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“ Future product development tasks can’t be predetermined. Distribute

planning and control to those who can understand and react to the
end results.
—Michael Kennedy, Product Development for the Lean
Enterprise1

There is no magic in SAFe . . . except maybe for PI Planning.

—Authors

PI Planning
PI Planning is a cadence-based event for the entire ART that aligns teams and Introduction to PI Planning:
stakeholders to a shared mission and vision. A Quick Overview

PI planning
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Details
The Agile Manifesto states, “The most efficient and effective method of
conveying information to and within a development team is a face-to-face
conversation.” SAFe takes this to the next level with PI planning.

Where possible, everyone is face-to-face (virtually or physically), and these

large-scale PI planning events now occur within many enterprises worldwide.
They have clearly shown real financial ROI, not to mention the intangibles that
happen when the team of Agile teams creates a social construct that is
personally and collectively rewarding.
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It may not always be practical for the entire Agile Release Train (ART) to
collocate; however, in our current times, COVID-19 has created a situation Course
where this isn’t an option. While physical face-to-face planning has benefits, the
SAFe Release Train Engineer
unwritten SAFe ‘rule’ is that the people who do the work plan the work. Real-
time, concurrent, virtual, face-to-face planning has now proven effective when
physical presence is not possible. Indeed many ARTs have been flourishing in See available classes
creating a hybrid situation where several teams join remotely, as shown below
in Figure 1.
Learn more about the course

The advanced topic article, Distributed PI Planning with SAFe, provides

additional guidance and considerations for successfully managing these
scenarios.

Figure 1. Face-to-face PI planning. Remote teams are planning at the same time using video
conferencing.

PI Planning has a standard agenda that includes a presentation of business context and vision, followed by team planning breakouts—
where the teams create their Iteration plans and objectives for the upcoming PI. Facilitated by the Release Train Engineer (RTE), this event
includes all members of the ART and occurs within the Innovation and Planning (IP) Iteration. Holding the event during the IP iteration
avoids affecting the scheduling or capacity of other iterations in the PI. PI Planning takes two days, although the ART can extend this
timebox to accommodate planning across multiple time zones.

Business Benefits of PI Planning

PI planning delivers many business benefits, including:

Establishing face-to-face communication among all team members and stakeholders

Building the social network the ART depends upon

Aligning development to business goals with the business context, vision, and Team and ART PI objectives

Identifying dependencies and fostering cross-team and cross-ART collaboration

Providing the opportunity for just the right amount of architecture and Lean User Experience (UX) guidance
Matching demand to capacity and eliminating excess Work in Process (WIP)

Fast decision-making

Inputs and Outputs of PI Planning

Inputs to PI planning include:

Business context (see ‘content readiness’ below)

Roadmap and vision

Highest priority Features of the ART Backlog

A successful PI planning event delivers two primary outputs:

Committed PI objectives – Each team creates a set of SMART objectives with the business value assigned by the Business Owners.

ART planning board – Highlighting the new feature delivery dates, feature dependencies among teams, and relevant milestones

Preparation
PI planning is a significant event that requires preparation, coordination, and communication. It is facilitated by the RTE and event
attendees, including Business Owners, Product Management, Agile Teams, System and Solution Architects, the System Team, and other
stakeholders. The RTE must schedule all PI planning in advance to be well prepared. The active participation of Business Owners in this
event provides an essential Guardrail on budgetary spending.

For the event to be successful, preparation is required in three major areas:

1. Organizational readiness
2. Content readiness

3. Logistics readiness
The following sections describe these three areas.

Organizational Readiness

Before PI planning, there must be strategy alignment among participants, stakeholders, and Business Owners. Critical roles are assigned.
To address this in advance, however, event organizers must consider the following:

Planning scope and context – Is the planning process’s scope (product, system, technology domain) understood? Do we know which
teams need to plan together?
Business alignment – Is there reasonable agreement on priorities among the Business Owners?

Agile teams – Do we have Agile teams? Are there dedicated team members and an identified Scrum Master/Team Coach
and Product Owner for each team?

Content Readiness

It’s equally important to have a clear vision and context so that the right stakeholders can participate. Therefore, the PI planning must
include the following:

Executive briefing – A briefing that defines the current business context

Product vision briefing(s) – Briefings prepared by Product Management, including the top 10 features in the ART Backlog

Architecture vision briefing – A presentation made by the CTO, Enterprise Architect, or System Architect to communicate new
Enablers, features, and Nonfunctional Requirements (NFRs)

Logistics Readiness

Preparing an event to support a large number of attendees isn’t trivial. This prep can include securing and preparing the space for
physically collocated planning. For remote attendees or a fully distributed PI Planning, this also includes investment in the necessary
technical infrastructure. Considerations include:

Locations – Each location where planning takes place needs preparation in advance.
Technology and tooling – Real-time access to information and tooling to support distributed planning or remote attendees
Communication channels – Primary and secondary audio, video, and presentation channels must be available

Standard Agenda
The event follows an agenda similar to Figure 2. Descriptions of each item follow. For guidance on adapting this agenda to support
planning across multiple time zones, refer to the advanced topic article, Distributed PI Planning with SAFe.

