PI Outcome Planning

A healthy OKR environment strikes a balance between alignment and autonomy, common purpose and creative latitude.

— Doerr, John. [1]

What is the PI Outcome Planning event?

SAFe has always used nested cadences – iterations, typically two weeks long, and planning intervals (PIs) every 8 to 12 weeks. While the nature and purpose of the cadences remain fairly consistent, the increased variability and speed introduced by AI have driven significant changes to the events associated with them.

In AI-Native SAFe:

• The two-day PI Planning event that provided the time and space for the entire ART to create a set of plans for the upcoming PI has been replaced by a one-day PI Outcome Planning event that focuses on in-flight re-alignment.

• The half-day Inspect and Adapt event that drove ART-level learning cycles on a PI cadence has been replaced by a two-hour Sense and Respond event every iteration, driving accelerated learning. This Sense and Respond event also includes the activities formerly present in the System Demo. 

NOTE: Some ARTs may choose to run the problem-solving portion of the SAFe Inspect and Adapt event periodically if it supports their ongoing problem-solving approach.

These events are shown in Figure 1 below:

PI Outcome Planning is an AI-Native ART event designed to align the Agile Release Train around strategy and outcomes.  It serves as a significant synchronization point to ensure all teams and stakeholders are aligned with the overarching product vision and the specific results the ART intends to achieve in the upcoming PI. This event focuses on establishing commitments to measurable PI and team outcomes alongside agreeing to key milestones. Bringing the whole ART together enables collective human expertise to analyze insights, explore options, and determine the best path forward.  

Whereas Sense and Respond events enable continuous adaptation, the PI Outcome Planning event is designed to create space for exploring more strategic opportunities.  

What is the purpose of the PI Outcome Planning event?

PI Outcome Planning provides a critical mechanism for achieving three things:

1. Aligning and committing to the PI Outcomes that will best advance the ART’s long-term strategy

The ART expresses its longer-term strategy as ART outcomes. These are typically the results it intends to achieve over the year ahead. PI outcomes, on the other hand, are the set of outcomes that will best advance those ART outcomes in the next PI. They sit one level below the ART outcomes in the AI-Native SAFe outcome tree, as shown in Figure 2 below.

The outcome tree connects outcomes at each level to those above it, from the portfolio’s longer-term strategic outcomes down to the outcomes that provide day-to-day focus for AI-Native Teams. The outcome tree is central to an outcome-driven approach to product management, since it communicates purpose down through the organization and commitment back up.

2. Formulating and committing to the Team Outcomes that will progressively achieve the PI Outcomes

Team outcomes define each team’s contribution to the PI outcomes. However, a team’s capacity is not consumed entirely by work that contributes to PI outcomes. A team may hold spare capacity to devote elsewhere. That capacity may be used to advance other outcomes that serve the ART’s longer-term goals, whether or not they trace to a PI outcome. Team capacity may also be used for more routine work that isn’t captured in any specific team outcome or PI outcome. 

The PI Outcome Planning event is where draft team outcomes are tested against other teams’ plans. During the event, teams make adjustments and trade-offs to their team outcomes before committing to a finalized set. ART leadership and stakeholders validate how each team intends to contribute, where its capacity is going, and whether the overall plan holds together, so teams can move fast in pursuit of their own outcomes while the ART stays aligned and in control.

3. Identifying the milestones that create an executable plan

Teams working at speed and with autonomy still reach moments when one team’s progress depends on another team, or when a date set outside the ART constrains them all. Identifying and agreeing on milestones is what creates a combined executable plan across the ART.

AI-Native SAFe defines four types of milestones:

• Fixed-date milestones: These typically represent events and contractual obligations that fall on or before a specific date. Their timing is set outside the ART, and they often set expectations with the market and customers.
• Learning milestones: These are the points where the ART validates a technical or business opportunity or hypothesis. They mark progress towards outcomes and enable informed choices,  including confirming whether the work is still worth pursuing.
• Synchronization milestones: These are the points where two or more teams’ work must converge, such as a dependency or integration point. If a synchronization milestone is missed, the dependent work often stalls. 
• Release milestones: A release is a planned point where value is delivered to customers. Most are made on demand and can move, but a release may also coincide with a fixed-date milestone when a market rhythm sets the date. 

