It's PI Planning Season

Nov 29

We know, the holidays are important. But we also know you will probably be conducting your final PI Planning event for the year sometime between now and the end of the year (or early in the New Year). As you focus on getting 2023 off to a great start, here are Springbach’s Top 10 tips and tricks to make it your best event ever!

Before The Event

Conduct a simulation. Do you have new or restructured teams? Or lots of new team members? Having a PI Simulation a week before the first PI can create a dramatic impact on how your PI1 goes. If you want an alternative to the PI Planning simulations found in Leading SAFe(R) try Springbach’s Movie Experience simulation for a creative, fresh take.
Pick a theme. You could do a traditional Holiday theme, but if you have multicultural teams from around the world, or just want to do something more creative, pick a winter theme like Winter Olympics, even more relevant this year… World Cup.
Publish the schedule - in advance, for each day, with links to breakout rooms. Don’t waste time during the event directing people where to go.
Pre-populate your team calendars. Have the team add their time off to a team calendar in advance of the PI event so team capacity can be easier to define during the PI event. Also, add any training, conferences, company events, etc.
Make prioritized features visible. Ensure each team has a place to view the features in prioritized order.

During The Event

Start the PI event off with an ice breaker but keep it short so the team stays engaged. Our favorites? Anything that brings back memories to the teams... could be screenshots of version 1 apps, people on the team, people that used to be on the team, quotes that people never stop saying like "at the end of the day", silly photos of management, photos of team members working from home or in the office.
We’re loving the Ativo Plug-in for Jira right now. Install the Jira plug-in Ativo for a better way to visualize and plan out your features and stories. It's also helpful for conducting the Scrum of Scrums during the event and tracking progress after.
Sleep. Yes, during the event! While an afternoon nap isn’t something we’ve tried yet (though we’re not opposed!), a good night’s sleep between your Draft Plan review and Final Plan review is essential. Conducting the event over 2 days will produce more creative solutions and better, more achievable plans. We know this is true anecdotally…we’ve seen so many team members arrive refreshed on Day 2 and head straight to their team area to make changes to the plan based on an Aha! moment they had overnight. But now these observations are backed by the science of Matthew Walker in his book Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams. According to Matthew, “REM-sleep dreaming fuels creativity...REM sleep can ... divine overarching insights...We can awake the next morning with new solutions to previously intractable problems”.
Take the time to allow your teams to have fun together, choose a night during the event to have your team have fun…go bowling, Top Golf, a Happy hour, learn curling (good for that Winter Olympics theme!).