Program Increment Planning (PI Planning) is a structured, periodic event designed to align multiple development teams toward a common vision and shared objectives within large organizations. This structured approach fosters transparency across various functional groups, ensuring that all efforts contribute directly to the overarching organizational strategy. By bringing hundreds of stakeholders together simultaneously, the event minimizes conflicting priorities and synchronizes complex workstreams. The preparation and execution of this planning session establish a predictable rhythm for value delivery in the enterprise.
Defining Program Increment Planning
Program Increment Planning is formally recognized as the foundational event within the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), providing the necessary structure for large-scale coordination. This event serves as the primary mechanism for an Agile Release Train (ART)—a group of teams—to define, commit to, and communicate the work for the upcoming timebox. A Program Increment (PI) typically spans 8 to 12 weeks, representing a fixed duration during which the ART delivers continuous value. The planning event itself is usually a fixed two-day exercise, ensuring a dedicated effort to synchronize all contributing teams toward a unified mission and set of business outcomes.
The Core Purpose of PI Planning
The underlying purpose of this planning session is to forge a shared understanding of business priorities among all participating teams and stakeholders. Meeting simultaneously allows teams to directly address and eliminate cross-team dependencies, which are complex items where one team’s work relies on another’s completion. This interaction promotes deep collaboration, allowing developers, product owners, and architects to negotiate implementation details in real-time. The process secures a collective commitment regarding the scope of work, creating a unified view that prevents organizational silos and ensures focus on agreed-upon business goals.
Key Roles and Participants
Successful execution of the planning event requires the dedicated involvement of several specialized roles, each contributing a distinct perspective.
- Release Train Engineer (RTE): Acts as the primary facilitator, preparing the agenda, guiding the flow, and driving the event to its stated objectives.
- Product Management: Responsible for presenting the prioritized features and the vision for the upcoming increment, translating customer needs into actionable work items.
- System Architects and Engineers: Provide necessary technical guidance, ensuring that proposed solutions are architecturally sound and feasible across the entire system.
- Business Owners: Attend to define the business value of the work and assign weights to the objectives the teams create.
- Agile Teams: Comprise Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and Developers. Scrum Masters manage timeboxes and identify dependencies, Product Owners represent the backlog, and developers estimate the required effort.
The Essential Steps of the PI Planning Agenda
The planning event follows a structured, two-day agenda designed to maximize alignment. The first day begins with a series of presentations that establish the context and define the scope of the planning session.
Setting the Stage: Business Context and Vision
Executive leaders initiate the process by presenting the current state of the business, outlining recent performance and market shifts that influence strategy. Product Management then presents the Solution and Product Vision, detailing the highest-priority features for the upcoming increment. This step ensures participants understand the “why” behind the work, grounding technical tasks in real-world business outcomes. Finally, the System Architect presents the architectural vision and any technical constraints or enablers teams must consider.
Team Breakouts and Draft Plan Creation
Following the context setting, Agile teams move into dedicated breakout sessions to begin their detailed planning. Each team estimates its capacity for the increment, accounting for holidays, training, and potential support work. Teams pull prioritized features into their local backlogs and break them down into executable user stories. They identify and document dependencies where their work intersects with other teams. Teams also formulate their initial PI Objectives, which are high-level business value statements summarizing intended outcomes. A management review session assesses the draft plans to identify capacity issues, feature gaps, or unaddressed dependencies that need immediate attention. Feedback from this review is used for refinement and necessary adjustments in a second round of breakouts.
Finalizing the Plan and Confidence Vote
The second day focuses on resolving issues surfaced during the draft review and finalizing the commitment. Teams work to address all remaining dependencies and risks, coordinating directly with affected teams to find solutions or workarounds. Once plans are refined, each team presents its finalized PI Objectives and any remaining risks to the entire Agile Release Train. This collective presentation ensures transparency and validates alignment with overall program goals. The final step is the Confidence Vote, where every team member votes on their confidence in the team’s ability to deliver its objectives. This vote uses the “fist-of-five” method, typically requiring a score of three or higher to proceed. If confidence is low, reasons are discussed, leading to scope adjustments until commitment is achieved.
Critical Outputs and Deliverables
The conclusion of the planning event results in several concrete artifacts that guide the subsequent development cycle.
- Team and Program PI Objectives: Measurable, high-level statements detailing the business value teams intend to deliver. Program Objectives are aggregated outcomes for the entire Agile Release Train, while Team Objectives outline specific contributions. These objectives are later scored based on their actual business impact.
- Program Board: A large, visual representation of the entire increment’s plan. It maps feature delivery against iterations and explicitly shows documented dependencies between teams, used throughout the increment to track progress and manage coordination.
- Program Risks: A consolidated list of risks identified during breakouts. These are systematically analyzed and categorized using the ROAM technique: Resolved during the planning, Owned by a specific individual, Accepted as a known risk, or Mitigated by creating a plan to reduce their probability or impact.
Preparation and Logistics for Successful PI Planning
The success of the planning event depends heavily on the quality of the preparation completed in advance. A primary requirement is a fully groomed and prioritized Program Backlog, where features are clearly defined, estimated, and sequenced by Product Management. Without a ready-to-pull backlog, teams will spend precious planning time defining scope instead of breaking down work. Securing the attendance of Business Owners is also necessary, as their presence is required to define business value and participate in objective scoring. Logistical considerations must address both physical and virtual environments, especially for globally distributed teams. This includes arranging adequate space for visual planning or setting up virtual tooling that supports collaborative, real-time whiteboarding and dependency mapping. Ensuring reliable technology, internet bandwidth, and necessary supplies is paramount for a seamless experience.