Agreeing on key milestones during the PI Planning Outcome event is how the ART commits to a shared path underpinned by an executable plan.

How to run a PI Outcome Planning event

How often does a PI Outcome Planning event occur?

PI Outcome Planning occurs at the start of every PI. As Mik Kersten shares from his deep research into organizations that harness AI effectively at scale, planning should be done at the business cadence [2]. For example, if an organization operates on a quarterly business cadence, it is common practice for its PIs to reflect the same cadence. This creates a single cadence across the organization. 

How to prepare for the PI Outcome Planning event

In the weeks leading up to the PI Outcome Planning event, ART Leadership and Business Owners review the product vision and roadmap, current progress against ART outcomes, and insights from recent Sense and Respond events. They consider what they have learned and draft a set of PI outcomes they believe will best advance the ART outcomes in the upcoming PI.

These draft PI Outcomes are typically distributed to the teams a week before the PI Outcome Planning event. This ensures they have time to explore how they may contribute to achieving the outcomes. 

Similarly, teams do not arrive at the event with a blank slate. In the days leading up to the event, each team drafts its team outcomes, which answer the question: given our capabilities and the area of the product we are responsible for, how can we best advance the PI outcomes and solve the customer and business problems behind them? 

This is where much of the ART’s innovation begins. Good ideas are not bound by hierarchy, and the teams closest to the product and the customer are often the first to see what is possible. 

Who attends the PI Outcome Planning event?

The entire ART should attend the PI Outcome Planning event. This ensures the event has the judgment, context, domain expertise, and decision-making authority needed to fulfill its purpose. 

• ART Leadership: Product Management, System Architects, and Release Train Engineers
• Stakeholders: Business Owners accountable for economic outcomes and risk, and other stakeholders closely associated with the work of the ART
• Experts: AI Value Architects who coach the ART on responsible AI adoption and workflow improvements
• AI-Native Teams: These are the people whose innovation and insight will develop the plan that drives the ART towards its outcomes.

The combination of dedicated time and space, and the right people, enables deep collaboration and is necessary for strategic alignment while maintaining flexibility to adapt to specific ART contexts.

What is the structure of a PI Outcome Planning event?

PI Outcome Planning takes place over a single day and follows a standard agenda shown in Figure 3 below. The agenda is further described and illustrated with an example in the sections that follow.

Business Context

The ART vision, ART outcomes, and current progress on key results are presented. Business Owners, Product Management, or other stakeholders may also want to share any significant strategic shifts or insights from the previous PI that might influence the outcomes the ART is pursuing.

In the example shown below, a Retail Pharmacy ART is about to plan its second PI. With a vision of ‘Making the healthy choice the easy choice for each household we serve’, they have ART outcomes to pursue ‘trusted health partnerships with households’, ‘support family health’, and ‘drive profitable growth’. Figure 4 illustrates how this information has been brought together on a slide, presented at the beginning of the event.

Retail Pharmacy ART
“Make the healthy choice the easy choice for every household we serve”

ART Outcomes	State after 1 PI
Objective 1: The Household’s trusted health partner
• KR1: Increase health & specialized-diet line revenue by 40%	12% growth
• KR2: Increase active households completing a guided health journey from 12% to 45%	18% completion
• KR3: Increase diabetic/heart-health household diet-swap completion from 15% to 60%	34% completion
Objective 2: Family health as a shared, sticky habit
• KR1: Enroll 350,000 households in shared health challenges throughout the year	100,000 enrolled households
• KR2: Achieve 60% weekly active challenge participation for enrolled households	55% participation
• KR3: Increase 12-month retention among engaged households from 68% to 80%	71% retention
Objective 3: Profitable growth as AI reshapes the cost base
• KR1: Increase blended gross margin from 22% to 30%	24% blended gross margin
• KR2: Reduce cost-to-serve per basket by 25%	8% reduction
• KR3: Contain AI operating cost to <= 3% of revenue	Increase from 3.0% to 3.4%

Figure 4: Example business context opening slide

Their first PI produced solid progress against most objectives, overachieving on the key result of ‘enrolled households in shared health challenges’ but encountering concerns about their ability to contain AI operating costs, a key result in the final ART objective. Having reviewed the current context ahead of the PI Outcome Planning event, ART leadership and the Business Owners present the PI outcomes that they have drafted (Figure 5). 

