The Ultimate Guide to PI Planning

Program Increment (PI) Planning is a cadence-based event that aligns all Agile Release Train (ART) teams to the same mission and vision. It’s a crucial element of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) that organizations need to master if they want to develop and manage successful products.

In this guide, you’ll learn why organizations use PI planning, who’s involved, what the agenda covers, and how to run successful PI planning events. We’ll also show you how to bring multiple teams together and streamline the PI planning process with monday dev.

What is PI planning?

Program Increment (PI) Planning is a key event in the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), where multiple teams within the same Agile Release Train (ART) meet to align on goals and plan work for the upcoming program increment.

It’s typically a 2-day event held every 8-12 weeks where teams establish a shared vision, plan features, identify dependencies, and commit to objectives for the next program increment.

Why do PI planning?

PI planning aims to align releases, foster collaboration, manage risks, improve predictability, and ensure teams work efficiently towards shared business goals. Although it requires significant time and effort, many organizations find the benefits outweigh the costs for large-scale agile development. Here are the key reasons:

Alignment and visibility

PI planning aligns all teams within the Agile Release Train (ART) to the business context and vision. It clarifies planned work for the upcoming Program Increment and gets everyone working on the highest priority items.

Collaboration and coordination

PI planning brings teams together to discuss and coordinate dependencies. It fosters cross-team collaboration and allows for real-time discussion and decision-making.

Risk management

PI planning identifies potential risks and issues early. It allows teams to proactively develop mitigation plans and reduces the chances of surprises during execution.

Planning and predictability

PI planning leads to more accurate planning and estimation. It increases the predictability of delivery and gives stakeholders confidence in team commitments.

Resource utilization

PI planning helps allocate team capacity and capabilities more effectively. It matches demand to capacity and eliminates excess work-in-progress.

Motivation and clarity

PI planning ensures teams understand the bigger picture and their role in the project. It builds a shared understanding of goals and priorities and increases team motivation.

Social networks

PI planning establishes face-to-face communication across team members and stakeholders. It builds relationships and trust between teams and brings key stakeholders together to make informed decisions.

How often is PI planning done?

PI planning typically occurs every 8 to 12 weeks, but organizations can adjust the timing to their needs. For instance, some organizations prefer 8-week intervals for more agility, while others choose 12-week intervals to align with financial quarters. If sprints are 2 weeks long, one PI consists of 4 to 6 sprints, providing a consistent rhythm for planning and alignment.

Whatever cadence organizations choose, PI planning has a regular, predictable schedule. It’s a fixed time-boxed event that usually lasts for two days. The consistent cadence ensures teams have regular opportunities to synchronize, plan, and adapt their work across the Agile Release Train (ART).

Who participates in PI planning?

Due to its collaborative nature, PI planning involves multiple perspectives. Here are the key roles and responsibilities:

Release Train Engineer (RTE)

The RTE facilitates the entire PI planning event, which means they help:

• Manage risks and dependencies
• Create and track program objectives
• Ensure strategic alignment

Product Managers

The Product Managers present the program vision and upcoming milestones. They also:

• Review the draft plan
• Manage and prioritize workflows
• Update the product roadmap post-planning

Product Owners

The Product Owners maintain and prioritize the team backlog. They’re also responsible for:

• Defining features and user stories
• Making decisions at the user story level
• Conveying the vision from upper management

Scrum Masters

The Scrum Masters help the product owners and developers by removing any impediments or obstacles that might hinder the team. They also:

• Ensure everyone follows the Agile principles
• Monitor the timebox and coach teams
• Support team planning processes and identify dependencies

Developers

The developers and testers participate in breakout sessions to:

• Build and refine user stories
• Identify risks and dependencies
• Draft team PI objectives

Other key stakeholders

Additionally, PI planning may involve:

• System Architects
• Technical Leaders
• Senior Executives
• Business Owners
• Customers

What’s included in the PI planning agenda?

