PI Planning: Streamline Your Projects

Imagine a team, each member with a vital role, crowded around a table, all working toward a single project's success. This is the heart of PI Planning, a cornerstone in Agile development. It's where success begins, where the plan for the program increment takes shape, and where teams unite for a shared mission. 

Traditionally, many software development methodologies have been structured around the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) model, with a strong emphasis on the phases of planning, execution, inspection, and adaptation. In this blog, we'll uncover PI Planning in Agile Methodologies and learn about the process, benefits, and common challenges of PI Planning. 

Table of Contents 

1) What is PI Planning? 

2) Importance of PI Planning 

3) Goals behind PI Planning 

4) Benefits of PI Planning in business 

5) Post-PI Planning 

6) Common challenges and how to overcome them 

7) Conclusion 

What is PI Planning? 

PI Planning, which stands for Program Increment Planning, is a pivotal practice within the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). It's an event that repeats at regular intervals, bringing together multiple teams from the same Agile Release Train (ART) to synchronise their efforts, share a common vision, examine features, craft a strategic roadmap, and spot cross-team dependencies. 

The critical elements of PI Planning encompass: 

1) Two full-day sessions every 8-12 weeks: These two-day sessions, conducted every 8 to 12 weeks, offer a solution to the needs of your specific program increments. The timeframe may vary based on the duration of your increments. 

2) Prioritisation by product managers: Before the PI Planning sessions, product managers complete the crucial task of prioritising the features that are planned for the upcoming increment. 

3) User story planning and estimation: The development teams take ownership of user story planning and estimation, ensuring that the complexity of tasks is well-understood and that they are accurately sized. 

4) Validation by engineers and User Experience (UX) teams: Validation is a critical phase where engineers and UX teams collaborate to assess the achievability of the planned work items and ensure they align with user experience expectations. 

5) Alignment as the core objective: PI Planning is fundamentally about aligning not just the teams involved but also their efforts and objectives. It sets the stage for a collective mission. 

6) In-person attendance (where possible): The ideal setting for PI Planning sessions is in-person, which allows direct communication and collaboration among team members. However, circumstances sometimes necessitate remote participation. 

7) Technology for distributed teams: T To accommodate distributed teams, technology comes into play, offers virtual participation, and ensures that no team is left out. 

When it comes to adopting the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), PI Planning forms the foundational cornerstone. It serves as the bedrock upon which the entire SAFe framework is built. As Scaled Agile emphasises, "If you are not doing it, you are not doing SAFe." 

In brief, SAFe, or the Scaled Agile Framework, is a comprehensive set of principles and practices carefully designed to infuse agility into large organisations, spanning all business levels and teams. This framework is tailored to enhance visibility, foster alignment, and promote collaboration, ultimately leading to heightened productivity, superior results, and accelerated project delivery. 

Whether you're diving into the full spectrum of all five SAFe levels or opting for essential SAFe components, the primary aspect of your transformation journey and the engine driving it all is the PI Planning ceremony. 

Jumpstart your Agile journey today - Explore our Agile Project Management Foundation & Practitioner (AgilePM®) Course and pave the way for your project's success! 

Importance of PI Planning 

PI Planning stands as an invaluable asset for large-scale agile organisations. It offers transformative benefits that are particularly important if we consider the magnitude of these operations. To truly grasp the impact, it's worth delving into the numbers.  

Picture this scenario: some of these mammoth organisations may comprise a staggering 200-300 teams and an army of 10,000 developers. In the traditional way of doing things, these teams often operated separately, hardly ever engaging in meaningful conversations unless a dire crisis necessitated it. 

Historically, alignment efforts were primarily directed at the leadership team level, with multiple layers of management in between. This hierarchy might have conveyed information, but it rarely offers meaningful cross-team interactions. It created an endless struggle for resources, budget allocations, and coveted opportunities to work on high-visibility projects. 

The concept of projects has often resulted in conflicting efforts. One team's release had the unfortunate tendency to disrupt the work of another team on a separate project, causing unintended clashes and setbacks. This is where PI Planning enters the stage as a transformative force. It serves as the catalyst, compelling these enterprises to bring their teams together—physically in the same room or virtually on the same call—to initiate long overdue conversations. 

But why is this shift in approach so pivotal? 

1) Systemic Impact: When working with a complex system or a shared code repository, understanding how changes affect other teams becomes important. The clarity provided by PI Planning ensures that teams can anticipate these impacts and adapt their approaches accordingly. 

