SAFe Program Increment: 8 best practices for a successful PI Planning
You manage a project portfolio, and you keep running into the same problems: you plan every step ahead of time, yet your projects stall for lack of available resources or because of dependencies that were hard to anticipate.
It doesn't have to be this way! What if you took inspiration from the agile approach known as the SAFe "Program Increment" to solve these issues?
Here's what a PI is, along with the keys to running your next PI Planning smoothly.
What is a SAFe Program Increment (PI)?
First things first: a quick refresher on what a SAFe PI actually is.
SAFe PI & PI Planning: what are we talking about?
A PI, or Program Increment (renamed Planning Interval in SAFe version 6), is a fixed timebox during which teams (also called an "Agile Release Train", or ART, in the agile method) plan, build, test and gather feedback on a solution they are developing. We talk about the "SAFe PI" because the Program Increment concept belongs to the agile framework known as SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework).
Throughout the timebox of the SAFe PI, the train plans, implements, evaluates and adjusts the solution being developed, through successive iterations.
By the SAFe book, a PI lasts between 8 and 12 weeks. However, if you're not applying the framework to the letter, you can perfectly well adapt that cadence to your company's — for example, by deciding that a PI lasts one quarter. That doesn't stop the development team from keeping the principle of shorter sprint iterations and more frequent releases.
One of the key moments of a Program Increment is PI Planning. It's a collective ceremony designed to plan the entire PI in advance — collaboratively, with every stakeholder involved in developing the solution.
A PI Planning session thus brings together all the key players of the Agile Release Train, namely:
- Product Management (including the Product Owners)
- The Scrum Masters
- The business representatives
- The project sponsor
PI Planning can be applied to software development, but also to any type of project portfolio.
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The benefits of a well-run PI Planning
Whether you follow the SAFe agile methodology "from the book" or are simply looking for a more effective project management practice, PI Planning can bring you major benefits.
A well-organized SAFe PI notably lets you:
- Clearly define your strategic priorities, by aligning all your projects' stakeholders
- Foster collaboration, especially on cross-functional projects
- Get a clear, realistic view of your projects, by setting measurable objectives — the best way to avoid the tunnel effect
- Boost the engagement of every stakeholder, which helps your business transformation move forward
- Anticipate risks and blockers, by identifying dependencies between projects: ideal for tackling the lack of agility most companies face
- Enter a continuous improvement loop, thanks to valuable feedback from the different teams
- Accelerate value delivery — the consequence of all the previous benefits!
PI Planning pushes every stakeholder to ask the right questions about the value tied to the project. During the discussions, the focus is on why we're doing this project, what the priorities are, and how to identify and manage dependencies. This process lets everyone see that project management is transparent, not arbitrary, and puts responsibilities back where they belong.
8 essentials for a successful PI Planning
No need to read the Agile Manifesto to launch your own SAFe PI approach! With the following tips, you can adapt the SAFe methodology to your organization.
Have a clear view of your strategic priorities
Even before your PI Planning starts, you need a precise view of your project's strategic priorities — and, on a broader scale, of the environment it's deployed in.
Leadership or the Business Owners must define and communicate the objectives of the SAFe PI. It's the job of whoever organizes the PI Planning to go and ask all the business leaders involved what their strategic priorities are, and which points of tension they'll want to address during the meeting.
The project vision is what expresses, in the short or longer term, where we collectively want to go. It might be a new regulation to comply with, projects the company is heading towards, competitors entering the market… It can involve elements that won't necessarily impact the upcoming SAFe PI, and elements both positive and negative. The ultimate goal of the PI vision is to get every stakeholder on board for the long run, and have them all pull in the company's direction.
Also take the time to look into your product roadmap. Medium-term priorities must be established to guide the teams in their planning. You need to have the features in mind, and have them prioritized. Just make sure they are mature, feasible, understandable and sized.
Anticipate potential blockers
If possible, before your PI Planning, start identifying the blockers that could come up during the discussions.
- Analyze the risks, by preparing a project risk matrix.
- Anticipate bottlenecks, by identifying potential dependencies between teams. These interdependencies will be discussed during the PI Planning.
- Prepare answers to the technical questions, and anticipate the project's external constraints.
The working material ahead of a PI Planning is essentially a project backlog — a project portfolio, pre-sorted with a macro-level prioritization and a rough, ballpark estimate of the effort. And when capacity is a concern, it can be worth trying to identify, upstream, which bottleneck might emerge.
Organize flawless logistics
Logistics are essential to a smooth PI Planning. The idea: put everyone in the best possible conditions to project themselves into the upcoming SAFe PI period.
To do so:
- Pick a date when every stakeholder is genuinely available.
