteria and Task Criteria.
 * Make Hardware Request If an Initiative has identified hardware requirements then a request should be made at this stage to the appropriate external teams based on the Process for Hardware Requests.
 * Develop RfC If an Initiative has identified a potential RfC then preparation of the RfC should begin at this stage based on the RfC Process.
 * Setup team/update Roadmap At this stage a suggested team should be planned based on the skillset needs identified by the Initiative plan.
 * Waiting to Kickoff Initiatives in this column are ready to go and can be scheduled into a future sprint, dependent on engineer availability.
 * In Progress Initiatives currently being worked on
 * Complete Done