Big Room Planning (BRP) is a structured, periodic event designed to align large groups of teams working toward a shared solution. It serves as the primary method for ensuring that the efforts of many independent teams converge on the highest business priorities. By bringing all necessary personnel together, BRP establishes a unified direction and ensures that dependencies and risks are transparently identified before development begins. This coordinated approach is foundational for achieving predictable flow and delivering complex products.
Defining Big Room Planning
BRP is a cadence-based, generally two-day event where all teams within an Agile Release Train (ART) collaboratively plan the next iteration of work. It is frequently known as Program Increment (PI) Planning, especially within the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). This event mandates the physical or virtual attendance of every team member, product manager, and stakeholder. The goal is to create a shared, detailed plan for the upcoming Program Increment, which typically spans eight to twelve weeks, integrating technical and business perspectives across the entire solution.
Core Objectives
The fundamental purpose of BRP is to establish a shared understanding of the business context and product vision among all participants. This alignment ensures that every team channels its capacity toward organizational goals that provide the greatest value. A primary objective is the early identification of cross-team dependencies, where one team’s work relies on another’s output. Mapping these connections at the beginning of the cycle allows teams to proactively manage potential bottlenecks and scheduling conflicts. BRP also drives the creation of committed Program Increment Objectives, translating high-level features into concrete, measurable goals that provide a clear focus for the upcoming period.
Key Participants and Roles
The BRP requires the participation of several distinct roles, each contributing a specific perspective necessary for comprehensive planning.
- Business Owners and senior management provide the initial strategic context, presenting the current state of the business and financial guardrails for the work.
- Product Management and Product Owners detail the near-term product vision and prioritize the features to be planned.
- Agile Teams (developers, testers, and analysts) are the core planners, estimating capacity and breaking down features into manageable stories.
- The Release Train Engineer (RTE) handles facilitation and overall coordination, acting as the chief scrum master for the entire ART.
- Scrum Masters support their respective teams by ensuring timeboxes are met and internal team processes are followed throughout the planning sessions.
The Big Room Planning Agenda and Process
Day One: Establishing the Vision and Context
The first day begins with high-level presentations designed to synchronize the entire group on the direction for the next planning cycle. The opening session starts with the Business Context, often delivered by a senior executive, explaining current business performance and strategic themes. This is followed by the Product/Solution Vision presentation from Product Management, detailing the top features and capabilities for the Program Increment. The final context presentation is Architectural Guidance, where system architects outline non-functional requirements, technical constraints, or necessary enabler work. This sequence ensures that planning activities are grounded in both business reality and technical feasibility.
Day One: Team Breakouts and Dependency Mapping
Following the initial context setting, teams move into the first major breakout session to begin detailed planning. Each team estimates its capacity for the upcoming iterations, accounting for holidays, training, and support work. Using this capacity, teams pull prioritized features from the program backlog, break them down into user stories, and assign them to specific iterations. As teams plan, they actively identify cross-team dependencies. These dependencies are physically visualized on a Program Board, which uses strings or sticky notes to illustrate the flow of feature delivery across teams and iterations.
Day Two: Draft Plan Review and Management Adjustments
The second day commences with the Draft Plan Review, where each team presents a summary of their initial plan to the ART and stakeholders. This presentation includes the draft PI Objectives, planned capacity utilization, and a summary of identified program risks. Stakeholders, including Business Owners and Product Management, review these draft plans to ensure alignment with business expectations and technical integrity. This review often leads to a Management Adjustments meeting, where leadership resolves resource conflicts, re-prioritizes misaligned work, or provides further guidance on technical scope. This mid-event correction prevents teams from continuing to plan based on flawed assumptions.
Day Two: Final Plan Review and Confidence Vote
After incorporating management adjustments, teams finalize their iteration plans, refine their PI Objectives, and prepare for the final review. A structured risk-handling discussion follows, using the ROAM technique to categorize and plan for program-level risks:
- Resolved (No longer an issue).
- Owned (A specific person takes responsibility).
- Accepted (Tolerated without mitigation).
- Mitigated (A plan is developed to reduce impact).
The event concludes with a Confidence Vote, where every team member anonymously votes on their confidence level in the plan. A low collective confidence score often triggers a re-planning session to address lingering concerns and ensure full commitment before the Program Increment begins.
Critical Outputs and Artifacts
The BRP culminates in the generation of several tangible artifacts that guide the work for the subsequent Program Increment. The primary output is the set of Program Increment (PI) Objectives, which are business-oriented summaries of the technical features teams intend to deliver. These objectives are scored by Business Owners to assign a measurable business value, clarifying the relative importance of each goal. The Program Board is a large physical or digital display that visually maps planned feature delivery and highlights all cross-team dependencies. This board serves as the single source of truth for the flow of work. Finally, the prioritized list of Program Risks, categorized using the ROAM model, is documented to ensure all known threats have an associated action or owner.
Benefits of Adoption
Implementing a regular BRP cadence significantly improves communication and fosters trust across organizational silos. By requiring interaction, the event breaks down barriers between teams and functional areas, leading to transparent discussions about technical challenges and business priorities. The early identification of dependencies and risks reduces late-stage rework and integration issues. Teams resolve integration conflicts in minutes during the event rather than days or weeks later in the development cycle. The commitment established through the Confidence Vote ensures that all participants feel ownership of the final plan, leading to higher morale and increased predictability in delivery.
Setting Up for Success
A successful BRP requires significant preparation in advance. The prerequisite for effective planning is a well-refined and prioritized Program Backlog, ensuring features are clearly defined and ready for teams to break down into stories. Logistical preparation is equally important, whether securing a large physical space with ample wall space and supplies, or configuring virtual collaboration tools for distributed teams. Business Owners must be briefed and prepared to present the business context and score the final PI Objectives, as their participation is necessary for effective prioritization. The RTE and Scrum Masters must also prepare the agenda and planning materials, ensuring all necessary infrastructure is in place. For remote BRPs, selecting and preparing collaboration tools that replicate the real-time interaction of a physical room is crucial for maintaining effectiveness.