PI Planning

Digital PI Planning vs a Physical Whiteboard

Most PI planning is first done on a physical whiteboard. This is great for getting everyone on the same page if you can get everyone in the same room. However, the physical whiteboard and its cards are not connected to any data and the board is not easily shared or updated. This is especially bad if anyone can't attend the event for any reason. SmartDraw gives you the best of both worlds. you can build a PI board on a digital whiteboard as your team contributes cards, or you can generate a PI board using your Jira data. many organizations wil use the digital PI board to supplement their in-person PI planning events to provide a real-time dashboard to their teams.

Difference Between PI Planning and Sprint Planning

PI planning is part of SAFe and it's a high-level event that occurs every 3 months (8-12 weeks) and typically involves multiple, cross-functional teams. In contrast, sprint planning is more frequent and focused on the work of a single team in a short period of time. A sprint planning session is part of Scrum and it will probably occur every 1-2 weeks depending on the length of a team's sprint.

How to Prepare for PI Planning?

Before PI planning can begin, it's important for stakeholders to define the key objectives and make sure every team is on the same page. It may also be a good idea to review the board from previous PI planning event to compare the planned iterations to the reality of what happened. The challenges faced in the prior iterations should help inform future plans.

How To Do PI Planning in SmartDraw?

Step 1. Start with a PI Planning Template

Open SmartDraw's PI Planning template. You'll see a starter matrix with some columns for iterations and rows for your teams and milestones.

Step 2. Add or delete rows and columns

Make the board custom to your team. You can easily delete any row or add new ones using the SmartPanel or right-click menu.

Step 3. Add tasks

Drag and drop sticky notes and add text. You can also add notes using the yellow action buttons around existing notes on your board. Click on the arrow in the direction you want to add a new note. The board will automatically expand any cells to make room for notes added this way.

Step 4. Show dependencies

Use the line tool to connect sticky notes that are dependent on each other.

Add Single Jira Cards to Any Board

Even of you don't want to generate your entire PI board from data, SmartDraw lets you import individual Jira cards as needed to help inform any discussion. Connect to your Atlassian account and add any Jira card relevant to your PI planning. You can also push ideas and tickets generated during your meetings and brainstorming session back into Jira.