PI Planning Event Exit Survey

PI Planning Surveys: What to Ask and How to Act in 48 Hours

SAFe PI (Planning Increment) planning event exit surveys help gauge event success by gathering feedback on the planning process, alignment, and outcomes. They typically ask questions about the clarity of the business context and vision, the effectiveness of breakout sessions, the quality of the final plan, and the overall experience of the participants. The goal is to provide data for continuous improvement for future events, addressing challenges like remote collaboration and communication gaps.

Key areas covered in PI planning exit surveys

Overall Experience: “How would you rate the overall effectiveness of this PI Planning event?”
Business Context and Vision: “Was the business context and vision presented clearly enough to inform your team’s planning?”
Team Breakout Sessions: “How effective were the team breakout sessions for creating your PI objectives and plans?”
Plan and Alignment: “Do you feel the final plan provides clear alignment for the ART for the upcoming PI?”
Key Outcomes: “Did the event result in a pre-populated backlog for your team that accurately reflects the plan for the PI?”
Challenges: “What were the biggest challenges you faced during this event?”
Improvements: “What suggestions do you have to improve the next PI Planning event?”

How survey results are used

Identify pain points: Survey data highlights issues like miscommunication, challenges with remote collaboration, and misalignment across teams.
Measure success: Feedback helps the Release Train Engineer (RTE) and other leaders understand what worked well and what can be improved for the next planning cycle.
Inform future events: Insights from the survey are used to adjust the agenda, tools, and facilitation techniques for future events to make them more effective.
Validate outcomes: Surveys help confirm if teams left with a clear plan, including updated backlogs, objectives, and identified risks, as described in the Scaled Agile Framework guide on PI Planning.

Sample PI Planning Event Survey Questions:

Prior to the PI planning event, Features were sufficiently defined to enable elaboration into User Stories.
ART Backlog items were sized to enable delivery in a single PI timebox.
Features were ranked in order of business value so that planning trade-offs could be made.
Architectural Enablers were visible and prioritized on the ART Backlog.
Prior to planning, teams on the ART were aligned on the goals and priorities for the PI.
Team Product Owners were sufficiently knowlede-able about features and priorities to support the teams during planning.
Teams on the ART are organized around value delivery and have minimal dependencies.
The Product Manager and Business Stakeholders were strongly aligned on the goals and priorities for the PI.
Lessons learned from the previous PI were shared across teams to accelerate learning across the ART.
Improvement actions from the PI Inspect & Adapt Event were included in plans for the PI.
Teams were able to elaborate features into user stories in the time allocated.
Teams were able to quickly estimate user stories.
Stories were estimated in points or capacity units and rolled up to provide overall feature estimates.
Feature estimates were reconciled with available development capacity to ensure the delivery schedule was realistic.
Dependencies between teams were identified and built into the overall PI Plan using the ART Planning Board.
Risks and constraints were identified, discussed, and tracked in the planning process.
Teams were able to create and present draft plans by the end of the first planning day.
The leadership team held a review and problem-solving session at the end of the first day, and prepared planning adjustments for the next session.
PI Objectives were defined, and represented business summaries of what each team hoped to accomplish in the PI.
Defined PI Objectives were specific, measurable, realistic, and aligned to business strategy.
Business stakeholders were actively involved in the planning process.
Business stakeholders scored PI Objectives by relative business value.
A confidence vote was conducted to gauge overall confidence in finalized plans.
An event retrospective or exit survey was conducted at the end of the event to identify improvements in the PI Planning process.

How To Take The Survey

Create the assessment using the above questions. This can be done with something like Google Forms, or use the Agility Surveys free survey application which has the assessment already setup with these questions. Email the assessment link to team members.
Take the Assessment: All teams on an ART (Agile Release Train) complete the assessment.
Receive Instant Results: Results are provided instantly and can be displayed in a number of reporting formats (example below).
APD Survey Results (Partial)
Benchmark Comparisons: Results can be compared against previous assessments to understand trends.
Identify Opportunities: The assessment highlights specific areas for growth and improvement in the organization’s APD practices.
Take Action: The insights gained are used to develop strategies and take action to enhance agility.