PI Planning for 8 Teams — From Chaos to Cadence
Implemented SAFe-style PI planning for eight product teams that were operating independently with constant dependency conflicts. Reduced cross-team dependency conflicts by 65% and improved PI commitment accuracy from 55% to 82%.
Challenge
Eight product teams operating independently with constant dependency conflicts and missed commitments, resulting in quarterly goals being met less than half the time.
Solution
Implemented quarterly PI planning with dependency mapping, shared objectives, and confidence voting to create alignment and surface risks early.
Result
Cross-team dependency conflicts reduced 65%, PI commitment accuracy improved from 55% to 82%.
The Problem
I joined a large enterprise platform organisation as a Senior Program Manager overseeing delivery across eight product teams — roughly 70 engineers, designers, and analysts. On paper, they were all working toward the same platform vision. In practice, they were eight islands.
Each team planned independently on different cadences. Dependencies between teams were discovered mid-sprint, usually when someone's build broke or a shared API changed without notice. Commitments made to leadership at the start of each quarter had a 55% accuracy rate — meaning nearly half of what was promised did not get delivered on time. The engineering VP was losing credibility with the C-suite, and morale across the teams was declining as finger-pointing replaced collaboration.
What I Did
I introduced quarterly PI (Program Increment) planning, drawing on SAFe principles but tailored to fit the organisation's culture. This was not a textbook implementation — it was designed to solve the specific coordination failures I observed.
The first step was a dependency mapping exercise. I worked with each team lead to document their planned work for the upcoming quarter and identify every cross-team dependency — APIs, shared services, data contracts, design system components. We visualised these on a physical dependency board during a two-day planning event.
During the planning event, teams presented their objectives, negotiated dependency timelines face-to-face, and flagged risks. I introduced confidence voting — each team rated their confidence in delivering their committed objectives on a 1-to-5 scale. Anything below a 3 triggered an immediate problem-solving conversation. This surfaced issues that would have otherwise stayed hidden for weeks.
I also established a bi-weekly sync cadence between PI planning events — a 30-minute Scrum of Scrums focused exclusively on cross-team dependencies and blockers. I kept it tight and action-oriented to avoid it becoming another status meeting.
After the first PI, I ran a retrospective on the planning process itself, adjusting the format based on team feedback. By the third PI cycle, the teams had internalised the cadence and were self-organising much of the coordination.
The Outcome
Cross-team dependency conflicts dropped by 65% within two PI cycles. Commitment accuracy rose from 55% to 82%, which restored leadership confidence in the delivery organisation. Teams reported feeling more connected to the broader mission. The quarterly planning event became something teams looked forward to rather than dreaded — a genuine alignment mechanism rather than a bureaucratic exercise.