Remote PI Planning for distributed agile teams

Fun Fact! According to the State of Agile report, over 90% of organisations practice Agile, and more than half of Agile teams are now distributed, making remote PI Planning a necessity, not a choice.

Team Savah

  • May 6, 2025

In this article, we’ll explore why remote PI Planning matters and how to make it more effective, covering essential tools, practical tips, common challenges, and proven best practices for distributed Agile teams.

In recent years, remote working has grown exponentially, with companies worldwide embracing this shift. Most large tech companies have distributed Agile teams. Those that have adopted the SAFe framework typically hold Programme Increment (PI) Planning sessions every quarter. These sessions are crucial as they involve bringing together stakeholders to ensure alignment and collaboration.

While in-person PI Planning sessions offer numerous advantages, such as improved collaboration, enhanced communication, and team dynamics, they also entail certain logistical overhead and require a significant time commitment.

Making Remote PI Planning engaging and effective

The overall experience of participating in remote PI Planning differs significantly from that of in-person sessions. Prioritising the digital experience for participants is essential to ensure they are adequately prepared for this new environment.

Tools that Enhance Collaboration:

Platforms such as collaborative whiteboards (Miro or Mural), Programme Board (Savah, Jira Align), Kanban boards (Jira, Trello), and real-time editable documents offer teams an engaging and open space for all members to discuss, prioritise, and analyse dependencies. These technologies provide consistency and allow teams to adjust their goals and duties in real-time while maintaining transparency and integrity across team meetings.

Communication Best Practices

Teams can maintain effective communication via video conferences for face-to-face meetings, message boards for immediate clarifications, and centralised document-sharing platforms. Breakout rooms enable individual teams to focus on specific challenges or problem-solving solutions, whereas main meetings encourage cross-team alignment on high-level goals.

Inclusive Planning for Global Teams

Remote PI Planning eliminates geographical constraints, helping teammates from all across the world to proactively engage. Time zone considerations, flexible timetables, and online tools ensure all voices can be heard and no critical contribution is missed. Inclusiveness improves teamwork and ensures everyone’s opinions are considered in the overall approach.

Transparency and Accountability

Teams have a single reliable source because every objective, dependency, and challenge has been tracked in centralised systems. Performance monitoring tools and programme boards ensure reliability while reporting and dashboards allow accessibility for all teams and stakeholders involved.

Steps to follow for an effective PI Planning

Strategic Planning: The Key to Successful Remote PI Planning

1. Pre-Planning meetings: Have pre-planning meetings with key stakeholders to define objectives and highlight dependencies.

2. Make a clear agenda: Create a detailed agenda with schedules for critical tasks, breaks, and fallback times.

3. Technology setup: Assure everybody involved has access to and knows how to use all the necessary tools. Also, set up the dedicated areas for team breakout sessions.

4. Define roles and responsibilities: Having a clearly defined role and responsibility helps to spend time identifying roles & responsibilities for RTE (release train engineers), product owners, and scrum teams. This will ensure people have responsibilities and maximise the PI Planning session.

Setting up the remote PI Planning agenda

In SAFe, PI Planning is the lifeline of an Agile Release Train (ART), bringing teams together around a common goal. Globalisation and financial restrictions have made remote work the norm; traditional planning techniques require a new strategy. Remote PI (Program Increment) Planning is an important event in the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), which was created to organise teams around common objectives and plan for the next iteration. The schedule typically spans two days (sometimes, 3 days). Even in a distributed setup, making PI Planning productive and enjoyable encourages teamwork, increases productivity, and successful results.

Day 1

On the first day, management sets up the environment by presenting the company’s background and goal and then conducting team breakout sessions to identify initial targets, pitfalls, and dependencies. Teams then present their initial plans, soliciting input for revision.

Day 2

The second day is dedicated to completing these plans, with teams considering any required changes before submitting their final objectives.

