SAFe FAQ: How Much Detail Should Teams Go Into at PI Planning?
FAQ about the Scaled Agile Framework. What is a PI Plan? What is the output of PI Planning? What are planning horizons?
One of the most frequently asked questions I hear about SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) practices is “How much detail should teams go into during PI Planning?”
Knowing precisely what level of detail teams should be getting into during their Team Breakout sessions can be difficult. To help answer this question I explore some theory:
- Planning horizons
- The PI Planning event as a timebox
- The outputs of PI Planning
And then discuss some common SAFe practices
- Iteration Planning during Team Breakouts (PI Planning event)
- Iteration Planning during the PI (8–12 week period)
Planning horizons
Planning horizons propose that time is linked to uncertainty, as time increases so does the level of uncertainty, therefore our plans should reflect this. Short-term plans can be made with a higher level of detail, while longer-term plans should be less defined.
This approach to planning reduces the risk of waste that can occur with large upfront planning which is vulnerable to changes in the market, new learnings, etc, while still providing a longer-term view via high-level roadmaps.
SAFe advocates planning using a five-level planning horizon. The five planning levels span from a single day to multiple years in the future.
The PI Plan is a relatively mid-range plan. It covers an 8–12 week period. Therefore the plan’s level of detail or granularity should be mid-level.
What this looks like in practice is (1) a set of features, with some breakdown to story level to aid capacity planning, (2) milestones and significant cross-team dependencies mapped to features, and (3) a set of higher-level PI objectives that summarise the team’s goals.
I’ll discuss these specific outputs in more detail later in the article, but the key to take from this section is that mid-level planning horizons require mid-level planning detail!
The PI Planning event as a timebox
The PI Planning event is typically a two-day timebox (sometimes slightly longer if your ART is distributed) to plan 8–12 weeks’ work. However, the time allocated for the Team Breakout sessions (when the planning actually occurs) is approximately 5 hours. This should give you some idea of the intended level of detail.
If your PI Planning events are significantly longer or shorter than two days you might not be planning at the level that SAFe is designed for.
Scrum Master/Team Coach facilitation tip: Help ensure that your teams do not get ‘stuck in the weeds’ (lost in detail) during the Team Breakout sessions. If the team is spending too much time discussing a feature try asking “Is this the most valuable conversation to have right now or should we move on?”
Teams should do some type of feature-level exploration/discovery/refinement before PI Planning. They should not be discussing features for the first time during the planning event. However, they should not be planning before the event either. PI Planning is designed to be a synchronous, collaborative planning event. Teams risk having to replan if they pre-plan before the event.
The outputs of PI Planning
Another way of thinking about this is to look at what SAFe defines as the two primary outputs of a successful PI Planning event:
- Committed PI objectives — Each team creates a set of SMART objectives with the business value assigned by the Business Owners
- ART planning board — Highlighting the new feature delivery dates, feature dependencies among teams, and relevant milestones
PI Objectives are a summary of business and technical goals for the PI. SAFe suggests 7–10 committed and 2–3 uncommitted per team as a rough guide.
The ART planning board visualises the work as features and connects them to milestones, and any significant cross-team dependencies. The level of planning detail here is again very much in the mid-range.
What is important to note here is that the primary output of PI Planning is:
- Alignment of business goals and objectives
- A mid-level plan identifying features and milestones
- Cross-team dependencies visualised
The output is not:
- 5 x 2-week finalised Iteration Plans
- A 10-week or quarterly plan with fully drafted stories/tasks
Iteration Planning during Team Breakouts (PI Planning event)
As established above, team Iteration Plans are not one of the primary outputs of PI Planning. However, PI Objectives and the ART planning board are both undoubtedly derived from the teams’ draft Iteration Plans that are created during PI Planning.
SAFe advises that during the Team Breakouts “teams estimate their capacity for each Iteration and identify the backlog items they will likely need to realize the features. Each team creates draft plans, visible to all, iteration by iteration.”
SAFe refers to backlog items in the quote above, but they do specify stories elsewhere, “which are small and must be completed in a single iteration”.
Tip: Some teams that I have worked with fill their draft Iteration Plans with larger stories, 3–5 points, which they break down further during their actual Iteration Planning events, once the PI is underway.
Iteration Planning during the PI (8–12 week period)
SAFe describes three inputs into Iteration Planning:
- The Team Backlog, which includes stories identified during PI Planning that were tentatively assigned to iterations, newly identified stories, tech debt, maintenance, etc
- PI Objectives, which serve as a summary of goals for the PI
- Feedback from System Demos and prior iterations, including stories that did not meet the definition of done (DoD)
So as you can see these Iteration Plans are not fixed. The output of PI Planning is one of the inputs to Iteration Planning, along with any newly identified stories, new backlog items arising as feedback from stakeholders, and incomplete work from the last iteration.
Tip: I often find that the team plans for Iterations One and Two closely resemble what was discussed in PI Planning, while Iterations Three and Four tend to diverge. This is a good illustration of planning horizons and uncertainty.
Summary
Defining the exact level of detail that teams should plan during PI Planning is not straightforward, and can depend on the level of uncertainty in your context. However, I would generally advise creating:
A mid-level plan covering 8–12 weeks that includes:
- Some user stories tentatively assigned to draft Iteration Plans ✔️
- A set of committed PI Objectives ✔️
- Features, milestones, and significant cross-team dependencies mapped on an ART planning board ✔️
- The expectation that you will collectively make adjustments to your plans during daily Team Syncs and at Iteration Planning ✔️
I would advise against:
- Creating a highly detailed 8–12 week plan ❌
- Not adjusting your plan as new information and learning emerges ❌
Ultimately, PI Planning is about creating alignment and fostering cross-team collaboration on mid-term objectives and making an adaptable plan with a realistic level of detail based on what is known at the time.
Thanks for reading my article 😀
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