2) Interdependencies: In the complex web of interdependencies, teams often find themselves needing to perform preparatory work to enable other teams to proceed smoothly with their features. PI Planning lays the foundation for these mutual adjustments, allowing for seamless collaboration. 

In essence, PI Planning introduces a fundamental shift in the dynamics of these organisations, showing in a new era of: 

1) Communication: Teams that once worked in isolation now engage in meaningful conversations, promoting a culture of information exchange. 

2) Visibility: The fog of obscurity lifts, and teams gain greater visibility into the activities of their counterparts, allowing them to plan more effectively. 

3) Collaboration: Collaboration becomes the order of the day. As teams align and share their goals, they unlock the potential for greater collective achievements. 

The outcomes are nothing short of remarkable. Teams operate with enhanced efficiency, delivering a multitude of features within compressed timeframes and, crucially, staying within budget constraints. 

PI Planning emerges as a linchpin in the transformation of large-scale agile organisations, not merely as a tactical measure but as a catalyst for a profound shift in culture and practice. 

Ready to ace your Agile interview? Dive into these essential Agile interview questions now!

Goals behind PI Planning 

PI Planning plays an important role within the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), a framework thoughtfully designed to guide agile principles into the expansive large corporations boasting multiple teams. 

Within the SAFe framework, PI Planning serves as a fundamental pillar. It offers a cohesive environment where Agile Release Train (ART) teams align, cooperate, and coordinate their actions across various dimensions, encompassing workflows, goals, and release tactics. 

However, when PI Planning is absent from the equation, teams often find themselves navigating risky waters with limited structured communication. The result? A lack of insight into the industries of other teams leads to a cascade of potential issues. For instance, two teams may unknowingly be working on distinct features, oblivious to the lurking dependency that threatens to disrupt release schedules or necessitate substantial code revisions. 

This is where the true essence of PI Planning comes into play. Its overarching mission is to assemble all your teams with strategic alignment as the guiding principle. The grand objective is to foster an environment of cross-team collaboration, thereby mitigating the risk of these potential bottlenecks and mishaps. 

Steps of PI Planning 

The steadfast rhythm of PI Planning, intricately aligned with the overarching release plan, ensures its seamless integration into the organisational calendar. This adherence to a pre-defined schedule offers multifaceted benefits—it effectively reduces the cost associated with directing these events while also enabling participants to proactively manage their other commitments, guaranteeing their presence and full engagement in these pivotal gatherings. 

Now, let's navigate through the preparation stages leading up to the PI Planning ceremony, marked by a series of pre-event steps. These steps, along with a well-structured agenda for the central ceremony, are crafted to maximise the value derived from the extensive effort dedicated to aligning teams and stakeholders. 


 

Step 1: PI Planning preparation 

The PI Planning ceremony is a well-rounded process involving pre- and post-event measures. These preparatory steps, including pre-defined roles and responsibilities, are vital in uniting team members, leadership, and stakeholders across the organisation. This sets the stage for evolving the backlog throughout the increment. 

Step 2: Readiness of the organisation 

Strategic alignment among participants, stakeholders, and business/application owners is paramount. Achieving this alignment involves understanding the scope and context of planning, gaining agreement on business priorities, and ensuring that agile teams are in place with dedicated team members, scrum masters, and product owners for each team. 

Step 3: Readiness of content 

This stage is a crucial requirement for a clear vision and context. Essential components encompass executive briefings, product vision briefings, and architecture vision briefings, all designed to provide a comprehensive understanding of the landscape. 

Step 4: Readiness of the facility 

Creating a collaborative environment, whether virtual or physical, for distributed or co-located teams is vital. It necessitates investments in technical infrastructure and focuses on key criteria, including preparing locations, providing access to technology and tools, and ensuring robust communication channels, mainly through AV equipment and presentation tools. 

Step 5: PI Planning agenda 

 Each occurrence of a PI Planning event adheres to a consistent 2-day schedule, organised with activities thoughtfully distributed across these two days. This structured approach is pivotal in ensuring that the event remains faithful to its purpose and that the intended outcomes are realised as planned.  

While the standard is set at a 2-day duration, there can be flexibility in the timeline, contingent upon the unique dynamics and configuration of each organisation and its teams. The specific requirements and complexities of the setup may influence the precise duration of the event. 