A confidence vote assesses the team’s commitment to the plan. The event closes with a retrospective to discuss the procedure and discover areas for modification.

Moving from a traditional to a remote format presented issues, including keeping commitments and organising across different time zones. However, using tools such as Zoom for video calling and Miro for interactive white-boarding assisted in reproducing the team-based atmosphere of in-person meetings. Open communication, regular breaks, and strong technology assistance were critical to the efficacy of remote PI Planning, which made it a viable alternative to typical on-site events.

Benefits of remote PI Planning with SAFe

The benefits of Remote Agile PI Planning Sessions are numerous and significant. They include increased productivity, enhanced engagement, global accessibility, reduced costs, zero commutes, and recordability. These advantages make remote PI Planning a compelling choice for distributed teams.

  • Boosting productivity: Working together online with digital tools helps us boost productivity by cutting down on logistics time, allowing us to focus more on our strategies and goals implementation.
  • Engagement is all about connecting team members through engaging and real-time collaboration tools! With features like Breakout team rooms, everyone can dive into specific conversations and participate in small-group discussions.
  • Global accessibility: Remote PI Planning promotes openness and diversity by allowing team members from various places to engage. This can result in more creative approaches and improved collaboration between distributed teams.
  • Reduce costs: Remote PI planning removes the costs related to transport, accommodation, and other expenses. Teams can use the money to invest in tools, training, and other assets that improve Agile processes. So, the corporation could put money into collaborative tools such as Miro, Jira, or Savah rather than travelling.
  • Zero commute: Team members can devote more attention and effort to planning. The anxiety and exhaustion of travelling are avoided, and individuals can do their best at each meeting. So, a global staff may meet without scheduling numerous travel days, making planning easier.
  • Session recording: Meetings can be recorded for future review, enabling team members to evaluate conversations and choices without missing anything. This also helps people unable to join meetings.

Disadvantages of remote PI Planning with SAFe

  • Too much screen time, fatigue from multiple sessions.
  • Technical Dependencies: Successful online PI Planning requires reliable access to the internet and efficient digital technologies such as virtual meetings and communication platforms. Technical concerns, like network breakdowns or software faults, may interfere with the event’s flow.
  • Reduced Engagement: Virtual settings may limit participant involvement. The absence of physical presence may cause interruptions or less contact, dropping the overall efficacy of teamwork.
  • Time Zone Differences: Working together across different time zones can lead to scheduling difficulties, member weariness, and decreased efficiency, particularly for multi-day events.

While online PI Planning has numerous benefits, including expanded connectivity and cost savings, it needs considerable focus on technological setup and user participation to be genuinely beneficial.

Tips to improve remote PI Planning

Successful Remote PI Planning involves focus on minute details as well as dedication to the best techniques:

  1. Communicate effectively through various mediums to avoid misconceptions.
  2. Effective managing time involves adhering to an agenda and prioritising critical tasks.
  3. Use dynamic elements such as surveys, group discussions, and Q&A sessions to engage people.
  4. Implement feedback processes to collect ideas to enhance and improve future PI Planning sessions.

Post-PI Planning: important actions to take after a remote event

After a remote PI Planning Event, it is critical to maintain consistency and momentum. Wrap up and update the program board, which includes every target, interdependence, and risk factor.

  • Verify the shared objectives and ensure that all team commitments are clearly defined and agreed upon.
  • Assess for any pending challenges/risks or dangers and identify owners to follow up.
  • Set frequent syncs to monitor performance and modify plans as necessary.

Finally, ask for feedback on the remote planning process. This will help enhance future meetings, with a special focus on team involvement, tool performance, and overall teamwork & collaboration.

Conclusion

Remote PI Planning isn’t just a workaround, it’s an opportunity to bring teams together from anywhere in the world and plan with agility and clarity. By focusing on preparation, communication, and continuous improvement, distributed teams can collaborate just as effectively as those in a shared office. With the right tools, you're set up for success every quarter.