PI Planning Ceremony

Help your development and product teams overcome the challenge of over coordinating the team and provide a goal for each team or team member. Using the SAFe method, each team or team member works on a specific part of a broader goal. Ideal for #agileteams

Steps
5
Last edited
Mar 9, 2022
Created by
Nova

About this process

Help your development and product teams overcome the challenge of over coordinating the team and provide a goal for each team or team member. Using the SAFe method, each team or team member works on a specific part of a broader goal. Ideal for #agileteams You will have a meeting and invite your teams and all the key stakeholders. Together you will review the "backlog", break down all the features, identify all the risks and dependencies, and determine what direction the team will take next. Usually, Agile teams meet every 8-14 weeks to do this. The PI Planning ceremony is part of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), for that reason this tool is ideal for Agile teams. Benefits: Establishes face-to-face and direct communication between all the stakeholders. Empowers teams to stay productive and on track. Implementation of cross-Agile Release Team (ART) collaboration. Risk evaluation Team consensus and alignment Align the development team with business goals (keep in mind the company's vision, team skills and objectives) Identifies dependencies and overcome barriers simultaneously Stay productive Duration: This is a big ceremony and extremely important for Agile teams so this ceremony usually takes between 3 hours to 3 days. The average is 1 day.

The process in detail

5 steps
  1. 1

    Prepare the board

  2. 2

    Backlog

  3. 3

    PI Planning Ceremony

  4. 4

    Discuss & plan next steps

  5. 5

    Session Debrief (Optional)

Read the full text
1. Prepare the board

Open the board and customize it based on your preferences. Make sure you provide some information about your organization, your customer pains, and key macro and microenvironment updates. Here a few suggestions: Maybe you need to add the name of your team, add additional teams or change the colors on the board to better reflect your branding. Schedule a meeting. Program Increment Planning can sometimes be a big ceremony, or it can be a rapid planning session. Some teams spend 8 hours and other teams spend 2 or 3 days in which the entire team comes together to evaluate what needs to get done.

Work on the whiteboardPI
2. Backlog

Add your product backlog to the board. This can be done by one person or by every team/department. Make sure everything is in this section before your start the meeting.

Work on the whiteboardPI
3. PI Planning Ceremony

Introduction: Someone in the team should provide information about what is new, and provide background about the current situation and customer needs. You may link this session to a storyboard session, secondary research, or persona board. Start the discussion and make sure the backlog is complete. Add additional features to the backlog. Sticky notes or cards to the iteration board/program board: Each sticky note represents a Feature or Enabler from each team’s Program and Solution backlog. It is a good idea to give Enablers and Features different colors. In the “special” lanes at the top and bottom, the sticky note instead represents what is relevant for each team (a milestone, for example). Discuss the Iteration board (also known as the program board). Move forward to the ROAM board and start evaluating risks. The ROAM board has four categories where you evaluate and organize your features/items based on the type of risk. 1. Is the sticky note resolved? Is the risk is not a problem? 2. Would someone take ownership? Would a team member take ownership of the item even if the item was not resolved in the meeting? 3. Would you accept the risk? Everyone agrees that the risk cannot be resolved so it has to be understood and accepted for what it is. 4. Can you mitigate the risk? Create a plan to eradicate the risk. Vote of confidence: Once all the risks have been organized by those 4 categories, a vote of confidence is taken each team member. Make sure every team and team member understands their goals. Tips: Make sure you are using the right color code. Program board: Make sure your teams are organized by dependency. Organize teams based on their dependencies - add a team that depends on another team below that team (the parent team)

Work on the whiteboardPI
4. Discuss & plan next steps

Usually, teams get together and plan their next milestone/sprint. You can start the discussion here or link this session to a new session

Work on the whiteboardPI
5. Session Debrief (Optional)

What are the take-aways? What went really well? What can we improve next time? What information needs to be shared with others? How?

Write a note
PI
  • Background & Vision Wall
  • Provide information about the customer, the macro and microenvironment, etc
  • Start typing here...
  • ROAM Board
  • Backlog
  • ROAM is a method to help you manage and evaluate risks effectively. These are the four categories the risks are put into and which are further described below: 1. Resolved, Owned, 3. Accepted, and 4.Mitigated. After all the risks are set in one of the categories, everyone needs to vote. This step is known as the vote of confidence. If team members are in the same location, team members can raise their hands and with their fingers indicate if the risk is worth working on or not. Otherwise, each category has a color. Anything less than 3 fingers suggest that the risk needs to be addressed and worked on.
  • Vote of confidence
  • This is a sticky note and you can make any sticky-note into a task.
  • 1
  • 2
  • Resolved — The risk is not a problem
  • 3
  • Owned — A member of the team takes ownership of the item as it was not resolved in the meeting
  • 4
  • Iterations
  • 5
  • Iteration Name/Number
  • Iteration Name/Number
  • Iteration Name/Number
  • Iteration Name/Number
  • Team
  • Ex: Blue team
  • Mitigated — Formulate a plan to eradicate the risk
  • Accepted — The risk cannot be resolved so it has to be understood and accepted for what it is
  • Add name here
  • Add name here
  • Add name here
  • You can also organize it using these colors or the link:
  • Capability
  • Significant dependency
  • Milestone/Major Goal
  • A
  • B
Use this process
Capabilities
Fully editableAdapts as work changesAdd more sessions anytimeAI can be assigned
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Created byNova·Official process
Last edited Mar 9, 2022·5 steps