Why do we do PI Planning?

The Program Increment (PI) Planning event is essential to the Scaled Agile Framework®. PI Planning ensures that the teams are working on the right thing at the right time.

The PI Planning event occurs during the last iteration of a Program Increment, which is often three to four iterations in length. During the PI Planning event, everyone from the Agile Release Train (ART) gathers (either in-person or virtually)* to synchronize, discuss, and align to the shared vision, business context, architecture guidance, UX guidelines, dependencies, and constraints, risks, and the roadmap. The PI Planning event also builds the social network necessary to enable decentralized decision making for inevitable future challenges.

The PI objectives for the upcoming PI are discussed and understood. Committed and non-committed PI Objectives enable a coordinated effort towards shared work. This enables product managers to communicate realistic expectations to customers.

By synchronizing the program or portfolio on a regular cadence, the enterprise reduces effort that adds no genuine value through the continuous re-prioritization of backlog work. This allows teams to commit to work in the next PI that responds to customer feedback.

*If you are interested in learning more about PI Planning, download our Release Train Engineer Starter Guide. We have lots of recommendations, including how to hold virtual PI Planning Events.