What is PI Planning?

A successful PI planning meeting agenda should include the following information:

The business owner starts by describing the current state of the business. They’ll share the company’s vision for the future and outline how existing business solutions address current customer needs.

Product management then presents the current vision. This is often represented as the next 10 product features or the most pressing items in the product backlog. The product manager then highlights any changes from the last PI planning session.

The RTE presents the planning process and outlines the expected outcomes.

Participants break away into their teams to estimate the capacity for each iteration. The teams then create a draft plan outlining each iteration. This session is timed (use Miro’s Timer to manage this).

Teams present their key planning outputs, including their capacity, PI objectives, risks, and dependencies. Other teams review all the draft plans and provide feedback.

Draft plans often present challenges to overcome, such as limited scope, capacity, resources, and conflicting dependencies. Management spends some time figuring out how to address these challenges. The RTE keeps this meeting on track.

Before launching any new iterations, it’s important to identify potential risks. Teams categorize these risks into one of five categories. The first category is Resolved, which means the entire team agrees that there’s no longer a risk. The second category is Owned, meaning someone takes ownership of managing an unresolved risk. The third category is Accepted, which includes risks that are unavoidable and simply need to be understood and accepted. The fourth category is Mitigated, where teams figure out how to reduce the impact of a risk. Finally, the fifth category is Confidence Vote. The confidence vote in PI planning allows teams to vote on how confident they are that the team will meet the objectives after addressing all the risks.

Teams then rework their plans and address potential risks to achieve as high a confidence level as possible.

In the final stage of the meeting, the RTE leads a brief retrospective. They’ll cover what went well, what didn’t, and what can be improved for the next session. The amount of time you assign to each of these areas is up to you. There’s no right or wrong but bear in mind that it’s harder for team members to maintain focus if they’re attending the meeting virtually. Allow for enough breaks throughout the session to keep them motivated and engaged.