Effective Program Increment (PI) planning is the foundation of the Agile Release Train, a ceremony that brings everyone together to align on a shared vision and plan the work ahead. For any distributed team, running this intensive, multi-day PI planning event can feel like a monumental task. Without the right support, agile teams can easily become siloed, dependencies can be missed, and alignment can break down.
This challenge is precisely where PI planning tools are essential. The best PI planning tools transform this complex ceremony from a logistical challenge into a streamlined, collaborative experience. These virtual PI planning tools provide the digital space for multiple teams to brainstorm, map dependencies, and commit to a plan, no matter where they are. In this guide, we'll explore the fundamentals of PI planning, look at the best PI planning tools available today, and help you choose the perfect fit for your team. Finding the right remote PI planning tools is key to success.
Best PI planning tools at a glance
Finding the ideal tool depends on your team's specific needs, but here’s a quick look at the top contenders in the market. Each of these planning tools offers unique features to facilitate seamless PI planning.
1. Lark: An all-in-one suite for seamless project management and cross team collaboration.
2. piplanning.io: A dedicated SAFe app with bi-directional Jira integration.
3. Mural: A digital whiteboard for visual collaboration and agile ceremonies.
4. Miro: An online collaborative whiteboard for team workshops and planning.
5. Planforge: Enterprise software for hybrid project and portfolio management.
6. Easy Agile: Programs and roadmaps for PI planning inside Jira.
7. Jira Align: An enterprise agile platform for connecting strategy with execution.
8. FigJam (by Figma): An online whiteboard for agile teams to ideate and brainstorm.
9. ClickUp: A comprehensive project management tool with agile features.
10. Monday.com: A flexible work OS for managing projects and workflows.
What is PI planning?
Program Increment planning, often shortened to PI planning, is a cornerstone PI planning event within the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) where multiple teams within an Agile Release Train (ART) come together. The primary goal is to collaboratively create a plan for the next Program Increment, which is typically an 8-12 week period. It's an intense, focused planning session that sets the direction for the entire release train and ensures all agile teams are moving in sync.
The ceremony is designed to foster communication, resolve dependencies, and align teams on both business and technology goals. Key activities during the PI planning event include presenting the business context, refining the program backlog, and identifying risks. The outcome is a set of committed objectives that everyone agrees to pursue.
Here are the core components of a typical PI planning event:
Aligning on context: Leadership kicks things off by presenting the current business vision and roadmap. This ensures every team member understands the strategic goals their work will support during the Program Increment.
Team breakouts: Agile teams work individually on their sprint planning for the upcoming iterations, estimate capacity, identify risks, and write draft team PI objectives. This is where the bulk of the planning process happens.
Mapping dependencies: Teams visualize and negotiate dependencies between each other on a program board, often called a PI planning board. For instance, using a collaborative database like Lark Base can help create a real-time, single source of truth for all cross team dependencies.
Finalizing the plan: Teams present their final plans to the entire ART, and stakeholders conduct a confidence vote to secure commitment to the PI objectives.
This planning process demands exceptional cross team collaboration and a centralized space for information. That's why a tool like Lark is so valuable, offering an integrated environment where agile teams can manage backlogs, share documents, and communicate seamlessly throughout the PI planning session.
Benefits of PI planning
Conducting a PI planning event is about more than just creating a roadmap; it's a transformative planning process that aligns the entire Agile Release Train and drives tangible business results. When done effectively, it creates a powerful sense of shared purpose and momentum that carries through the entire Program Increment. The investment in this two-day PI planning ceremony pays dividends in clarity, efficiency, and team morale.
Here are some of the key benefits you can expect from Program Increment planning:
Fostering alignment: PI planning creates a direct line of sight between business strategy and execution. It helps ensure alignment by making sure that every team, from developers to product managers, understands the vision and how their work contributes to the larger goals of the organization.
