Why your PI Planning sucks & 9 Tips to make it better for Agile Teams

Practical tips from the trenches to be more prepared, aligned & more interactive!

What is PI Planning?

This is an event where multiple teams get together to plan their next program increment. A program increment is usually the deliverables set out for the next increment, which is usually 12 weeks. It usually involves gathering many teams and stakeholders into a large area, virtual or physical, so they can collaborate, line up their dependencies and deliveries, and create a plan for the next quarter to commit to.

The goal of PI planning is to improve collaboration, create alignment of all of the teams commitments and interdependencies, and improve transparency while doing all of this.

PI Planning is largely associated with SAFe - but it may not necessarily be, many teams who don’t use SAFe may also have a form of PI planning as described above.

What we aren’t going to talk about

Is PI planning a quarter of work agile? We have our opinions as everyone else does. The purpose of this article is not to open this can of worms, but to help the person who has just landed in a new company or team, and then is tasked with running a PI Planning session. We don’t always get to pick the perfect job in the perfect company - and we may have to start off with something we may not particularly enjoy.

As a side note: we have seen many teams work in a very rigid, up front, micro managed way using PI planning, with Stakeholders pressuring teams to make unrealistic up commitments and then breathing down their necks into a fixed scope, fixed date death march.

We have also seen some teams who have been working very well, and who have used PI Planning as a strategic planning session for the next quarter, who focus on outcomes rather than rigid deliveries, and who have the autonomy to self organise themselves around the problems and opportunities they want to go after. Granted - the first case is much more common - but the point stands, we’re not here to debate whether PI Planning is good, bad or ugly - we’re here to help those who are in the PI Planning trenches and would like a little help to make it successful :)

Bob only has crappy brushes, but they are the only brushes he has, so shut up & help him use those crappy brushes!

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How to have the best possible session

There are many guides out there, but these are some of the things we have seen and tried that have helped improve the quality of PI Planning sessions. The aim at the end of the day is to have a well organised session, that adds value to everyone that has attended. We want them to walk away thinking that was a worthwhile exercise to do, and they feel more confident about the plan for the next quarter than before it.

So with that said - here are 9 tips to think about and help to prepare for a great PI Planning session.

Tip 1: Establish a Ubiquitous Language

Depending on how well the teams work together, there may be lots of different terms bouncing about.

Things we will want to be clear on:

- Who our customers and users are

- Terms we use when talking about product goals and success measures

- The terminology we use when describing the work. Do some teams say Epic, some say Feature, some say work package?

- It can really help to define the work item descriptions, particularly with how they are defined in terms of size. For example: we may want to give guidance on work items like, a Story might be 12 days of work or less; an Epic might be made up of 5-10 stories; an Initiative might be made up of 5-10 Epics.

We may want to make it clear that PI Planning is about the Epic level for the next quarter.

- Dependencies are a core part of PI Planning - provide clarity on how to describe inbound and outbound dependencies, how to request them, and how to interlock them.

Tip 2: Get the owner of the puzzle to turn up & explain the big picture

There is likely a reason why all of the teams have been asked to collaborate in one PI Planning session; they likely need to work together and support common product(s). The teams are trying to get their pieces of a puzzle to build the big picture.

Who is owning that big picture? What is the overarching strategy for that big picture? And what does the leader or leadership have in mind for these teams? Is there a larger goal or something that needs to be achieved, and requires all of the teams to work together? Do we have high level measurable outcomes we want to achieve? If there is a strong direction for the next quarter, try to make this really clear from the outset.

Who owns it? Who can present this and make it clear in the PI Planning session?

Tip 3: Get the bottom up Strategy

All of the teams likely have ownership over either their own components or products. There may well be a strategy at the local team levels as well.

Ask all of the teams to be very clear on being able to articulate their strategy and why they think it will deliver their intended value, so they can go into PI Planning and negotiate and change things around if needed.

If teams have not come together before, there is a chance that the local level strategies may not quite line up - so they may have to collectively decide which strategies they will back and which ones they will adjust.

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