The agenda for a PI planning event generally includes these core sessions:

• Business context presentation: An overview of the current state of the business and market conditions.
• Product vision presentation: Details about upcoming features and priorities from product management.
• Team breakouts: Teams work in smaller groups to draft plans, assess capacity, and identify risks and dependencies.
• Draft plan review: Teams present their draft plans for feedback, focusing on risk management and cross-team dependencies.
• Finalization: After discussions and adjustments, teams finalize their objectives and commit to delivering them during the increment.

How to prepare for a PI planning event

Here are ten essential steps to ensure your organization is well-prepared for a successful PI planning event.

1. Understand and communicate the purpose: Ensure all participants, especially executives and management, clearly understand the goals of PI planning. Communicate that the aim is to create an emergent roadmap and identify potential obstacles.
2. Schedule well in advance: Plan the event for the next quarter at the end of the current quarter. Ensure the availability of all key stakeholders and leaders.
3. Prepare the program vision and context: Determine the program vision and purpose in advance. Ensure program leaders and business stakeholders know how to convey this information.
4. Arrange appropriate facilities: Book a large room that can accommodate about double the number of expected attendees. Ensure proper setup for remote participants, such as video conferencing equipment.
5. Refine the backlog: Review and refine the product backlog. Ensure user stories and features are well-defined and prioritized.
6. Align stakeholders: Engage with business owners and stakeholders to understand the priorities and expectations.
7. Plan logistics: Arrange the necessary tools, resources, and materials. Set up digital collaboration tools if needed.
8. Prepare an agenda: Create a detailed agenda for the two-day event. Include time for business context, vision presentations, team breakouts, plan reviews, etc.
9. Pre-PI planning: Each team should conduct its own pre-PI planning session to prepare initial plans and identify potential risks and dependencies.
10. Set up a program board: Prepare a physical or digital program board to visualize features, dependencies, and milestones.

How to run a PI planning event 

Here’s how a typical PI planning agenda plays out over the two days.

Day 1

The first-day agenda includes an overview of the business context, product vision, and architecture, followed by detailed team planning and initial reviews of those plans.

• Business context: A business owner or senior executive presents the current state of the business, portfolio vision, and how existing solutions address customer needs.
• Product/solution vision: The product manager presents the current product vision, typically represented by the top 10 or so upcoming features.
• Architecture vision and development practices: The system architect presents the architecture vision, and a senior development manager outlines best Agile development practices.
• Planning context: The RTE presents the planning process and expected outcomes.
• Team breakouts #1: Teams estimate their capacity for each iteration and identify backlog items needed to realize the features. They create draft plans visible to all, iteration by iteration.
• Draft plan review: Teams present key planning outputs, including capacity, load, draft PI objectives, potential risks, and dependencies. Business Owners, Product Managers, and other stakeholders review and provide input.
• Management review and problem-solving: Management negotiates scope changes and resolves problems by agreeing to various planning adjustments. The RTE facilitates this session, keeping key stakeholders together to make necessary decisions.

Day 2

The second-day agenda lets teams finalize their plans, address risks, and align on objectives for the upcoming PI. It concludes with a confidence vote to ensure everyone is committed to the plan and a retrospective to improve future PI planning events.

• Planning adjustments: Management presents the results from Day 1 and any changes.
• Team breakouts #2: Teams continue planning and making adjustments based on management’s feedback and finalize objectives for the upcoming PI. Business owners assign business values to the objectives and rank them.
• Final plan review: Every team presents its finalized plans, including risks, impediments, and dependencies. At this stage, business owners must approve all the plans, even if teams have to adjust them.
• ART risks: Teams discuss and categorize risks identified during the final plan presentations into one of four categories:
  • Resolved: Teams agree there’s no longer a risk.
  • Owned: Someone takes charge of managing an unresolved risk.
  • Accepted: Everyone understands and acknowledges the unavoidable risks.
  • Mitigated: Teams identify strategies to reduce a risk’s impact.
• Confidence vote: Teams vote on their confidence in meeting the PI objectives using the “fist of five” voting method (physically or digitally).
  • If the average is three or above, the plan is accepted.
  • If it’s less than three, the plan may need reworking.
  • If anyone votes two or less, they should make their concerns known. It may be necessary to add these concerns to the risk list, replan them, or provide further information.
• Plan rework (optional): If confidence is low, teams may need to rework their plans.
• Planning retrospective and moving forward: The RTE conducts a brief event retrospective to identify improvements for future PI planning sessions.