Enhancing communication: The PI planning event breaks down silos by bringing all team members into the same room (whether physical or virtual). This face-to-face interaction is crucial for building relationships and establishing open lines of cross team collaboration that last throughout the PI.
Building a social network: PI planning connects individual team members across different departments, creating a valuable network of contacts. This makes future collaboration smoother, as people know who to turn to for information and support.
Matching demand to capacity: By having agile teams estimate their work against their known capacity, the release train can create a realistic and achievable plan. This avoids overburdening teams and sets a sustainable pace for development, a process easily managed in a shared resource like Lark Base, where capacity and story points can be tracked transparently.
Increasing transparency: The planning process makes all work visible, including dependencies, risks, and objectives. This shared understanding allows the entire release train to own the plan collectively and manage expectations with stakeholders effectively.
Improving predictability: By committing to a set of PI objectives, agile teams create a more predictable and reliable delivery cadence. This commitment, made during PI planning, allows the business to better forecast when new features and value will be delivered to customers. For example, using a tool with integrated calendars and task management, like Lark, ensures that deadlines and milestones are visible to everyone, enhancing predictability across the board.
Ultimately, the benefits of PI planning create a ripple effect, leading to more engaged agile teams and better business outcomes. A platform that centralizes these activities, like Lark, amplifies these benefits by providing a single source of truth for communication, the plan, and to track progress.
Top 10 PI planning tools in 2025
Choosing the right software is critical for a successful PI planning event, especially for remote teams and hybrid agile teams. Here’s a detailed look at the best PI planning tools that can help you facilitate cross team collaboration and alignment.
1. Lark: An all-in-one suite for seamless project management and cross team collaboration
Overview
Lark is a comprehensive collaboration suite that unifies everything a team needs for PI planning—and beyond—into a single, integrated platform. It eliminates the need to switch between multiple applications by combining chat, meetings, documents, spreadsheets, and databases. This all-in-one design creates a seamless workflow, making it an ideal environment for the high-intensity cross team collaboration required during remote PI planning events. For agile teams, this unification makes the entire PI planning process more efficient.
Key features
Integrated project management: Lark Base offers powerful database capabilities with customizable views like Gantt charts and Kanban boards. You can use it to build a dynamic program board or a detailed PI planning board, manage backlogs, track dependencies, and visualize team progress in real-time.
Real-time collaborative documents: With Lark Docs, agile teams can co-create and edit PI objectives, team PI objectives, and risk assessments simultaneously. You can insert tasks, mention colleagues, and embed various content types to create a rich, centralized knowledge base for your Program Increment.
Seamless communication: Lark Messenger is the central hub for all communication. You can create dedicated group chats for different agile teams or topics, start video calls directly from a chat, and use threads to keep conversations organized without cluttering the main channel where team members are focused on the plan.
Powerful meeting tools: Lark Meetings supports large-scale video conferences with features like virtual whiteboards for brainstorming, Magic Share for interactive document presentations, and AI-powered transcripts that are automatically generated, searchable, and translatable. These are essential features for an effective PI planning session.
Centralized task management: Lark Tasks allows you to break down large features into smaller, actionable items. You can create tasks directly from messages or documents, assign tasks to team members, set deadlines, and monitor their status, ensuring accountability for the plan.
Automated workflows: You can automate repetitive processes within Lark Base, such as sending notifications when a task status changes or creating reminders for key deadlines during a Program Increment, freeing up time for more strategic work.
Pricing
Starter: Free for up to 20 users, including 100 GB of storage, unlimited AI translation, and 1,000 automated Base workflow executions per month.
Pro: $12 per user/month, supporting up to 500 users with unlimited message history, 15 TB of storage, and unlimited AI meeting transcriptions.
Enterprise: Custom pricing for unlimited users, offering advanced security, SSO, and a significantly higher volume of automated workflows.
Best for
Agile teams and organizations of all sizes looking for a single, cost-effective solution to replace their entire stack of collaboration and project management tools and improve their PI planning process.
