Best tools for PI planning and sprint breakdown

TL;DR

• Effective PI planning tools should provide a visual programme board, connect directly to Jira issues and make it easy for teams to break features down into sprints.
• Whiteboards and external PI planning tools can be useful during big room events but often drift away from your Jira backlog once the event is over.
• Easy Agile Programs provides PI planning and a live Program Board in Jira, while Easy Agile TeamRhythm supports story mapping and sprint breakdown for each team.

What you need from PI planning and sprint breakdown tools

Whether you follow SAFe or another scaled agile approach, PI planning and sprint breakdown tools should help you:

• Agree on a shared set of objectives for the increment.
• Visualise work across teams and iterations.
• Identify and manage dependencies between teams.
• Break larger features down into stories that teams can deliver in sprints.

If your teams work in Jira, the most effective tools are usually those that build on top of Jira issues rather than requiring a separate backlog.

Common approaches to PI planning tools

Teams often use one of three approaches.

1. Standalone SAFe and PI planning tools‍

Tools such as Jira Align, Planforge or piplanning.io offer rich support for scaled agile but often sit alongside Jira. They can be powerful but come with separate licences, configurations and learning curves.

2. Whiteboards plus Jira‍

Teams use Miro, Mural or FigJam to simulate programme boards and then manually move outcomes into Jira. This is flexible during workshops but adds manual work and can lead to misalignment.

3. Jira-native PI planning‍

Teams plan PIs using Jira issues and clusters of boards, with a Jira app providing programme level views and structure. This keeps planning and delivery together.

PI planning in Jira with Easy Agile Programs

Easy Agile Programs is built specifically to support PI planning and programme visibility in Jira.

It provides:

• A Program Board that shows features, epics and dependencies across teams and iterations.
• A way to align teams during big room PI planning events using live Jira data.
• Support for SAFe style PI planning as well as other scaled patterns.

Because it builds directly on Jira issues, there is no need to duplicate work between a separate PI planning tool and Jira.

Sprint breakdown with Easy Agile TeamRhythm

Once PI planning is complete, teams need to break high level items into deliverable stories and organise them into sprints. Easy Agile TeamRhythm helps by offering:

• User story mapping to break features into user journeys and detailed stories.
• Sprint planning views that pull work from the story map into sprints.
• Planning poker and retrospectives that support a complete team rhythm.

This combination helps teams move smoothly from PI planning to sprint level planning without leaving Jira.

Recommended PI planning and sprint breakdown stack

For Jira centred organisations, a practical approach is:

• Use Easy Agile Programs for PI planning, programme boards and cross team dependencies.
• Use Easy Agile TeamRhythm for sprint breakdown, team level planning and retrospectives.
• Reserve whiteboarding tools for early ideation and facilitation, not as the system of record.