What is PI Planning?

PI Planning (Program Increment Planning) is the term for the planning process itself and for the face-to-face event where all Agile Teams of an Agile Release Train plan the next Program Increment together. This two-day event occurs with every PI change (every 8-12 weeks) and is organized by the Release Train Engineer.

PI Planning Agenda

Roughly, the agenda of a PI Planning event contains the following steps:

• Defining the business context
• Setting up the product/solution vision
• Outlining the PI process
• Discussing backlogs and velocity in team breakouts
• Presenting the draft plans
• Solving problems
• Including management reviews
• Setting up the final plan
• Discussing program risks
• Conduct confidence votings

Outputs of PI Planning

The main outputs of a successful PI Planning event are:

• The program board: Displays milestones, dependencies among teams, and dates
• The PI objectives: Display SMART objectives created by each team

The PI Planning event aligns the ART to share a vision and mission. The goal of the PI Planning event is to structure Agile Teams and involve them in the planning and prioritization process of features. When there is no PI Planning, SAFe® is not implemented correctly.

Benefits of PI Planning

• Social network building
• Aligned mission and vision
• Aligned development to business goals
• Communication across teams and stakeholders
• Identification of dependencies and cross-team collaboration

PI Planning Tools

The following figures display PI Planning in a Enterprise Agile Planning Tool: