The program board is the primary tool that helps visualize work during PI (Program Increment) planning. It serves as a shared, high-level snapshot showing each team’s planned features, their expected completion across sprints, and the dependencies connecting work across teams. But the program board is just one of several visual tools teams use during PI planning to make scope, risks, and commitments visible to everyone in the room.
The Program Board
The program board is the centerpiece of PI planning visualization. In a physical setting, it is a large wall-mounted board with columns representing each iteration (sprint) in the upcoming program increment and rows representing each team on the Agile Release Train (ART). Teams place feature cards along their row in the sprint where they plan to deliver each piece of work.
What makes the program board especially useful is how it surfaces dependencies. When one team’s feature relies on another team completing something first, a connector line (traditionally a piece of yarn or string) is drawn between the two cards. Red lines or markers typically flag timing conflicts, where a dependency is needed before the delivering team plans to finish it. This makes sequencing problems immediately obvious, so teams can negotiate adjustments on the spot rather than discovering conflicts weeks later.
In a digital environment, tools like Jira Align replicate this with a “Program Room” view that displays each team’s workstream, expected completion dates, dependencies, and feature status in real time. Connector lines appear automatically between related items, and red lines indicate timing conflicts between dependent work items. You can toggle these connector lines on or off to get a cleaner view when the board gets crowded, without losing the underlying dependency data.
Team Breakout Boards
Each team also works with its own iteration-level planning board during breakout sessions. This board replaces the big poster board traditionally taped to a wall, showing individual user stories organized by sprint. Stories move through columns representing their state of completion, following a Kanban-style layout.
These boards let each team plan at a more granular level than the program board allows. While the program board tracks features across the entire ART, the team board tracks the stories that make up those features. In digital setups, these boards integrate directly with the team’s project management tool, so cards placed during planning are immediately available as the team begins executing work after the event ends.
The ROAM Board for Risks
PI planning surfaces risks that could threaten the increment’s success, and the ROAM board is the visual tool used to organize and track them. ROAM stands for four categories: Resolved (the risk has been eliminated), Owned (someone has accepted responsibility for addressing it), Accepted (the risk is acknowledged but no action will be taken), and Mitigated (steps have been put in place to reduce its impact).
The ROAM board is typically structured as a grid or Kanban-style board with four columns, one for each category. During PI planning, teams collaboratively assess each identified risk and place it in the appropriate column. This keeps risks visible to the entire ART rather than buried in meeting notes. An important distinction: risks that a single team resolves on its own ROAM board don’t need to be escalated to the program-level ROAM board. Only risks that affect multiple teams or the broader program stay on the shared view.
Objectives and Action Tracking
PI objectives, the specific business outcomes each team commits to delivering during the increment, need their own visual space. Teams draft these objectives during planning and present them for review. An objectives grid displays each objective alongside its planned business value, giving leadership and stakeholders a clear picture of what the ART intends to accomplish and why it matters.
Alongside objectives, an action items grid captures tasks that must be completed, who owns each one, and which program increment they belong to. This is especially valuable during the management review and problem-solving session near the end of PI planning, when open issues need owners and deadlines before the event wraps up.
Supporting Tools for Remote PI Planning
When PI planning happens virtually, several layers of tooling work together to maintain the visual collaboration that makes the event effective.
- Video conferencing with breakout rooms replicates the physical experience of teams splitting into separate spaces for iteration planning and then reconvening for broader reviews. The ability to automatically move participants back to the main session keeps the event flowing on schedule.
- Shared documentation platforms host the preparatory content that frames the planning event: executive briefings, product vision statements, architectural guidance, and the planning agenda itself. Structuring this content in a central, searchable space lets participants review and comment asynchronously before and during the event.
- A planning playbook consolidates logistics like the daily agenda, working agreements, contact information for team leaders, and which communication channels to use for different purposes. This may sound like an administrative detail, but for a remote event involving dozens or hundreds of people, it prevents confusion that would otherwise eat into planning time.
How These Views Work Together
Each of these visual tools addresses a different dimension of the same planning challenge. The program board answers “what is each team delivering and when.” Dependency lines answer “where does work cross team boundaries.” The ROAM board answers “what could go wrong and how are we handling it.” The objectives grid answers “what business outcomes are we committing to.” And the team breakout boards answer “how does each feature break down into executable work.”
During the event itself, these views feed into each other. A dependency flagged on the program board might reveal a risk that goes onto the ROAM board. A risk on the ROAM board might generate an action item on the objectives grid. A story on a team board might expose a cross-team dependency that needs a new line on the program board. The visual tools create a feedback loop that surfaces problems while there is still time and collective energy to solve them.