2. piplanning.io: A dedicated SAFe app with bi-directional Jira integration
Image source: piplanning.io
Overview
piplanning.io is a specialized tool designed exclusively for facilitating SAFe PI planning events. It focuses on replicating the in-person Big Room Planning experience for remote teams and hybrid setups, with a strong emphasis on real-time synchronization. It's one of the most focused PI planning tools on the market.
Key features
Digital program board for visualizing dependencies.
Real-time, bi-directional integration with Jira and Azure DevOps.
Dedicated views for team planning, risk management, and drafting PI objectives.
Pricing
Standard: Starts from $875/year
Premium: Starts from $1050/year
Enterprise: Starts from $1400/year
Best for
Enterprises heavily invested in the Scaled Agile Framework that need a dedicated tool with deep integration into existing ALM platforms like Jira to manage program increment planning.
3. Mural: A digital whiteboard for visual collaboration and agile ceremonies
Image source: mural.co
Overview
Mural is a visual collaboration platform that acts as a digital whiteboard. It provides a flexible canvas for agile teams to brainstorm, organize ideas with sticky notes, and run agile ceremonies like PI planning using its extensive library of templates. It is an excellent choice for a PI planning event that requires a high degree of visual thinking.
Key features
Infinite canvas for brainstorming and mind mapping.
Pre-built templates, including a PI planning template, for retrospectives, and other agile events.
Facilitator tools like timers, voting sessions, and private mode.
Pricing
Free: $0 for unlimited members
Team+: Starts from $9.99/member/month
Business: Starts from $17.99/member/month
Enterprise: Custom pricing
Best for
Creative agile teams and facilitators who rely on highly visual and interactive workshops to drive cross team collaboration and planning.
4. Miro: An online collaborative whiteboard for team workshops and planning
Image source: miro.com
Overview
Miro is a popular online whiteboard that helps multiple teams collaborate on a wide range of activities, from initial brainstorming to detailed planning. Its versatility and large template library make it a strong choice for virtual PI planning, especially for mapping out dependencies on a PI planning board.
Key features
Vast template library for program boards, including a PI planning template, retrospectives, and more.
Integrations with planning tools like Jira, Asana, and Slack.
Real-time collaboration with features like cursors, comments, and video chat, which helps teams stay focused.
Pricing
Free: $0 for unlimited members
Starter: Starts from $8/member/month
Business: Starts from $16/member/month
Enterprise: Custom pricing
Best for
A distributed team that needs a flexible and powerful digital canvas for a variety of collaborative sessions beyond just PI planning.
5. Planforge: Enterprise software for hybrid project and portfolio management
Image source: planforge.io
Overview
Planforge is an enterprise-grade tool that combines project portfolio management (PPM) with agile planning. It supports hybrid methodologies, allowing organizations to manage traditional and agile projects within a single system, making it a robust PI planning tool.
Key features
Integrated resource and portfolio management.
Support for SAFe, including features for PI planning and ARTs.
Real-time synchronization with Jira and other systems to track status.
Pricing
Free: Up to 4 users
Starter: Starts from €45/user/month
Professional: Starts from €54/user/month
Enterprise: Starts from €83/user/month
Best for
Large organizations that need to manage a hybrid portfolio of both agile and traditional waterfall projects and require robust financial and resource planning capabilities for their program increment.
6. Easy Agile: Programs and roadmaps for PI planning inside Jira
Image source: easyagile.com
Overview
Easy Agile offers apps that integrate directly into Jira, enhancing its capabilities for PI planning and program management. It provides a user-friendly interface for visualizing agile roadmaps and dependencies without leaving the Jira environment, turning Jira into a more effective PI planning tool.
Key features
A program board that lives directly within Jira.
Drag-and-drop interface for scheduling features and to manage dependencies.
Team capacity planning and the ability to track progress.
