Show
Introduction to PI Planning: A Quick OverviewProgram Increment (PI) Planning is a cadence-based, face-to-face event that serves as the heartbeat of the Agile Release Train (ART), aligning all the teams on the ART to a shared mission and Vision. PI planning is essential to SAFe: If you are not doing it, you are not doing SAFe. DetailsFind a Course:Implementing SAFe 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 this involves physical collocation, and these large scale PI planning events now take place within many enterprises around the world. They have clearly shown real financial ROI, not to mention the intangibles that occur when the team of Agile teams creates a social construct that is personally and collectively rewarding. It may not always be practical for the entire Agile Release Train (ART) to collocate however, and in our current times COVID-19 has created a situation where this isn’t an option. While physical face to face planning has its benefits, the unwritten SAFe ‘rule’ is “the people who do the work plan the work.” When physical presence is not possible, real time, concurrent, virtual, face to face planning has now proven to be effective. Indeed many ARTs have been successful in creating a hybrid situation where several teams join remotely, as shown below in Figure 1. 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 Program Increment (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 place over two days, although this is often extended to accommodate planning across multiple time zones. Business Benefits of PI PlanningPI planning delivers many business benefits, including:
Inputs and Outputs of PI PlanningInputs to PI planning include:
A successful PI planning event delivers two primary outputs:
PreparationPI planning is a significant event that requires preparation, coordination, and communication. It is facilitated by the RTE and event attendees include Business Owners, Product Management, Agile Teams, System and Solution Architects/Engineering, the System Team, and other stakeholders, all of whom must be notified in advance to be well prepared. The active participation of Business Owners in this event provides an important Guardrail on budgetary spend. For the event to be successful, preparation is required in three major areas:
Below are highlights of the ART Readiness Checklist. (The full checklist is provided in the SAFe PI Planning Toolkit, available to SPCs). Organizational ReadinessBefore 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:
Content ReadinessIt’s equally important to ensure that there is a clear vision and context and that the right stakeholders can participate. Therefore, the PI planning must include:
Logistics ReadinessPreparing an event to support a large number of attendees isn’t trivial. For physically collocated planning this can include securing and preparing the physical space. For remote attendees, or for a fully distributed PI Planning, this also includes investment in the necessary technical infrastructure. Considerations include:
Standard AgendaThe 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. Figure 2. Standard two-day PI planning agendaDay 1 Agenda
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 (e.g., 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 goals that the ART may not be able to deliver. The teams also add the features and associated dependencies to the program board, as shown in Figure 3. Figure 3. Program board showing features and dependencies
In multi-ART Solution Trains, a similar event may be held after the first day of planning to resolve cross-ART issues that have come up. Alternatively, the RTEs of the involved trains may talk with each other to raise issues that are then resolved in each 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
Each team conducts a ‘fist of five’ vote. If the average is three fingers or above, then management should accept the commitment. If it’s less than three, the team reworks the plan. Any person voting two fingers or fewer should be given an opportunity to voice their concerns. This might add to the list of risks, require some re-planning, or simply be informative. Once each team has voted the process is 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
After the planning event is done, the RTE and other ART stakeholders summarize the individual team PI objectives into a set of program PI objectives (Figure 7) and use this to communicate externally and to track progress toward the goals. Product Management uses the program PI objectives to update the roadmap and will improve the forecast for the next two PIs, based on what was just learned. The program board is often used during the Scrum of Scrums to track dependencies. It may, or may not, be maintained (manually) after planning is complete. This depends upon the Agile project management tooling in place and the needs of the ART. Teams leave the PI planning event with a prepopulated iteration backlog for the upcoming PI. They take their team’s PI objectives, iteration plans, and risks back to their regular work area. Program risks remain with the RTE, who ensures that the people responsible for owning or mitigating a risk have captured the information and are actively managing the risk. Most important, the ART proceeds to execute the PI, tracking progress and adjusting as necessary to the changes that occur 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. This is fresh input for the iteration planning processes that follow. Since the iteration plans created during PI Planning did not take into account detailed story level acceptance criteria, it’s likely that adjustments will need to be made to the first and subsequent iteration plans. Figure 7. Program PI objectivesSolution Train PI PlanningThis 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 a Pre-PI Planning event, which sets the context and provides the inputs for the individual ART PI planning events. A Post-PI Planning event follows ART PI planning and is used to integrate the planning results of the ARTs that contribute to the solution. Figure 8. Pre and Post-PI PlanningThe Innovation and Planning Iteration article provides an example calendar for accommodating Pre- and Post-PI planning events. Learn More[1] Leffingwell, Dean. Agile Software Requirements: Lean Requirements Practices for Teams, Programs, and the Enterprise. Addison-Wesley, 2011. [2] Kennedy, Michael. Product Development for the Lean Enterprise. Oaklea Press, 2003. Last update: 10 February 2021 The information on this page is © 2010-2022 Scaled Agile, Inc. and is protected by US and International copyright laws. Neither images nor text can be copied from this site without the express written permission of the copyright holder. Scaled Agile Framework and SAFe are registered trademarks of Scaled Agile, Inc. Please visit Permissions FAQs and contact us for permissions. © 2022 Scaled Agile, Inc. All rights reserved. What happens at the end of PI planning?Post-PI Planning happens after all the ARTs have completed their PI Planning for the next increment. They present the plans, explain their objectives, and share milestones and expected timelines.
Which statement correctly describes one aspect of the team's commitment at the end of PI planning?This is Expert Verified Answer. The statement that describes an aspect of the team's commitment at the end of PI Planning is to maintain predictability with uncommitted objectives.
Who votes at the end of PI planning?Confidence Vote is an activity done in the Program Increment Planning session after the risk assessment has been done. It is when all the team members sit together and raise their hand and with their fingers, vote their level of confidence on the PI Objectives being completed.
What is the default method used to vote at the end of PI planning?Arguably the most important part of PI planning is the confidence vote. Here's how it works: The RTE asks, “will we meet our objectives?” Then everyone in the room votes by raising a hand showing a number of fingers expressing their level of confidence (5 fingers = very confident, 1 finger = not confident).
|