PI planning in EAP

  • Release version: Washingtondc
  • Updated March 7, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of PI Planning in EAP Strategic Portfolio Management

    The Planning board in Enterprise Agile Planning (EAP) enables ServiceNow customers to effectively plan work for multiple teams across iterations, facilitating Big Room Planning. It allows tracking progress, visualizing dependencies between work items, and quickly rescheduling to align with business priorities.

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    Key Features

    • Planning Board Layout: The board varies by team level, including ART, Solution Train, and Portfolio with a two-dimensional Kanban layout. Agile Teams utilize a simple Kanban board with vertical lanes representing work item states.
    • Work Item Grouping: Work items are grouped from bottom to top based on the team hierarchy, with Agile Teams showing stories by sprint and ARTs grouping story cards by child teams.
    • Dependency and Capacity Visualization: Enabling the Dependency toggle allows visualization of relationships between work items, while the Capacity toggle provides insight into team workloads.
    • Customization: Users can personalize the Planning board to display various work item types (Capabilities, Epics, or Stories) by updating EAP configurations with the help of an admin.

    Key Outcomes

    By effectively using the Planning board, customers can coordinate work across teams, manage dependencies, and resolve blockers in real-time. Additionally, customizing the Planning board enhances visibility of critical metrics, ensuring that key information is readily available during planning sessions.

    Using the Planning board of Enterprise Agile Planning, plan work for multiple teams across iterations (for example, Big Room Planning). Track the progress of work, create and visualize dependencies between work items, and reschedule work to react quickly to changes while confirming alignment with business priorities.

    Layout of Planning board

    Figure 1. Planning Board for an Agile Release Train (ART)
    ART planning board in EAP.
    Based on the EAP configuration, the layout of the Planning board across different team levels such as Agile Team, ART, Solution Train, or Portfolio is:
    • ART, Solution Train, and Portfolio: Two-dimensional Kanban board layout with differences in the horizontal and vertical lanes.
    • Agile Team: Simple Kanban board with work item States as the vertical lanes.

    The work items are represented as cards. You can choose to display cards in the compact or full size. Full size cards have data points on them such as item Number, State, and indicators for enabler, dependencies, or blocked whereas compact cards display just the short description.

    Default grouping of work items

    As you go bottom to top in an Agile structure, the cards are grouped as follows for each team:
    Important:
    The team hierarchy and the iterations within teams are based on your EAP configuration. The following information applies to the default Full Configuration.
    • Agile Team: For an iteration, vertical lanes represent the State of the story.

      For example, if Sprint is the planning calendar configured for an Agile Team, the cards on the Planning Board represent the work assigned for the selected Sprint. For an Agile Team, you can see Stories on the planning board.

    • ART: For an iteration, the Story cards are horizontally grouped by child teams and vertical lanes represent the iterations of the child teams.

      If Planning Interval (PI) is the planning calendar configured for ART, the vertical lanes represent the Sprints within the selected PI.

    • Solution Train: Horizontally grouped by child ARTs and vertical lanes represent the state of the item.
    • Portfolio: Horizontally grouped by child Solution Trains and vertical lanes represent the state of the item.
    • If the Dependency toggle is enabled, you can visualize the dependencies between work items.
    • If the Capacity toggle is enabled, you can visualize the work load of the teams.
    The Planning board for an EAP team shows only those work items that are enabled in its default configuration. For example, for an ART with Full Configuration, the Planning board shows only Features by default. If your product managers or team members want to switch to viewing other work item types such as Capabilities, Epics, or Stories, work with your admin to update the required EAP configuration details. For more information, see Configure display of other work item types in EAP Backlog and Planning board.
    Switch between viewing Feature and Story on ART planning board.
    Tip:
    For an ART, if you switch from viewing Story to another work item type on the planning board for the first time after updating this configuration, you might not have your work item cards displayed. To resolve this, ensure that the Vertical lane selection in the Planning board personalization is not set to Enterprise agile iteration.

    As with Backlog, you can change the Type of work items displayed and create work items of multiple types from the Planning board.

    Use the following tasks to get started with PI Planning within Enterprise Agile Planning.