What happens after a PI planning event? 

By following these post-PI planning activities, organizations can ensure that plans are effectively implemented and continuously improved throughout the program increment.

• Next steps: To move objectives forward, teams coordinate calendars to arrange daily standups and iteration meetings.
• Documentation: Teams transcribe objectives, user stories, and the program board into tools like monday dev and update roadmaps based on program objectives.
• Execution: ARTs begin implementing the plans outlined during PI planning and delivering value according to the commitments.
• Post-PI planning events: Further planning sessions involving stakeholders from all Agile Release Trains (ARTs) within the Solution Train take place to ensure synchronization and alignment. Teams present plans, explain objectives, and share milestones and timelines for each iteration and ART.
• Continuous improvement: Teams hold regular Inspect and Adapt (I&A) sessions throughout the increment, reflecting on progress, identifying areas for improvement, and adapting plans as needed to optimize performance.
• Customer feedback: Product owners actively seek and incorporate feedback from customers and end-users so future plans align with customer expectations.

Common PI planning pitfalls to avoid

Here are ten common pitfalls to avoid in your PI planning.

1. Insufficient preparation: Not providing enough context or vision before the event and failing to have a clear backlog or prioritized features ready.
2. Poor time management: Allowing discussions to run over and disrupt the agenda and not allocating enough time for team breakouts or plan reviews.
3. Lack of stakeholder engagement: Not involving key business stakeholders throughout the process and failing to get proper buy-in from leadership.
4. Ignoring dependencies: Failing to identify and manage cross-team dependencies and not visualizing dependencies on the program board.
5. Overemphasis on estimation: Spending too much time on granular details at the expense of other activities and losing sight of the big picture.
6. Neglecting team dynamics: Not promoting a positive and inclusive environment for collaboration. Failing to address conflicts or issues promptly.
7. Skipping the confidence vote: Not conducting or taking the team confidence vote on the plan seriously.
8. Forgetting to review past PIs: Not looking back at previous PI performance to inform current planning.
9. Neglecting retrospectives: Skipping or rushing through the planning retrospective and not implementing improvements based on feedback from previous sessions.
10. Challenges with virtual planning: Failing to adapt the planning process effectively for distributed teams and using inadequate remote collaboration tools.

Using monday dev for PI planning

Built on monday.com Work OS and packed with versatile features, monday dev enables teams and stakeholders to connect and collaborate at every step of the PI planning process.

Customizable boards

Adapt the customizable boards to support various aspects of PI planning. For example:

• Program board: Create a high-level program board showing features, dependencies, and milestones across teams.
• Team boards: Set up individual boards for each team to track their PI objectives, allowing teams to break down their goals into actionable items.

Collaboration

Use monday dev to collaborate extensively through:

• Real-time updates: Teams can work simultaneously on their plans, making real-time changes visible to all participants.
• Comments and discussions: Use the platform’s communication tools to discuss dependencies, risks, and adjustments during planning.

Views

Enhance your PI planning with the platform’s visualization capabilities:

• Gantt Charts: Use Gantt views to visualize the timeline of features and dependencies across the program increment.
• Kanban Boards: Use Kanban-style boards to manage backlog and plan work for the upcoming PI.

Integrations

Leverage the integration features to:

• Connect with other tools: Integrate with existing development tools to pull in relevant data for planning.
• Automate workflows: Set up automations to notify team members of updates or changes to the plan.

Reporting

Use the reporting features to:

• Track progress: Monitor the advancement of PI objectives throughout the increment.
• Generate insights: Create dashboards to visualize team capacity, risks, and other key metrics for PI planning.

Streamline your PI planning

Successful PI planning relies on the active participation and alignment of all team members and stakeholders. With monday dev, you have a flexible platform to provide the technical infrastructure, but the event’s success ultimately depends on effective facilitation and team engagement.

Try monday dev to see how you can streamline your PI planning process and get everyone on the same page.