Whether you apply agile methods or not, and whether you are doing IT project management or not, the concept of Program Increment Planning may be of interest to you.
The result: longer projects that are better paced, teams that are better aligned and more motivated, and deadlines that are better respected.
But you still need to know how to prepare and manage a PI Planning effectively...
Good news: here, experts in the field have put together their best practices in this field for you, so that you know what you need to do before, during and after your PI Planning.
Ready to get started with the implementation? Thanks to our experts, you will save a lot of time and avoid the pitfalls that they themselves may have encountered.
Let's start by recalling a short definition of what a PI Planning (Program Increment Planning) is, also called Planning Interval Planning since version 6 of SAFe.
A PI Planning is a ceremony, originally defined in the SAFe agile framework, whose objective is to collectively plan the work to be done over a period of time called “Program Increment”.
This meeting allows you to respond to a need for team alignment, in particular in the context of the management of transversal and interdependent projects. You make hidden dependencies emerge quickly. It also helps to anticipate and avoid bottlenecks, and to give teams a long-term perspective to motivate them. Do your teams lack meaning? Embarking on the IP planning adventure is a good way to remedy it!
In the traditional SAFe agile approach, a Program Increment lasts 8 to 12 weeks.
However, its timeframe must be adapted to that of your organization. For example, you can set a PI for one quarter - but that doesn't prevent sprints from always maintaining the same pace of agility, with more frequent deliveries from the development team.
And to successfully carry out your own PI Planning, let's go and discover the different steps to take!
Preparation: this is the first key to the success of a PI Planning. The following steps will help you arrive well-equipped for your meeting.
As a first step, the Project Manager, Product Manager, Product Owners, and all project stakeholders should prepare a clear vision and goals for the next Program Increment.
So start by collecting and identify business priorities with business owners and the expected results for this PI.
Also consider prepare a clear vision that governs projects. This is crucial in order to make sense of team work. For example, it may be the company's more or less long-term strategy, or the risks of not carrying out projects successfully. The intervention of top sponsors of the organization may be required and prepared so that they themselves can carry out the major strategic changes.
Second, it is a question of collecting all the information you will need during the Program Increment Planning. Objective: to obtain a precise vision of what has already been done, and to project yourself into each other's missions during the next PI.
For this:
To help you prepare your PI Planning, AirSaaS has developed the quarter plan and prioritization functionalities. Discover the tool now!
The success of a Program Increment Planning is also dependent on the presence of the right stakeholders at the meeting.
Ensure that all teams, Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Product Owners, Business Managers (business owners in Newspeak SAFe), architects, and managers participate.
In particular, the following must be present:
The positive and pragmatic state of mind of the participants needs to be worked on as much as the guest list. Take time up front with skeptics, address their fears, and identify their complexities. Supervise the Jean-Michel Jamais Content, if necessary by preparing with their direct manager and by making a smart deal: a personal challenge cracked against general moderation.
A single person can damage the impact of an IP, especially in the first few implementations. Don't be cuddly.
Logistics is one of the key elements for a PI Planning to go as smoothly as possible.
First, make sure that the participants (the Project Manager, Product Owners, Product Owners, Product Managers, Scrum Masters, and Business Owners) are available by the specified date. The Lord of La Palice couldn't have said it better, but checking twice is good. Mark the days of the PI Planning in their agenda at least two months in advance.
If these people have to travel for PI Planning, make sure of the schedules, or the proximity of a hotel.
Tips Airsaas : In best practices, check if the dates set well in advance do not allow your guests to plan team meetings or other meetings on the previous or following days. A deal with the local hotel is always that at the expense of the budget.
In a second step, be sure to book a room adapted to PI Planning if it takes place in physics. It should be able to contain all participants. Provide ancillary rooms to deal with problems that may appear during the session. Also, think about the most suitable seating plan: who should be near whom to carry out the exchanges successfully?
Finally, Plan a detailed agenda, including the duration of each session, and share it beforehand (as well as the PI Planning instructions) with all stakeholders.
Are you opting for PI Online? Don't underestimate the complexity of logistics. Rooms, video quality, collaborative software for workshops... Tests and a dress rehearsal the day before seem essential. We personally do not recommend conducting your PI Plannings remotely!
To succeed in your PI Planning, you need to have a well-oiled methodology, but also the appropriate tools to prepare and follow your schedule. Without this type of tool, you can quickly lose sight of everyone's commitments, or the dependencies between projects.