They have elected to monitor the escalation in AI operating costs while retaining focus on things that will drive profitable growth. In the household gamification objective, they have focused on retaining existing customers in the active challenge space to capitalize on the first PI’s success. The upcoming National Diabetes Awareness market event, which takes place next PI, has led to a focus on specialized diets in the health partnership space.

The central artifact in a PI Outcome Planning event is the PI Outcome Planning Board. Figure 6 shows an example of a PI Outcome Planning Board that has been prepared ahead of the event, with the draft PI outcomes shown in the left column. The board includes space to add team outcomes throughout the event, as well as milestones that visualize how the emerging plan will be executed.

Drafting the Plan

PI Outcome planning recognizes two types of breakouts. Outcome Breakouts and Team Breakouts.  The purpose of an outcome breakout is to bring together individuals from across teams to create a shared view of how each team intends to contribute to a specific PI outcome and to identify the critical milestones, including releases, that will enable them to maximize alignment whilst retaining local flexibility.  

The purpose of a team breakout is to create the space to consolidate all the work a particular team is doing, which likely spans multiple outcomes, as well as work local to that team. The team should use this time to assess their capacity and surface any constraints as they juggle multiple priorities. They will also begin identifying critical work items as they build their plans.

First Outcome Breakout 

Inspired by the business context briefing, the ART moves into the first outcome breakout of the event. ART Leadership, stakeholders, and teams self-organize to ensure they have appropriate representation at each breakout.  

As each team contributes to the discussion, the breakout group creates a visualization showing how the teams hope to achieve the PI outcome, Figure 7 below. In essence, this visualization mirrors a single row from the PI Outcome Planning Board. Teams share the draft team outcomes they have created ahead of the event and refine them based on feedback from the other attendees. Milestones are added to illustrate the emerging shared plan – providing enough detail to keep the teams aligned while preserving the ability to adapt as they learn throughout the PI.

Team Breakout

Team breakouts shift the focus from the ART to the team, providing space for individual team members to explore how they might work together to achieve shared team outcomes. They are conducted in team breakout areas, using a Team Outcome Planning Board such as the one shown in Figure 8 for the ‘Cart Team’, to visualize and support their planning. The team breakouts give each team the time and space to test their ability to meet the expected milestones, balance their commitments to different PI outcomes, and refine the draft team outcomes they brought into the room. 

The team begins by adding the information that emerged from the outcome breakouts to their board. Given the nature of outcome-driven product development, the team should not attempt to identify all their planned outputs for the PI. However, many teams find value in identifying sufficient detail about the critical experiments (purple), prototypes (green), enablers (red), and features (blue) they believe will be needed to advance their outcomes and test their thinking. These are shown as ‘stickies’ on the board above.

When significant challenges requiring ART-level decisions are identified, the team captures them to present at the next outcome breakout or the Management Review and Problem-Solving meeting, as appropriate. In the example above, the team has just identified a capacity issue early in the PI, which will force trade-offs among the security audit, the family cart release, and the specialized diet pilot.

2nd Outcome Breakout

The second outcome breakout provides an opportunity for the teams working together on a PI outcome to regroup and update their shared plan. The teams share adjustments and challenges that emerged from their team breakouts. Where changes to the plan cannot be absorbed without compromising the PI outcomes, a ‘Decision Needed’ or Risk is captured as input to the upcoming Management Review and Problem-Solving meeting (Figure 9).  

This second outcome breakout is also the time to transfer the draft plan to the PI Outcome Planning board, ready for the draft presentation next on the agenda.

Draft PI Outcome Planning Board Presentation

The morning began with the whole ART aligning around vision and business context, and this presentation provides an opportunity to realign following the morning’s planning breakouts. The PI Outcome Planning Board serves as the focal point for presentations and discussions (Figure 10). Team representatives communicate the draft team outcomes they are contributing to the PI outcome, alongside the identified milestones and any ‘decisions needed’ or risks that emerged.  

Lunch & Management Review and Problem-Solving

Draft plans often present challenges related to tradeoffs, resource constraints, potential risks, and dependencies. While the teams enjoy their lunch break, ART Leadership and stakeholders meet for a Management Review and Problem-Solving meeting. Throughout the day, a Management Review Board has allowed the teams to add ‘decisions needed’ alongside any risks (Figure 11).