- Plan the meeting's detailed agenda, dedicating enough time to each session, and share that agenda beforehand.
- Choose an appropriate space, one that allows working as a large group and in smaller teams. If your PI Planning takes place remotely, set up the appropriate video-conferencing tools. If it's in person, prepare a seating plan that encourages constructive exchanges.
Clarify everyone's roles and responsibilities
A collective planning session means getting everyone in tune with their role beforehand.
Remember to spell out each stakeholder's responsibilities ahead of the PI Planning:
- The Release Train Engineer (RTE) coordinates and facilitates the PI Planning, guiding the participants' exchanges.
- Product Management defines the priorities and the features to build.
- The Scrum Master helps the agile teams prepare their plans and remove blockers.
- The Business Owners provide strategic direction and validate the teams' objectives.
Communicate about the PI Planning ahead of time
Beforehand, make sure you spell out the rules of the PI Planning — but above all, help everyone understand its purpose and benefits!
Ahead of the PI Planning, you have to sell this process as a weapon of war. Everyone must be ready to "burn the ships": each person has to commit to the approach, with no turning back. To do that, you need to create engagement through a strong act of communication — publishing posts on the intranet, for example. To launch a PI Planning, we even once published an article in a leading external media outlet to detail the process: ideal for building engagement.
Lean on the benefits covered in the first part of this article to build your case. And don't hesitate to highlight the budget benefits of this type of project management either.
The SAFe PI process gives you better control over a project's budget. With a PI Planning, everything comes into view: capacity as well as the budget to allocate to each stage. It gives everyone (including the CFO) visibility into how the budget envelope is being used, and how its use is prioritized over the period.
Support the shift in project culture
While development teams are often already used to working with the agile SAFe PI approach, or to thinking in terms of features, business teams are less often seasoned in such fine-grained planning.
The PI Planning process therefore calls for real change management, with everything that entails: communicating the benefits of the process, lifting each person's reservations and, above all, putting techniques in place to plan better…
The big difficulty, especially for business teams, is managing to break the product down into finer features, so the deliverable fits within the Program Increment period. That requires driving a culture change. Everyone must understand that we're not building a monolith — the product has to be sliced up to meet production deadlines. There are a few tactics for that: slicing by geolocation, starting with one affected region first. Slicing the product into smaller products (the car's tires before the cabin). Slicing by population, for example with an 80/20 Pareto-style segmentation of the affected population…
Foster a climate of fully transparent exchange
Being more agile is, above all, operating in a climate where teams feel free to share their constraints and concerns, so everyone can move forward together. And that applies during the PI Planning too!
One of the keys to success: use collaborative tools that let everyone plan as a team. Team boards, a dependency board and a risk board should be set up to keep everyone aligned throughout the exchanges.
And be careful to clearly spell out the rules of the PI Planning right at the start of the meeting. Don't hesitate to go as far as explaining which post-it colors to use on each board, depending on whether you're talking about features, user stories, risks…
The PI Planning facilitator, the RTE, is someone you choose for their facilitation skills. They must be a good speaker and know how to manage their fatigue (because a PI Planning is exhausting!). They need a few techniques up their sleeve to call for silence, cut off the overly talkative, keep the timing under control… RTEs often sit in on other PI Plannings to prepare.
Use the right tools
The success of a PI Planning doesn't rest on the method alone. The tools you choose also play a decisive role. Without meticulous preparation and structured follow-up, this crucial step can quickly lose effectiveness: dependencies are poorly managed, commitments lack clarity, and teams drift off course.
That's where Airsaas comes in. Ahead of the session, the solution facilitates assessing team capacity, prioritizing the essential features and identifying critical dependencies. This anticipation provides a precise big-picture view, letting you frame the objectives and effectively mobilize every stakeholder around what's achievable over the quarter.
During the PI Planning, Airsaas simplifies the planning itself. Strategic decisions become instantly visible, commitments are formalized, and trade-offs are made easier. No more juggling multiple tools or spreadsheets: everything is centralized on an intuitive platform, making information accessible and actionable in real time.
And once the PI Planning is over, Airsaas ensures continuous follow-up. The commitments made are monitored, project progress is tracked precisely, and the necessary adjustments can be made quickly, as the context evolves or surprises arise.
With Airsaas, you give your business and IT teams a clear, structuring framework that fosters better coordination and guarantees permanent alignment with the company's strategy.
With these tips for organizing your PI Planning well, you're ready to set up an iterative project management process!
Looking for a project governance platform to help you prepare and run your next SAFe PI? Discover Airsaas, the favorite tool of PMOs and CIOs, helping them visualize their macro roadmap and per-team capacity in real time.
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