Elevate your Agile project management skills with our Agile Project Management Practitioner (AgilePM®) Course– Sign up now and upgrade your expertise! 

Benefits of PI Planning in business 

PI Planning brings a multitude of compelling business advantages, including: 


 

1) Enhanced face-to-face communication: By facilitating direct, real-time conversations among team members, PI Planning promotes open and effective communication. 

2) Unified team alignment: It serves as a powerful tool for aligning diverse teams into a cohesive and supportive model for the Agile Release Train (ART), fostering a sense of collective purpose. 

3) Goal alignment: PI Planning effectively aims for the organisational goals within the context of the business, vision, and Program Increment (PI) objectives, ensuring clarity and alignment. 

4) Improved collaboration: This event is instrumental in boosting collaboration, ultimately reducing work-in-progress (WIP) and wait times, thereby enhancing efficiency. 

5) Cultivating a culture of transparency and trust: PI Planning encourages a culture of transparency, trust, and team building, which are vital for harmonious and productive teamwork. 

6) Empowering quick decision-making: It equips teams and stakeholders with the agility to make swift and well-informed decisions, promoting efficiency and adaptability. 

Post-PI Planning 

Agile Release Trains (ARTs) are like big teams made up of smaller teams. These smaller teams work together to build and deliver a piece of a project. It helps everyone stay on track and work together to reach the project's destination successfully. After the completion of PI Planning, the next step involves assembling Agile Release Trains (ART) stakeholders from all Agile Release Trains to ensure their synchronisation. This takes place once all the ARTs have wrapped up their PI Planning for the upcoming increment. During this gathering, they reveal their plans, elucidate their goals, and reveal crucial milestones and anticipated timelines. 

Within Post-PI Planning, a planning board comes into play, which outlines the capabilities, dependencies, and milestones for each iteration and ART. It also focuses on capabilities rather than features. This event serves as a forum for deliberating potential issues and risks, which are collectively addressed through ownership, resolution, acceptance, or mitigation strategies. Plans undergo rigorous scrutiny and undergo a first-of-five vote of confidence, iteratively refined until consensus is achieved, with attendees typically averaging around three fingers or more. 

Common challenges and how to overcome them 

The well-regarded Agile manifesto firmly advocates for the supremacy of face-to-face communication. Yet, the realities of today's globalised and geographically dispersed teams often challenge this ideal. In such instances, the virtual PI Planning sessions are tailored to accommodate distributed teams. Due to the interdependent nature of this event, it is important that all participants are not only present but fully engaged and attentive throughout the entirety of the event. 

Still, PI Planning doesn't always go smoothly, especially the first time, and the framework itself can be challenging for some organisations. Here are some common mistakes and challenges to be aware of and try to avoid: 

1) Long, tedious sessions: PI Planning often involves long and heavy sessions right from the beginning. Finding ways to make these sessions more engaging, delivering important business context information differently, or adjusting the schedule to make them shorter can be beneficial. This leaves more time for team planning and collaboration. 

2) Technical issues: Technical problems can affect any event, but when you're streaming audio and video to a distributed team, it can disrupt the flow of the event. Testing equipment and connections thoroughly before the event can help minimise potential issues. 

3) Confidence vote: Some participants may find the concept of a confidence vote challenging. They might feel pressured to vote in favour of a plan rather than voicing their concerns. 

4) Time constraints: When you have a large Agile Release Train (ART) with many teams, presenting and reviewing draft plans for all of them can be time-consuming. This can result in lower-quality feedback compared to smaller ARTs with fewer teams. 

5) Commitment to the process: SAFe and PI Planning aren't flawless, but they have been successful for many organisations. It's essential to follow the framework's recommendations and fully commit to the process. 

6) Using outdated tools: If your current tools aren't working well, it's important to make changes. For instance, traditional SAFe Program Boards may not always be practical. If your post-it notes keep falling off, data in Jira doesn't seem right, or your distributed team needs a digital solution, consider upgrading to a digital program board like Easy Agile Programs. 

Conclusion 

PI Planning is like the foundation of a project when it comes to organisational activities. Although it might seem complex, especially with many people and viewpoints, it's all about teamwork. By understanding this method of Planning, teams can come together to tackle common challenges, deal with dependencies, and work concurrently to create the most efficient software solutions. 

Architect your Agile success – Register now for our SAFe® For Architects Training and become a certified SAFe for Architects!