Agile facilitators and product teams leverage PI Planning templates to achieve team alignment and establish a unified vision. PI (Program Increment) Planning traditionally takes place in person, but as hybrid work environments become increasingly prevalent, organizations are successfully conducting these sessions remotely. These templates provide a structured framework that offers comprehensive event oversight, enabling seamless process execution and enhanced collaboration.
PI Planning SAFe
SAFe stands for Scaled Agile Framework. It is one of the leading frameworks for scaling agile. Kanban and Scrum are other frameworks that are effective at the team level. However, SAFe aims to bridge the gap at a scaled level, where multiple teams work toward the same objective, product, and outcomes.
SAFe defines what must be done at each organizational level and ensures the success of scaled agile. It goes beyond the team level and includes all stakeholders. The key idea behind SAFe vs LeSS is that it enhances team alignment and work visibility, leading to more predictable results.
This is important as organizations continue adapting to change and customer demands for new features. In contrast, the traditional waterfall approach is inefficient and slow. PI Planning is an essential element of SAFe. It brings together representatives from various teams to collaborate, identify dependencies, define features, and create a Program Increment plan.
It promotes visibility across teams, frequent adjustments, and teamwork. As a result, organizations can improve efficiency, speed up processes, and compete effectively with more agile competitors. While SAFe is designed for large enterprises, smaller companies can also implement a version of PI Planning. All that’s needed is multiple agile teams to make it work.
The Program Increment Planning method helps create a shared team vision. During the planning event, stakeholders, team members, and product owners gather to review the program backlog and determine the business direction. Typically, PI Planning occurs every 8 to 12 weeks.
PI Planning Preparation Checklist
A PI Planning checklist must be followed for better results. Below are the components of this checklist:
Highlight the Readiness
Confirm the linkage of special features with the definition of ready. Some of the examples of DoR are non-functional requirements documents, illustrations, the business value, acceptance criteria, testers, and SMEs/
Determine Team and ART Cadence
The spread for calendar bids includes sprint planning, backlog refinement, and sprint review for planning. Calendar invites for ART consist of PO sync, ART sync, system demo, and scrum to scrum meeting for the PI planning.
Select Communication Technology
The team members must be skilled to use agile communication technology like Zoom, MURAL, and Miro.
Organizational Readiness
Product strategy alignment between participants, stakeholders, and business owners must be there.
Content Readiness
It’s important to secure an obvious perception that the relevant stakeholders can participate. Therefore, PI Planning must contain executive briefings, product vision briefings, and architecture vision briefings.
Logistic Readiness
This includes securing and preparing spaces for collocated planning and final distributed planning.
The PI Planning agenda encompasses the presentation of organizational vision and strategic context, followed by structured team breakout sessions where cross-functional teams develop iteration objectives and detailed plans for the upcoming Program Increment. This critical event is facilitated by a certified Release Train Engineer and involves all members of the Agile Release Train (ART).
The planning sessions are strategically conducted during designated Planning and Innovation (PI) iterations to minimize disruption to development capacity and maintain optimal sprint velocity. While PI Planning typically spans two full days, organizations may extend the duration to accommodate geographically distributed teams across multiple time zones, ensuring comprehensive participation and alignment.
PI Planning vs Sprint Planning
The main difference between PI planning and sprint planning is that PI planning occurs between teams, and sprint planning is an event for team members. The difference is the hierarchy and the scale. Sprints are subsets of the PI Planning and are for a single sprint. PI Planning, on the other hand, is executed for 8 to 12 weeks over four sprints. Its purpose is to obtain the business value vision.
PI Planning Template Miro
PI Planning Template Powerpoint
PI Planning Template Mural
PI Planning Template Creately
PI Planning Template Figma
PI Planning Template Chat Diagram
PI Planning Template Lucidspark
PI Planning Template Draft.io
PI Planning Template Klaxoon
PI Planning Step by Step
Follow the following steps to get the most from the PI Planning templates:
- Define your objectives
- Work with your development team
- Make every team fill their boards with features, objectives, and stories.
- Gather everyone together to fill the board
- Make use of sticky notes templates to fill stories and features
- Add any impediments or risks to the project with the Owned, Resolved, Mitigated, and Accepted Board
PI Planning Anti-Patterns
A prevalent PI Planning anti-pattern occurs when teams adopt a sequential approach, concentrating exclusively on individual iterations rather than developing a comprehensive overview. Teams typically begin by creating detailed plans for the first iteration before progressing to subsequent iterations. This myopic approach prevents teams from establishing the holistic, end-to-end perspective essential for effective problem-solving and strategic review processes.
Furthermore, when teams become overly focused on story creation and backlog refinement within their individual iterations, they frequently fail to engage in adequate cross-team collaboration regarding dependencies. This lack of interdisciplinary coordination often results in significant plan modifications during Day Two breakout sessions, potentially disrupting the overall planning process and undermining team alignment.
When to Use PI Planning
PI Planning is strategically designed to enable development teams to address complex coordination challenges across multiple processes, teams, and programs. This collaborative framework brings together cross-functional teams, each contributing specialized expertise toward achieving shared organizational objectives.
Agile Release Trains convene every 8 to 12 weeks to execute comprehensive PI Planning sessions. This structured event serves as a critical alignment mechanism, ensuring all team members develop a unified understanding of the strategic vision and maintain commitment to collective goals.
General considerations:
- Gather Everyone: Ensure all teammates, project owners, and stakeholders are available for the session. For remote sessions, choose a popular video conferencing tool.
- Clarify Team Goals: After the team is gathered for the articulation of a vision for a solution or product, decide on how you will fill the needs of the customer. How do market changes impact your capability to do so?
- Draft a Plan: Gather components and make a document for teams and management to review.
PI Planning FAQs
What is the ultimate goal of the PI Planning event?
The ultimate goal of the PI Planning event is to gather multiple teams for collaboration, be more flexible, increase transparency, and align project goals and strategies.
During the PI Planning, who owns feature priorities?
The Product Managers own the feature priorities during PI Planning. The development team owns estimation and user stories planning. The UX team and engineers work towards the validation of the planning. The goal is team alignment with each other and with the goal.
Why is a confidence vote held at the end of PI Planning?
The confidence vote is an important part of the PI Planning and concludes the event. The teams must be confident to meet the objectives of the work they commit to. The release train engineer asks the team to vote.
What is the scrum master’s role in PI Planning?
They prepare system demos and facilitate event preparation. They help the team with capacity estimation for iterations, finalise objectives, and manage dependencies, timeboxes, and ambiguities during team sessions.
Suggested articles:
- 5 Sprint Planning Templates Word & XLS
- 21 Free Capacity Planning Templates – Word, Google Docs
- 11 Free Stakeholder Engagement Planning Templates
Shane Drumm, holding certifications in PMP®, PMI-ACP®, CSM, and LPM, is the author behind numerous articles featured here. Hailing from County Cork, Ireland, his expertise lies in implementing Agile methodologies with geographically dispersed teams for software development projects. In his leisure, he dedicates time to web development and Ironman triathlon training. Find out more about Shane on shanedrumm.com and please reach out and connect with Shane on LinkedIn.