Pricing
Free: Up to 10 users
TeamRhythm: Starts from $2.80/user/month
Programs: Starts from $3.00/user/month
Roadmaps: Starts from $1.75/user/month
Personas: Starts from $1.50/user/month
Best for
Agile teams that are deeply embedded in the Atlassian ecosystem and want to enhance their existing Jira setup with dedicated PI planning features.
7. Jira Align: An enterprise agile platform for connecting strategy with execution
Image source: atlassian.com
Overview
Jira Align (formerly AgileCraft) is Atlassian's enterprise agile planning platform. It connects high-level business strategy with development work in Jira, providing visibility across all levels of the organization and supporting multiple agile frameworks. It is one of the most comprehensive PI planning tools for large-scale enterprises.
Key features
Connects strategy, execution, and outcomes in real-time.
Program board with dependency visibility and risk management features.
Financial forecasting and portfolio-level reporting for the entire program increment.
Pricing
Jira Align is an enterprise solution with pricing available upon request. It is one of the more expensive options on the market.
Best for
Large enterprises that need to scale agile practices across hundreds of agile teams and require a comprehensive platform to align strategy with execution during program increment planning.
8. FigJam (by Figma): An online whiteboard for agile teams to ideate and brainstorm
Image source: figma.com
Overview
FigJam is an online whiteboard from the creators of Figma. It is designed to be a more lightweight and fun tool for brainstorming and diagramming, making it a good option "for the ideation phases of" PI planning and for teams to run collaborative meetings.
Key features
Easy-to-use interface with sticky notes, shapes, and drawing tools.
Templates for brainstorming and agile methodology workflows.
Seamless integration with Figma for design-related projects.
Pricing
Starter: $0
Professional: Collab seat: $3/month; Dev seat: $12/month; Full seat: $16/month
Organization: Collab seat: $5/month; Dev seat: $25/month; Full seat: $55/month
Enterprise: Collab seat: $5/month; Dev seat: $35/month; Full seat: $90/month
Best for
Design-centric agile teams and others who need a simple, intuitive tool for brainstorming sessions and visual workshops during a PI planning event. It's a solid choice among simpler PI planning tools.
9. ClickUp: A comprehensive project management tool with agile features
Image source: clickup.com
Overview
ClickUp aims to be an all-in-one productivity platform that can replace multiple apps. It offers a wide range of customizable features, including task management, documents, and goal tracking, which can be adapted for the planning process of a program increment.
Key features
Multiple views, including lists, boards, and calendars, that serve as useful project tracking interfaces.
Customizable fields and statuses to fit any workflow.
Goal tracking and workload management features that help multiple teams understand capacity.
Pricing
Free: Best for personal use.
Unlimited: Starts from $7/user/month.
Business: Starts from $12/user/month.
Enterprise: Custom pricing.
Best for
Agile teams looking for a highly customizable project management tool that can be configured to support various agile ceremonies, including the PI planning ceremony.
10. Monday.com: A flexible work OS for managing projects and workflows
Image source: monday.com
Overview
Monday.com is a Work Operating System (Work OS) that allows agile teams to build custom workflows for managing their projects. Its visual and flexible nature makes it adaptable for planning and tracking work during a Program Increment.
Key features
Customizable dashboards for high-level team progress tracking.
Automations to reduce manual work and help teams stay focused.
Multiple data visualizations, including Kanban, timeline, and Gantt charts.
Pricing
Free: Up to 3 boards
Basic: Starts from $9/seat/month
Standard: Starts from $12/seat/month
Pro: Starts from $19/seat/month
Enterprise: Custom pricing
Best for
Agile teams that need a highly visual and flexible platform to build custom workflows for project management and the planning of a program increment.
How to choose the right PI planning tools
Selecting the best PI planning tools for your organization requires careful consideration of your specific needs, existing workflows, and team culture. A tool that works perfectly for one company might be a poor fit for another. To make the right choice, you should evaluate potential solutions against a set of key criteria that align with your business goals. The right PI planning tool can make a significant difference in the outcome of your program increment planning.
