PI Planning Template
Clarify features, identify dependencies, and decide what stories to develop.
About the PI Planning template
What is PI planning?
PI planning or “program increment planning” is a method for strategizing toward a shared vision among teams. In a PI planning event, teams, stakeholders, and project owners are assembled to review a program backlog and determine what direction the business will take next. Typically, organizations carry out PI planning every 8 to 12 weeks.
PI stands for “program increment” and it’s part of Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). It’s a process of breaking down features, identifying risks and dependencies, and deciding what stories to develop.
Benefits of PI planning
PI planning can be useful in a number of ways, and teams in various different industries apply the PI methods to boost efficiency and productivity.
Establish face-to-face communication
One advantage of PI planning is that it forces all the various stakeholders and teams on a project to meet face-to-face and talk about the overall mission and goals. This is the crucial first step towards aligning all the different parties towards the same mission and goals.
Boost productivity
PI planning fosters cross-team and cross-Agile Release Team (ART) collaboration and establishes a clear backlog and schedule for when tasks should be completed. With teams syncing and communicating in the right way and focused on their own goals, overall team productivity improves.
Align team goals
One of the main goals of the PI planning process is to set clear goals and ensure that all stakeholders and team members are working towards that goal. Making sure that everyone understands and shares the same goal is the foundation of a unified team effort.
When to use PI planning
PI planning is part of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), which is designed to help development teams overcome the challenge of coordinating among teams, processes, and programs. In the SAFe model, teams are assembled into Agile Release Trains (ARTs), each of which works on a specific part of a broader goal.
To engage in PI planning, the Agile Release trains are brought together every 8 to 12 weeks. A PI planning event is an opportunity to step back and ensure everyone is still working toward the same business goals and is satisfied with the overall vision.
Create your own PI plan in 5 steps
Miro’s whiteboard tool is the perfect canvas to create and share your PI plan. Get started by selecting this PI Planning template.
Step 1: Bring everyone together
Make sure all stakeholders, teammates, and project owners are present for the first all-hands planning session. For remote PI planning, you might choose to use video conferencing tools, which are widely used now.
Step 2: Survey the business context
Next, an executive describes the context in which the business is operating, including the competitive landscape, customers, and potential customers. Check in with other team members to address any questions.
Step 3: Clarify team goals
Now, the team comes together to articulate the vision for the product or solution. How are you filling customer needs? How have market changes impacted your ability to do so?
Step 4: Allow time for team breakouts
Once everyone is aligned on the overall vision, agile teams should have the opportunity to get together in breakout sessions for focused discussions. Specifically, teams should make sure they are all working toward the company’s shared vision. Brainstorm what you can do better or differently.
Step 5: Draft a plan
Bring all these components together in a project management document for management and teams to review.
Get started with this template right now. It’s free
Example Mapping
To update your product in valuable ways—to recognize problem areas, add features, and make needed improvements—you have to walk in your users’ shoes. Example mapping (or user story mapping) can give you that perspective by helping cross-functional teams identify how users behave in different situations. These user stories are ideal for helping organizations form a development plan for Sprint planning or define the minimum amount of features needed to be valuable to customers.
Value Chain
First coined by Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter, the value chain analysis helps your team evaluate your business activities so you can find ways to improve your competitive advantage. A value chain is a set of activities that a company performs in order to deliver a valuable product from start to finish. The analysis itself allows your team to visualize all the business activities involved in creating the product—and helps you identify inefficiencies, bottlenecks, and miscommunication within the process.
T-Chart
T-Charts can help you compare and contrast two different ideas, group information into different categories, and prove a change through “before” and “after” analysis. T-Charts are visual organizational tools that enable you to compare ideas, so you can evaluate pros and cons, facts and opinions, strengths and weaknesses, or big-picture views versus specific details. Designers and content creators can use T-Charts to turn possibilities into actionable ideas. T-Charts are useful for discussing differences and similarities with your team or clients and can help you to reach a decision together.
Strategic Planning
Whenever you need to define your goals and figure out the steps you’ll need to take to accomplish them, you’ll benefit from a Strategic Planning template. The Strategic Planning template guides you and your team through exercises to help you assess your current situation, determine their goals for the future, and develop a plan to help them get there. Generally, strategy considers the goals or reasons for doing something while planning refers to the specific actions you’ll take in order to achieve a specific goal. But with strategic planning, you’re considering both at the same time.
Buyer Persona
You have an ideal customer: The group (or few groups) of people who will buy and love your product or service. But to reach that ideal customer, your entire team or company has to align on who that is. Buyer personas give you a simple but creative way to get that done. These semi-fictional representations of your current and potential customers can help you shape your product offering, weed out the “bad apples,” and tailor your marketing strategies for serious success.
Project Planning
A project plan is a single source of truth that helps teams visualize and reach project milestones. Project plans are most useful when you outline the project’s “what” and “why” to anyone who needs to give you project buy-in. Use a project plan to proactively discuss team needs; expectations; and baselines for timeline, budget, and scope. The plan will also help you clarify available resources before you kick off a project, as well as expected deliverables at the end of the project.