Day 1 Agenda Day 2 Agenda

8:00 - 9:00 Business Context 8:00 - 9:00 Planning Adjustments

9:00 - 10:30
Product/Solution
Vision
9:00 - 11:00 Team Breakouts
Architecture Vision
10:30 - 11:30 and Development
Practices

Planning Context Final Plan Review

11:00 - 1:00
11:30 - 1:00 and Lunch
and Lunch

1:00 - 2:00 ART Risks

1:00 - 4:00 Team Breakouts
2:00 - 2:15 Confidence Vote

2:15 - ??? Plan Rework?

4:00 - 5:00 Draft Plan Review
Planning
Management Review Retrospective and
5:00 - 6:00 Moving Forward
and Problem Solving
© Scaled Agile, Inc.

Figure 2. Standard two-day PI planning agenda

Day 1 Agenda

Business context – A Business Owner or senior executive describes the current state of the business, shares the Portfolio Vision, and
presents a perspective on how effectively existing solutions address current customer needs.

Product/solution vision – Product Management presents the current vision (typically represented by the top ten or so upcoming
features). They highlight changes from the previous PI planning event and any relevant milestones.
Architecture vision and development practices – The System Architect presents the architecture vision. Also, a senior development
manager may introduce Agile-supportive changes to development practices, such as test automation, DevOps, Continuous
Integration, and Continuous Deployment, which the teams will adopt in the upcoming PI.
Planning context and lunch – The RTE presents the planning process and expected outcomes.
Team breakouts #1 – In the breakout, teams estimate their capacity for each Iteration and identify the backlog items they will likely
need to realize the features. Each team creates draft plans, visible to all, iteration by iteration.

During this process, teams identify risks and dependencies and draft their initial team PI objectives. The PI objectives typically include
‘uncommitted objectives,’ which are goals built into the plan (for example, stories that have been defined and included for these objectives)
but are not committed to by the team because of too many unknowns or risks. Uncommitted objectives are not extra things to do in case
there is time. Instead, they increase the reliability of the plan and give management an early warning of any objectives that the ART may not
be able to deliver. The teams also add the features and associated dependencies to the ART Planning Board, as shown in Figure 3.

Iteration 1.1 Iteration 1.2 Iteration 1.3 Iteration 1.4 Iteration 1.5 (IP) PI 2 >>>

Milestones &
Events

Unicorns
A milestone or event is
Lions occurring in iteration 1.3
(e.g., release, trade
Bears show)

Eagles

Tigers
This feature cannot be
delivered until multiple
Antelopes teams complete their
dependencies
Bulls

UX Help
A feature with no strings
means it does not have
Sys Arch Help any dependencies

ART Planning Board Legend:

Red strings (or lines for digital boards) are used
Significant Milestone or to connect a feature or milestone to one or more
Features Dependency Event dependencies. Sometimes a dependency has its
own dependencies (see Lions in iteration 1.2)
Blue Red or Pink Orange © Scaled Agile, Inc.

Figure 3. ART planning board showing features and dependencies

Draft plan review – During the tightly timeboxed draft plan review, teams present key planning outputs, which include capacity and
load, draft PI objectives, potential risks, and dependencies. Business Owners, Product Management, and other teams and
stakeholders review and provide input.
Management review and problem-solving – Draft plans likely present challenges like scope, people and resource constraints, and
dependencies. During the problem-solving meeting, management may negotiate scope changes and resolve other problems by
agreeing to various planning adjustments. The RTE facilitates and keeps the primary stakeholders together for as long as necessary
to make the decisions needed to reach achievable objectives.

Solution Trains often hold an additional management review and problem-solving workshop after the first day of planning to address cross-
ART issues. Alternatively, the RTEs of the involved trains may talk with each other to discuss the problems for the ART’s specific
management review and problem-solving meeting. The Solution Train Engineer (STE) helps facilitate and resolve issues across the ARTs.

Day 2 Agenda

Planning adjustments – The next day, the event begins with management presenting changes to the planning scope, people, and
resources.
Team breakouts #2 – Teams continue planning and making the appropriate adjustments. They finalize their objectives for the PI, to
which the Business Owners assign business value, as shown in Figure 4.

Objectives for PI 1 BV AV

1. Show routing calculations between

the five most frequent destinations 10
2. Navigate autonomously from
distribution center to the most
frequent destination 4
3. Parallel park for a delivery 7
4. Return to the distribution center
after delivery 10
5. Include traffic data in route planning 7
6. Recall a delivery that is already
in progress 8

Uncommitted Objectives
7. Spike: Reduce GPS signal loss by 25% 6
8. Demonstrate real-time rerouting to avoid
delays (e.g., accident, construction) 5

© Scaled Agile, Inc.