Here are some critical factors to consider:
Integration capabilities: The tool should seamlessly integrate with your existing software ecosystem, especially your primary work management system like Jira or Azure DevOps. Poor integration can lead to manual data entry and information silos. For example, while some planning tools offer direct integration, others, like Lark, can connect to hundreds of apps through platforms like Zapier, offering broader flexibility.
Ease of use: PI planning is already an intense planning process. The tool you choose should have an intuitive interface that new users can adopt quickly without extensive training. A steep learning curve can add unnecessary stress and hinder cross team collaboration.
Collaboration features: Look for features that foster real-time interaction, such as collaborative editing, digital whiteboards, and integrated communication channels. The goal is to replicate the energy and synergy of an in-person planning session.
Scalability: Consider whether the tool can grow with your organization. Will it support more Agile Release Trains or more complex dependencies as you scale? A platform with different tiers, like Lark's Starter, Pro, and Enterprise plans, can provide a clear path for growth without needing to switch planning tools later on.
Support for remote and hybrid work: The tool must be designed to support a distributed team effectively. Good remote PI planning tools include features for video conferencing, virtual breakout rooms, and asynchronous communication to accommodate different time zones.
Cost and value: Evaluate the tool's pricing in relation to the value it provides. An all-in-one solution may offer a better return on investment by replacing several other subscriptions, while a specialized tool might be justified if it perfectly fits a critical need.
Ultimately, the right tool should feel like a natural extension of your team's planning process. With its integrated suite of communication, collaboration, and project management features, Lark provides a holistic environment that can adapt to any team's unique PI planning needs.
Conclusion
PI planning is the essential ceremony that aligns agile teams, connects strategy to execution, and sets the rhythm for the entire Agile Release Train. With teams more distributed than ever, having the right PI planning tools is no longer a luxury—it's a necessity. The right platform can transform a logistical challenge into a dynamic, engaging, and highly productive experience, ensuring that every team member feels connected and empowered.
Choosing your toolset is an investment in your team's success and your organization's agility. It’s about more than just finding a digital whiteboard; it’s about creating a centralized hub that supports cross team collaboration not only during the two-day PI planning event but throughout the entire Program Increment. By prioritizing integration, ease of use, and features that support hybrid work, you can equip your agile teams with a solution that removes friction and fosters true alignment.
For a truly unified experience, consider Lark. It brings all your planning, communication, and project management needs into one seamless platform, enabling your agile teams to run effective PI planning events and drive results with clarity and confidence.
FAQs
What is PI planning?
PI planning, or Program Increment planning, is a core event in the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). It is a cadence-based, face-to-face ceremony that aligns all agile teams on an Agile Release Train (ART) to a shared mission and vision. The primary outputs of the PI planning event are a set of committed PI objectives and a program board.
How do you run a PI planning event?
A successful PI planning event involves three phases: preparation (defining business context and vision), the event itself (agile teams break out for sprint planning, mapping dependencies, and drafting team PI objectives), and finalization (presenting the plan, managing risks, and holding a confidence vote to secure commitment from the entire release train).
Can PI planning be done in one day?
While it may seem efficient, compressing PI planning into a single day is highly discouraged. The standard two-day format allows for crucial deep dives, problem-solving, and reflection. Rushing the planning process often leads to a poor plan, missed dependencies, and team burnout, undermining the event's purpose.
What is the PI planning framework?
The PI planning framework is a structured agenda and set of practices prescribed by SAFe to guide the pi planning ceremony. It ensures all necessary inputs, such as the business vision and roadmap, are discussed, and all key outputs, like PI objectives and a program board, are created collaboratively.
Can you use Jira for PI planning?
Yes, Jira is excellent for managing the program backlog and tracking work items that come out of PI planning. However, for the live, collaborative PI planning event itself, agile teams often need add-ons or complementary PI planning tools for visual planning and communication. A platform like Lark provides this integrated experience out-of-the-box.
