Template
PI planning (day one) template
The first day of a programme increment planning event in SAFe: where the business is going, then every team drafts its plan for the next eight to twelve weeks and shows its risks.
The agenda, with a time for each part
- Business context60 min
- What has changed in the business since the last increment?
- Product vision and top features90 min
- Which features matter most, and why now?
- What would make this increment a success?
- Architecture and how we build45 min
- What technical changes do the teams need to know about before they plan?
- Planning rules and how today works15 min
- How much capacity does each team really have?
- Team breakouts, first round180 min
- What can we commit to, iteration by iteration?
- What do we depend on another team for?
- Draft plans shown60 min
- Which objectives are at risk, and why?
- Management review of problems30 min
- What do we change — scope, people or dates — so the plan works?
How the notes read afterwards
A made-up example, so you can see the shape. In a real call each line carries the words that were said and who said them.
Context. Two large customers want single sign-on before they renew in the spring.
Draft plan, payments team. Three objectives; the third depends on the identity team finishing in iteration two.
Risk. The identity team is two people short until January.
Management decision. The reporting feature moves to the next increment to free two engineers.
Running it well
- Get the capacity numbers before the day. Teams that discover their holidays at 2pm plan for people who will not be there.
- Put every dependency on the shared board with both teams' names on it. A dependency only one team knows about is a surprise in week six.
- The managers' review at the end of the day is where trade-offs are made. Bring the people who can actually cut scope.
Ways to change it
When to skip it. If the train has fewer than three teams, a quarterly planning meeting is enough.
Questions
What is PI planning?
A two-day event every eight to twelve weeks in the Scaled Agile Framework, where all the teams on a release train plan the next increment together.
Who attends PI planning?
Every member of every team on the train, plus product management, architects, the release train engineer and the business owners.
What comes out of PI planning?
Each team's objectives for the increment, a board of features and dependencies, a list of risks and a vote of confidence in the plan.
What happens in the room
Everybody joins from the link, with no account. The agenda sits beside the call and each item fills in with what was said about it, under the name of the person who said it.
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