In this blog post, we’re diving into the key steps to get your planning scope ready for PI planning, based on what has worked for me. While the logistics and activities during PI Planning are also crucial for a successful event, these topics will be addressed another time. From my experience, there are four essential elements for preparing your planning scope for the next PI: Product vision, high-level refinement, prioritizing the work, and focusing on MVPs.

Product Vision and Alignment

A clear product vision is key to effective PI planning, and the roadmap is its central guiding tool. The roadmap mostly turns our product vision into actionable steps, but it also includes other important tasks that might not fit perfectly into the vision but still need to get done. Plus, it might change as our business needs evolve. What worked for me is having the Product Manager share the latest version of the roadmap approximately halfway through the PI. This helps kickstart high-level refinements with stakeholders and teams. The roadmap provides guidance on the refinement subjects, making the process more focused and efficient.

Facilitating Sessions Between Stakeholders and Teams

As an RTE, I find it crucial to facilitate sessions between stakeholders and my teams to determine what is important. These sessions are essential for refining requirements at a high level. However, it’s common for discussions to dive into details too quickly, which isn’t the goal. The objective is to address a variety of items, deciding what is possible and what isn’t. From my experience, these high-level refinement sessions are invaluable. They not only clarify priorities but also foster collaboration. Regular, informal discussions with stakeholders lead to a better understanding of each other and strengthen relationships, resulting in deeper insights and more refined requirements.

Applying Prioritization in Features

Once the high-level requirements are clear, the next step is to prioritize the features. Using the WSJF (Weighted Shortest Job First) tool helps us prioritize features by assessing their importance and feasibility, taking into account both their value and effort required. Of course, the outcomes are not directly copied as our priorities, but they help guide our conversations. Having clear priorities gives focus to the teams and helps them make informed decisions. It also reassures the teams by showing them what’s most important, so they can work and get ready with less stress.

Working Towards MVPs

Finally, it’s essential to work towards delivering Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) and narrow the scope of each feature. As described in the previous blog, this approach helps in delivering value incrementally and allows for early feedback and adjustments. This is not easy, and therefore I facilitate during the high-level refinements.

What are your experiences and thoughts on preparing for PI Planning?