PI Planning--A hero's journey — I'll walk from here

It’s been a tumultuous couple of weeks. It seems like everyone is coping with both professional and personal upheavals or changes and my last weeks have been no different. One constant though in our agile world is the PI Planning experience. PI is an acronym for Program Increment and it has been said that you aren’t really doing agile if you aren’t doing PI Planning.

For those unfamiliar with PI Planning, it is a two (or 4 day, if you’re virtual) in-person planning event for the entire Agile Release Train, where a plan is forged by fire for the next 3 months. We just finished ours. This weekend I sat reflecting on the experience it occurred to me that PI Planning mirrored the hero’s journey in many ways, at least for me.

The heroes are called to adventure

Regardless of whether I’ve been successful, struggled mightily or simply staggered across the PI Increment threshold, PI Planning happens. The call for adventure and I have no choice but to answer it. That doesn’t mean I'm not a little reluctant to begin the process of creating a new or adapting a plan. After all, circumstances change, we’ve learned a little more about our customers, our products and the broader market. Consider how quickly COVID19 appeared and disrupted well-laid plans. The chance to pivot, adapt or persevere every 3 months enables organizations to respond quickly to market opportunities or calamities. That doesn’t mean it’s easy.

But I don’t do it on my own. I have to reach out to different parts of the organization: my allies, folks perhaps I don’t always agree with, my leadership team to help craft a plan to take into the next quarter.

And those initial draft plans are always vague, heavily reliant on assumptions and light on the metrics. This creative thrashing is challenging both intellectually and emotionally. Pulling together a measurable plan that the entire ART can support requires an enormous amount of creativity, communications and empathy. Because as you are relying on your mentor to help inform a plan, others are looking for your guidance on their plan. Often times after that first day of planning, folks are spent— but we’re entering the death/rebirth part of the journey.

The heroes are reborn

And this is where it becomes fascinating. Those plans suddenly begin to transform from begin nebulous and ill-formed to well-honed, intentional and measurable. To that plan has been added new insights, key learning from other parts of the organization and, if you’re lucky, the strengthening of a team culture.

I have always been amazed on the 2nd day of a PI Planning event to watch draft plans morph into these amazing goal-oriented objectives. And how proud the teams appear, how much progress they have made in their understanding of the work and their own confidence in their ability to deliver. It’s the Transformation part of the hero’s journey.

Perhaps, the only stage where the analogy maybe is a little weaker is around atonement. I have heard of discussions becoming lively and spirited during PI Planning so perhaps there is some degree of team self-care that needs to happen. Although, as I write this I think our teams do some version of that during our post-PI-Planing debriefs. We come together (at a distance) to eat, drink and share our experiences and hopes for the next PI. Often times there are positive stories that are shared of work celebrated or teams recognized for their consistent and high-quality work or optimism for the new plan.

And that plan is our path back. It is the manifestation of everything we’ve learned, what we’ve had to change and where we think we’re going.

It is a cycle that we will repeat in another 3 months or so. Another hero’s journey. Another chance to confront what might be working or not working working and find the helpers that can inspire us to keep going or reimagine how we’ll achieve our objectives. And at the end of it, it is the learning and some wisdom that we may all have gained and can take into the next PI Planning.