The RTE facilitates, maintaining a strict focus on time-boxing to ensure the meeting has achieved its purpose when teams return from lunch ready to finalize their plans. The agenda should be created to suit the context, but an effective pattern is as follows:

• Identify any stakeholder or leadership concerns emerging from the draft PI Planning Outcome presentation, and capture these as additional ‘decisions needed’ or risks.
• Address all ‘decisions needed’ and risks, capturing confirmed decisions and actions.
• Agree on the role individual leaders and stakeholders will play in communicating the decisions and actions to the teams and supporting them in implementing them. 

NOTE: Figure 8 shows that some ‘decisions-needed’ and risks remain unaddressed. These may need to be discussed further with the entire ART or addressed after the PI Outcome Planning event.

Finalizing the Plan

Communicate Planning Adjustments

The afternoon begins with presenting the results of the Management Review and Problem-Solving meeting. Each committed decision and action is communicated, along with its owner, who can help teams adjust their plans to reflect it.

Outcome and Team Breakouts

The afternoon breakouts repeat the pattern of the morning. Following the planning adjustments, the outcome breakout regroups to incorporate relevant changes and deepen cross-team conversations that began in the morning. Milestones and outcomes anchor the conversation at the right level, enabling cross-team alignment. 

A decision was taken in the Management Review and Problem-Solving meeting to defer the ‘Diet-swap Pilot,’ recognizing the capacity challenges raised by the Cart Team. Figure 10 shows how this change affects the plan. Notice that the key results for the overall ‘Scale Specialized Diets’ PI outcome have also been adjusted to recognize the change.

Once the teams have realigned in the outcome breakout, each team returns to its own breakout for one last time. This typically involves adjusting their intentions to accommodate milestone changes, as well as changes to the critical work items they identified and their sequencing.

The final team breakouts also provide time for re-examining the team’s draft outcomes. What has changed during the day? What have they learned? Are they still the right objectives? Are they measuring the right key results? The team makes any necessary changes.

With team breakouts complete, attention moves to regrouping around outcomes for the final time. This final breakout is used to finalize the PI Outcome Planning Board. This involves implementing any agreed-upon changes to the PI outcomes, updating the team outcomes, and ensuring all milestones reflect the final agreed-upon plan. 

In addition, any ‘Other’ team commitments not linked to PI outcomes can be added to the final row on the PI Outcome Planning Board. 

Final Plan Review

The final plan review is facilitated in front of the PI Outcome Planning Board, shown below.

The following structure enables the ART to have the right final conversation:

• Review the plan for each PI outcome: Representatives from the outcome breakout groups present the final PI outcomes, contributing team outcomes, and the key milestones that have been agreed upon for the PI.
• Review other commitments: Team representatives present any team outcomes or additional commitments that relate to their broader mission rather than to the PI outcomes.
• Review ‘decisions needed’ and risks: Perform a brief review of any final ‘decisions needed’ and outstanding risks.
• Take a confidence vote: All ART members use a voting mechanism called a ‘fist of five,’ physically or in a digital tool, to indicate their confidence in committing to the set of Team and PI outcomes. Those voting low (typically 1 or 2) are given a chance to raise any concerns, which are addressed until everyone feels confident to commit. If commitment cannot be reached, some adjustments to the plan may be needed.

What happens after the PI Outcome Planning event?

There are two primary outputs from the PI Outcome Planning event. The first is the finalized and committed PI and team outcomes shown in Figure 14 below. Together with the ART outcomes, these create the ‘Outcome Tree’ that was introduced at the start of this article. The second is the PI Outcome Planning Board, which represents all agreed-upon milestones outlining how the outcomes will be achieved throughout the PI. 

Agreed approaches for tracking key results must be established, along with the necessary automation, to ensure performance dashboards provide the most up-to-date information possible. Fortunately, where once the transcription of data generated during a rich, in-person event involved hundreds of photos and hours of transcription, AI-Native ARTs will naturally find efficient ways to convert the insights emerging from the planning event into curated intent and context that will help steer the upcoming PI

The ART and the teams are now aligned, and they know the key milestones that will matter in the coming weeks. Above all else, they know they’ll use regular Sense and Respond events to align between now and the next PI Outcome Planning event.

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References

[1]  Doerr, John. Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs. Portfolio, 2018.

[2] Kersten, Mik. Output to Outcomes. IT Revolution. 2026.