Figure 4. A team’s PI objectives sheet with assigned business value

Final plan review and lunch – All teams present their plans to the group during this session. At the end of each team’s time slot, the
team states its risks and impediments and provides the risks to the RTE for use later in the ROAMing exercise. The team then asks
the Business Owners if the plan is acceptable. If the plan is accepted, the team brings their team PI objective sheet to the front of
the room so everyone can see the aggregate objectives unfold in real-time. If the Business Owners have concerns, teams can adjust
the plan to address the identified issues. The team then presents its revised plan.
ART PI Risks – During planning, teams have identified risks and impediments that could impact their ability to meet their objectives.
These are resolved in a broader management context before the whole train. One by one, the risks are discussed and addressed
with honesty and transparency and then grouped into one of the following categories:
Resolved – The teams agree that the risk is no longer a concern
Owned – Someone on the train owns the risk since it cannot be addressed during PI planning
Accepted – Some items are simply facts or potential problems that must be understood and accepted
Mitigated – Teams identify a plan to reduce the impact of the risk

Confidence vote – Once ART PI Risks have been addressed, teams vote on their confidence in meeting their team PI objectives

Each team conducts a vote using their fingers (fist of five) or a digital tool for remote events. If the average is three fingers or above, then
management should accept the commitment. If it’s less than three, the team reworks its plan. Anyone voting two fingers or fewer should
be allowed to voice their concerns. These concerns might add to the risk list, require replanning, or provide information. Once each team
has voted, it’s repeated for the entire ART, with everyone expressing their confidence in the collective plan, as illustrated in Figure 5.

Figure 5.
Confidence
vote for an
ART

Plan rework – If necessary, teams adjust their objectives until they have high confidence. This additional planning is one occasion
where alignment and commitment are valued more highly than adhering to a timebox.
Planning retrospective and moving forward – Finally, the RTE leads a brief retrospective for the PI planning event to capture what
went well, what didn’t, and what to do better next time, as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6. PI planning retrospective

Next steps – Typically, a discussion about the next steps, along with final instructions to the teams, follows, including:
Cleaning up the rooms used for planning (if applicable)
Entering the team PI objectives and stories in Agile lifecycle management (ALM) tooling
Reviewing team and ART events calendars
Determining Iteration Planning and Team Sync locations and timing

After the planning event, the RTE and other ART stakeholders summarize the individual team PI objectives into a set of ART PI objectives
(Figure 7) and use this to communicate externally and track progress toward the goals.

Product Management uses the ART PI objectives to refine the roadmap, improving the forecast for the following two PIs.

The ART Planning board is often used during the Coach Sync to track dependencies. It may or may not be maintained (manually) after
planning is complete. A digital tool for managing dependencies facilitates their follow-up.

Teams leave the PI planning event with a prepopulated backlog for the upcoming PI. They take their team’s PI objectives, plans, and risks to
their regular work area. ART risks remain with the RTE, which ensures that the people responsible for owning or mitigating a risk have
captured the information and are actively managing the risk.

Most importantly, the ART executes the PI, tracking progress and adjusting as necessary as new knowledge emerges. Execution of the PI
begins with all the teams conducting planning for the first iteration, using their PI plans as a starting point. It offers fresh input for the
iteration planning processes that follow. Since the plans created during PI Planning did not consider detailed story-level acceptance criteria,
the team will likely adjust the first and subsequent iteration plans.

ART PI Objectives

• Deliver basic search,

sort, and view of books in
inventory
• Deliver basic shopping
cart, purchase and
shipping options
• Support investor demo by
start of iteration 3

Team PI Objectives

Team A BV Team B BV Team C BV Team D BV

• One-click search for 10 • Purchase books 10 • Allow users to 8 • Provide book detail 10
books by title, author via various credit comment on books to web users
and genre card types they have purchased • Allow registered 8
• Support investor 9 • Allow customers to 8 • Support investor 9 users to manage
demo by start of choose their optimal demo by start of their profile
iteration 3 shipping option iteration 3
• Support investor 9
• Drag and drop 3 • Support investor 9 • Implement type- 3 demo by start of
columns by attribute demo by start of ahead using index iteration 3
iteration 3 from search

© Scaled Agile, Inc.

Figure 7. ART PI objectives

Solution Train PI Planning

This article focuses on the planning activities of a single ART. However, large Value Streams may contain multiple ARTs and suppliers. In this
case, the Solution Train provides coordination using Pre-Plan and Coordinate and Deliver activities.

Learn More
[1] Knaster, Richard, and Dean Leffingwell. SAFe 5.0 Distilled, Achieving Business Agility with the Scaled Agile Framework. Addison-Wesley, 2020.

[2] Kennedy, Michael. Product Development for the Lean Enterprise. Oaklea Press, 2003.

Last update: March 19, 2023

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