PI Planning in Agile: A Clear Guide to Running a Better Planning Event

PI planning agile can sound like a big, formal process. It doesn’t have to be. At its core, PI Planning is a structured way for teams to agree on what they will build next, why it matters, and how they’ll work together to deliver it.

If you’ve ever watched teams start a quarter with good intent, then drift into mixed priorities, surprise dependencies, and last-minute chaos, you already know why planning matters. PI Planning gives you a reset point: clear goals, shared dates, and fewer surprises.

This guide explains what PI Planning is, who’s involved, how the event works, and how to avoid the most common traps. You’ll also get practical checklists you can use right away.

What PI Planning means (in plain English)

PI stands for Program Increment. A Program Increment is a fixed time box (often 8-12 weeks) where teams deliver a set of outcomes. PI Planning is the event where everyone aligns on the plan for that time box.

PI planning agile comes from the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), where multiple teams work on one product or value stream. But you don’t need to run full SAFe to use the event. Any org with many teams, shared systems, and cross-team dependencies can benefit from a focused planning session.

If you want the formal definition and intent, SAFe lays it out clearly in its guide to PI Planning.

When PI Planning helps (and when it doesn’t)

PI Planning helps most when:

• More than one team ships parts of the same product
• Teams share services, APIs, data, or release trains
• Work depends on other teams or vendors
• Leaders need a reliable view of what’s likely to ship and what might not
• You’re tired of learning about conflicts two days before release

PI Planning is less useful when:

• One small team owns the whole product end to end
• You already plan well and have few dependencies
• The event becomes a theatre show where nothing changes afterward

The key is intent. PI Planning should reduce uncertainty, not hide it.

The goals of PI planning agile

A good PI Planning event produces a few concrete outputs:

• A shared set of PI objectives (what each team aims to achieve)
• Visibility into dependencies, risks, and capacity limits
• A rough plan across iterations (not a day-by-day schedule)
• Commitment based on reality, not hope
• Team-to-team agreements: “We will deliver X by date Y so you can do Z”

What it should not produce: a detailed spec for every story, or a plan that assumes no one gets sick, nothing breaks, and no priorities change.

Who should attend PI Planning?

PI planning agile works because the right people sit in the same room (or same video call) and solve problems live.

Core attendees

• Delivery teams (developers, testers, designers, analysts)
• Product owners and product managers
• Scrum masters or team coaches
• Architects or senior engineers who can speak to system constraints
• Business owners or stakeholders who can answer “why this now?”

Helpful supporting roles

• Security, compliance, and privacy partners (especially for regulated work)
• Ops, SRE, platform, and release management
• Customer support or sales engineering (they bring real customer pain)

If decisions require someone who isn’t there, you’ll lose time and the plan will rot fast. Invite the people who unblock decisions.

PI Planning format: what happens during the event

Most orgs run PI Planning over two days. Some run it in one long day. Remote teams often split it across shorter blocks to reduce fatigue.

The event has a rhythm: set context, draft plans, surface problems, fix them, then commit.

Step 1: Set context and constraints

Start with the “why” and the limits. What are the top business goals? What deadlines matter? What capacity do teams really have?

• Product vision and top priorities for the PI
• Key milestones (launches, compliance dates, seasonal demand)
• Known constraints (frozen windows, staffing gaps, major tech work)

Keep this part short. If leaders talk for 90 minutes, you’ve already lost half the room.

Step 2: Team breakouts and a first draft plan

Teams plan their work across iterations. They identify dependencies, sequence work, and draft objectives.

This is also where teams face reality. If a team’s plan assumes infinite capacity, this is the moment to fix it.

Step 3: Dependency and risk review

Teams review cross-team dependencies and risks with the wider group. This part often exposes uncomfortable truths, which is exactly the point.

For risk language, many groups use a simple ROAM approach: Resolve, Own, Accept, Mitigate. If you want the official SAFe framing, the ROAM risk technique page explains it.

Step 4: Plan adjustments and negotiation

Teams change plans based on what they learned. They trade scope, shift sequencing, or ask for help.

This is where leaders must behave well. If leaders punish teams for raising risks, teams will hide risks next time.

Step 5: Final objectives and commitment

Each team shares its PI objectives and the key dependencies. Then the group commits to the plan based on what’s known today.

Commitment isn’t a promise that nothing will change. It’s a shared agreement that the plan is the best option given the facts.

What are PI objectives (and how to write good ones)?

PI objectives describe outcomes, not tasks. They should read like something you can verify at the end of the PI.

