PI planning - Program board template

Use this template to create a visual summary of the goals, features, risks, dependencies, and timelines defined in the program increment plan.

Program Increment Planning — or PI Planning — is an iterative exercise part of the SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) that allows all Agile Release Train (ART) collaborators to align on goals, workflows, and releases included in the next PI.

The PI planning template helps teams:

• Achieve a higher level of agile team alignment to the larger business context

• Collaboratively create a clear roadmap and prioritize work items

• Increase transparency and build trust between teams and stakeholders

• Create a forum to come together and work towards common goals

How to use the program increment planning template

Before the teams come together for the PI planning iteration, be sure to have a few things prepared:

• Create a program board: from this template and create a dedicated room in Mural to hold all the resources from the upcoming sessions.

• Create one team board per team: In the dedicated room, add one team board per team that'll participate in the PI planning process.

• Edit the template: Delete any elements from the template that don’t suit your team’s needs and adapt the remaining elements to a format that best suits your team. This template should serve as a jumping-off point.

• Lock content to the background: Before sharing your mural, right click to lock all content to the background to avoid elements being moved during the session.

Step 1: Define the PI objectives

Define the objectives of the program increment by creating a high-level summary of the business and technical goals that an agile team or train intends to achieve in the upcoming session.

Be sure to list out objectives, not features. Draft objectives by thinking about the problems that are being solved for the user (better, faster, cheaper). Think of features as being the solutions to those problems.

Step 2: Fill out the program board

The program board highlights new feature delivery updates, feature dependencies between teams, and milestones.

Once teams have completed their planning in the team boards, the whole group comes together to conclude their dependencies and delivery dates in the program board.

• ‍PI Planning Program Board: Create a visual summary of the goals, features, risks, dependencies, and timelines defined in the program increment plan.‍

• PI Planning Team Board: Estimate the capacity of each team to accomplish the tasks in each iteration. You'll need one per team who participate in the planning.

Step 3: Complete the ROAM board

Identify program risks and impediments that could impact your ability to meet your objectives. These need to be discussed and addressed with honesty and transparency, then categorized into one of the following categories: resolved, owned, accepted, and mitigated.

Step 4: Hold a confidence vote

Rate your confidence in being able to deliver on your PI plan by using the voting function in Mural. Each participant gets one vote to cast.

Step 5: Export your PI planning board

After the session, clean up the board and record action items, following up from any unanswered questions that remain after the session.

Tips for a PI planning session

• Be sure to add any resources needed for the PI planning event to the Mural beforehand. This can be links, screenshots, PDFs, and more!

• For recommendations on how to make the PI planning sessions run smoothly, check out Mural’s guide to PI planning for hybrid and remote teams.

• Once the session is over, transfer learnings and action items quickly and efficiently into Jira.