That's where the Airsaas platform comes in.
Thanks to Airsaas, business IT teams and businesses have a pragmatic, clear framework to align their efforts with your organization's strategy.
Interested in the solution? Discover Airsas, and request your demo now.
Let's go for a tough day or two! Here's how to get out of it with a well-paced, realistic and motivating Program Increment for all your stakeholders.
The Release Train Engineer (RTE), the meeting facilitator, does The introduction of the meeting. It presents the PI Planning agenda, goals and expectations. Once the event is launched, each team gets ready to start planning in detail.
Do not entrust this task to Jean-Paul Malaisant or Christine Tourne-en-Rond... do you see the risk?
Then comes the time to Program Increment vision presentation. Key stakeholders, such as the Product Manager and those responsible for the various areas, present the goals of the PI, its vision, the road map and the strategic priorities. This allows teams to understand the direction to take based on expectations.
Invite business owners, business managers, even big bosses if necessary. Give the necessary weight to these interventions, which are the raison d'être of your event. You will avoid the over-complexities inherent in our complicated projects and products. Put business back in the center of the village.
Finally, the RTE Show the backlog, functionalities and their prioritization in detail.
In the second half day, the team planning workshops are launched. Each agile team meets to plan the functionalities they will deliver during the PI. This involves detailing each user story, or milestone and estimating the effort required.
At this stage, the role of the Scrum Master is essential. It facilitates discussions, helps resolve bottlenecks and prioritize them.
During these workshops, teams should also identify and manage dependencies between features or milestones - for example by using a visual chart or a tool, like Airsas and its smart views timeline that allow them to be visualized and made understandable to everyone.
At the end of the planning, the teams meet to present their plans to the other participating teams. The objective: validate dependencies, clarify open questions and adjust plans as needed.
Any dependencies identified during the presentation of plans should be clearly managed, either through plan adjustment or through inter-team coordination work. Teams work together to manage conflicts or shared priorities.
The next step in PI Planning is to identify potential risks and obstacles that could compromise the success of the Program Increment.
During the third half day, each team also works on actions to mitigate identified risks, and offers solutions. Risks are generally ranked in order of priority (for example, according to their probability and impact).
Risks that are historical and visible to all must be one of the objectives of these IPs. Working as a team to return to your silo as dry as possible is beta.
During the last half-day of PI Planning, the plans are finalized. Each team shares their plans and receives feedback from Business Owners, who validate them.
Once the adjustments have been made, the teams are committed to their plan. This can be done through a vote of confidence, or another mechanism to ensure that teams are aligned and that dependencies have been taken into account.
If the vote of confidence is very low, it is possible to have to do new work on the plans. But don't worry: this situation is extremely rare.
At the end of the PI Planning, it is essential to carry out a retrospective for Discuss what worked well and what can be improved in the process. To do this, you can conduct a ROTI. This helps to make future iterations more efficient and to adjust the process for future PI Plannings. Long live the logic of continuous improvement!
DAKI also works, and is natively included in The Airsaas platform. Easier if you are already equipped.
Your Program Increment Planning is over. What are you doing now? If you follow the SAFe methodology, most of the steps to follow are described in the comprehensive framework documentation. If you're not familiar with the process, here's what to do.
Gather all Program Increment goals and plans, and communicate them to the various stakeholders. Everyone must know what they have to do, in what time frame, to organize their team in the best conditions for success.
Your plan in a hidden Sharepoint will not be useful. Opt for simple solutions that make your plans understandable and available to teams and bosses.
You did not deploy all this energy, mobilized so many brains, to keep the inputs for yourself.
Throughout the PI, ongoing monitoring is required to ensure that teams stick to the plan and that obstacles are removed quickly.
To do this, set up the necessary rituals:
During PI Planning, you created high quality data on your projects and products: make sure that this data is used continuously by everyone.
The pitfall encountered by many teams, the news remains on posts it on Miro or on a flipchart taken with photos, and six months later, we start again to identify dependencies or risks that we had already removed.
You are now ready to launch or optimize your next Program Increment Planning!
Thank you again Elodie Clémentine and Michel who took the time to share their best practices with us.
Are you planning to opt for a quarterly PI planning that is more focused on cross-cutting projects and products? Discover how Airsaas supports its customers in the preparation, animation and monitoring of their PI Planning or quarter plans.
