SAFe Knowledge Base » PI Objectives

Pre-Plan 

Planning to Plan

—The Bobs’ whiteboard title from the movie Office Space

Definition: Pre-Plan describes the activities that align and prepare ARTs within a Solution Train for PI planning.

ARTs on a Solution Train plan their work through a series of common, cadence-based PI Planning events. Aggregating these outcomes results in a PI Plan for the Solution Train (see Roadmap). The ART planning events may be conducted as a single ‘Solution Train PI Planning’ event, or ARTs may plan in a more distributed fashion. In either case, Solution Train PI Planning is a critical synchronization point across all the ARTs and suppliers. This article describes the Pre-planning activities needed to prepare ARTs on a Solution Train for PI Planning.

Details

PI Planning is perhaps SAFe’s most powerful event as it creates business and technology alignment for an Agile Release Train (ART) and its stakeholders for the next increment of value delivery. In the context of a Solution Train, alignment before PI Planning is critical because multiple ARTs and suppliers are involved in individual or joint PI Planning sessions. Solution Train leaders must ensure their ARTs enter PI Planning aligned on a shared vision, goals, and objectives for the upcoming PI.

Figure 1 shows the SAFe practices that help Solution Trains create and maintain alignment during PI execution, as described in the Coordinate and Deliver article. Pre-planning describes Solution Train leaders’ activities to align ARTs on the upcoming Solution Train Capabilities and cross-ART dependencies they will need to address during their PI Planning events.