How to conduct PI Planning using Advanced Roadmaps

Background

• Conduct the PI planning prep meeting once a quarter with all members of the program to review and plan your work for the next program increment (PI).
• The outcome of PI planning includes a list of committed objectives, features targeted for delivery, and known risks or dependencies.
• Prerequisites:
  • Prepare for PI planning with Advanced Roadmaps
  • Refine features with Advanced Roadmaps

Description

1. Execute the PI planning event agenda.
   1. Review business context and proposed features using the shared PI plan in Advanced Roadmaps

      
   2. Review architect context and guidance.
   3. Review planning context by using team boards in Jira.

      
   4. Run team breakouts.
   5. Verify team capacity for the PI: validate team loads.
      1. Job to be done: validate team loads
         1. Ask: Have the teams committed to too much in any of the sprints being planned out this PI?
         2. Ask: Have updates to capacity for events like holidays and vacations been taken into account?
         3. Ask: Can work shift between teams if some are overloaded while others have capacity?
   6. Review team features schedule and committed dependencies.
   7. Identify ROAM risks: review risk mitigation.
      1. Ask: Are there any additional risks we should account for around the delivery of this feature?
      2. Ask: If there are accepted risks, is there nothing we can do to help mitigate the risk?
      3. Ask: Do we need to escalate any risks up to senior leadership for help?

         

         We suggest noting objectives in Confluence and displaying objectives coverage in Jira using a label or custom field.

   8. Define and commit objectives and set planned value scores.
      1. Job to be done: Commit to objectives and dependencies.
         1. Ask: Are there any additional features that should be linked to this objective?
         2. Ask: Do we know how we will measure to validate whether we’ve hit the target value?
         3. Ask: Are there any other risks or dependencies we need to account for on this objective before committing?

            

   9. Capture decisions.
      1. Conduct a confidence vote.
      2. Modify decisions to capture the decisions made during the meeting.
         1. In Confluence, open the page for the meeting.
            1. Set action items to any actions needed for risk mitigation, or follow-up needs.
            2. Modify decisions to capture the decisions made during the meeting.
         2. Follow up after the meeting.
            1. Confirm that decisions are communicated across the program.
            2. Share your plan with the program and stakeholders.
            3. Conduct weekly scrum-of-scrums to stay on track with your plan.

Output

• Distribute the meeting notes link in Confluence to all appropriate stakeholders using appropriate channels, including email, Slack, etc.

References

• Meeting notes template
• How to run inclusive meetings
• Project kickoff meetings: steps and example agenda
• Project poster template and examples from Atlassian
• Virtual or remote PI planning best practices and FAQ table of contents
• PI planning - Scaled Agile Framework