Good PI objective examples

• Reduce checkout failures by 20% by fixing the payment retry flow and adding monitoring
• Enable account recovery by SMS for 80% of users in supported regions
• Launch the new pricing page and measure conversion impact for two customer segments

Weak PI objective examples

• Work on performance
• Build API improvements
• Do tech debt

If you can’t tell whether it’s done, rewrite it.

How to prepare for PI planning agile (the part that decides success)

Most PI Planning problems start before the event. People show up without clear priorities, without refined work, and without basic capacity info.

A simple prep checklist for product and leadership

• Define the top goals for the PI in plain language
• Bring a ranked list of features or outcomes, not a grab bag of ideas
• Clarify what’s fixed date and what’s flexible scope
• Ensure stakeholders can attend or respond quickly during planning

A simple prep checklist for teams

• Review last PI: what slipped, what surprised you, what helped
• Estimate capacity with honesty (vacations, on-call load, support duties)
• Refine the highest priority work enough to plan it
• List likely dependencies before the event

If you struggle with “refine enough,” use a definition of ready that fits your team. Scrum.org has a clear explanation of what teams often mean by Definition of Ready.

Practical ways to run a smoother PI Planning

Use timeboxes and stick to them

Planning expands to fill the time you give it. Use a visible timer. Park side issues and assign owners.

Make dependencies visible early

Don’t wait until the end to discover that Team A needs an API from Team B in week 2. Capture dependencies during breakouts, then review them as a group.

Many teams track dependencies on a shared board. If you use Jira, Atlassian provides a solid overview of Agile planning concepts and practices that can help you choose a simple workflow.

Plan to learn, not to guess

Some work contains real uncertainty. Admit it. Add spikes or short discovery work, then plan the delivery work after you learn.

Keep objectives small enough to finish

If every objective is huge, you’ll ship half of each and feel like you shipped nothing. Slice work until objectives fit in the PI.

Protect capacity for the unplanned

Bugs, incidents, and “quick questions” always show up. If you plan at 100% capacity, you plan to fail.

Want a practical rule of thumb? Track your last few sprints and see how much time went to unplanned work. Then reserve space for it in the PI plan.

Remote PI Planning: how to make it work

Remote PI planning agile can work well, but it needs structure. Energy drops faster on video calls.

Remote tips that actually help

• Split the event into shorter blocks across two or three days
• Use one shared board everyone can edit
• Assign a facilitator to manage time and questions
• Use breakout rooms for team planning, then bring teams back for reviews
• Write decisions down as you make them

For the shared board, pick a tool your teams already know. Many teams use Miro for planning boards and dependency mapping. Their PI Planning guide includes example layouts you can copy.

Common PI Planning mistakes (and how to avoid them)

Turning PI Planning into a status meeting

If teams spend most of the event reporting, not planning, you’ll get a weak plan. Keep status updates short. Put time into trade-offs and sequencing.

Letting one team plan in isolation

In a multi-team setup, isolation creates hidden conflicts. Encourage teams to talk early, especially when they share services or release dates.

Confusing commitment with certainty

Plans change. That’s normal. The real failure is hiding change until it hurts. Use regular check-ins during the PI to update objectives and manage scope.

Skipping follow-through after the event

PI Planning isn’t a two-day ritual. It’s the start of a PI. If you don’t track objectives and dependencies, the plan becomes shelfware.

After PI Planning: keep the plan alive

Right after the event, do three things while the context is fresh:

1. Publish team PI objectives in a place everyone can find
2. Capture top dependencies with owners and target dates
3. List the top risks and what you decided to do about each one

Then keep checking progress. Many orgs use a short weekly or biweekly sync to review objectives and raise new risks. Keep it tight. Focus on decisions and blockers.

Does PI Planning fit with “real” Agile?

Some people hear “PI Planning” and worry it means big upfront planning. It can, if you do it poorly. Done well, it supports core Agile ideas: alignment, fast feedback, and honest communication.

Agile principles favor working software, close collaboration, and responding to change. The Agile Manifesto principles make that clear. PI planning agile should support those principles by helping teams coordinate and deliver, not by locking them into a rigid script.

Conclusion

PI planning agile works when you treat it as a problem-solving session, not a performance. Bring clear priorities, plan with real capacity, surface dependencies early, and write objectives that describe outcomes.

If your teams leave PI Planning with shared goals and fewer unknowns, you’ve already won. The rest comes down to steady follow-through: track objectives, manage risks, and adjust as you learn.