The AI-native SAFe PI Planning toolkit, in depth.
One opinionated platform for SAFe Agile Release Trains: a workspace-aware AI copilot, AI-assisted breakdowns from epics to stories, a live program board with cross-team dependencies, WSJF backlog, ROAM risks, anonymous confidence vote, retros and a built-in wiki.
Add a dependency from a feature, a team breakout, or directly on the dependency lane. Each dependency renders as a card at the producer's iteration and as an inbound chip on the consumer team's row at the target iteration.
On this page
- 01AI copilot — A workspace-aware AI copilot that drafts the boring parts of SAFe
- 02AI breakdown — Decompose strategy into features, stories and dependencies with AI
- 03Wikis & knowledge — Multi-wiki knowledge base with version history and AI grounding
- 04Pre-PI preparation — Set up Agile Release Trains, Program Increments and team capacity in minutes
- 05Program backlog — WSJF-scored backlog with inline editing and feature deep-dives
- 06Team breakouts — Focused team workspaces with capacity, draft objectives and feature pull
- 07Program board — Live program board with a cross-team dependency lane and milestones
- 08Risks & ROAM — ROAM risk register that survives the planning event
- 09Confidence vote — Anonymous fist-of-five vote with instant aggregation
- 10PI objectives — Committed and stretch PI objectives with predictability tracking
- 11Inspect & Adapt retrospectives — Modern retros with templates, voting and assignable actions
- 12Dependencies & milestones — First-class cross-team dependencies tracked from draft to delivery
- 13Epics & portfolio — Epics, lean business cases and portfolio rollups
- 14User stories — Decompose features into stories with story points and spillover tracking
- 15Analytics & predictability — ART health dashboards built on the SAFe metrics that matter
- 16Custom fields & taxonomy — Bend the tool to your taxonomy, not the other way around
- 17Security & access — Per-organisation isolation and role-based access — out of the box
- FAQFrequently asked questions
A workspace-aware AI copilot that drafts the boring parts of SAFe
PlanTrain ships a built-in AI assistant grounded in your live ART data. It drafts epics and features, breaks them into stories, suggests dependencies and answers questions about your plan — never replacing the humans, always proposing for review.
The assistant lives in a dedicated chat view with persistent threads. It uses tool calls against your actual workspace — ARTs, PIs, teams, capacity, backlog, risks and retros — so answers and suggestions reference your real plan instead of generic SAFe templates. Every tool call is visible, auditable and bounded by your SAFe role permissions.
Anywhere you create work, an AI-assist button is one click away: draft an epic from a prompt, draft a feature with WSJF inputs, generate a slate of features under an epic, or break a feature into 4–15 user stories with acceptance criteria and Fibonacci points. Every suggestion is previewed in a selection dialog — you pick which items to keep and the rest are discarded.
Approved stories don't just land in the backlog. They automatically populate the originating feature's swimlane inside the Backlog column on the breakout team's board, so the team's planning workspace is pre-staged the moment Product Management approves the AI draft.
- Persistent assistant threads with full tool-call history
- Grounded in your live workspace via typed tool calls
- Draft epics, features, stories and dependencies from a prompt
- Selection dialog — approve exactly what you want kept
- Approved stories auto-route into the breakout board Backlog swimlane
- Role-gated: AI actions respect your SAFe permissions
- Persistent assistant threads with full tool-call history
- Grounded in your live workspace via typed tool calls
- Draft epics, features, stories and dependencies from a prompt
- Selection dialog — approve exactly what you want kept
Decompose strategy into features, stories and dependencies with AI
PI Planning is mostly decomposition. PlanTrain's AI takes a one-line epic and proposes the full ladder down to acceptance criteria — leaving you to do the judgment work, not the typing.
On any epic, click 'Suggest features with AI' to generate a slate of features sized for a single PI. Each draft includes a description, WSJF inputs and a recommended owning team. On any feature, click 'Suggest stories with AI' to generate 4–15 user stories with acceptance criteria and Fibonacci story points based on the feature context and your team's prior story style.
Dependencies are the hardest part of PI Planning. The AI scans every other feature in the same PI and ART, then proposes cross-team dependencies with a one-line rationale and a confidence indication. You approve them in a single click and they wire onto the program board with producer, consumer and target iteration set correctly.
Every breakdown is opt-in and reviewable. The dialog shows what will be created before anything is written to the backlog or the board, so nothing surprises the train.
- Epic → Features: generate a PI-sized slate, pick what to keep
- Feature → Stories: 4–15 stories with AC and Fibonacci points
- Cross-team dependency suggestions with rationale
- All suggestions previewed before any write
- Requires only an assigned PI and primary team for context
- Epic → Features: generate a PI-sized slate, pick what to keep
- Feature → Stories: 4–15 stories with AC and Fibonacci points
- Cross-team dependency suggestions with rationale
- All suggestions previewed before any write
Multi-wiki knowledge base with version history and AI grounding
Decisions, runbooks, architecture notes and onboarding live next to the plan — not in a separate Confluence tenant your train has to context-switch into.
Create as many wiki spaces as you need per organisation — engineering, product, ops, onboarding. Each wiki has nested pages, a markdown editor with live preview, full version history with diff and restore, and threaded comments on every page.
Permissions follow your SAFe role model: viewers read, members edit, admins manage. And because the AI copilot can read your wikis, the knowledge your train writes down becomes context the assistant uses when answering questions or drafting work.
- Unlimited wiki spaces per organisation
- Nested pages with drag-to-reorder navigation tree
- Markdown editor with live preview
- Full version history, diff and one-click restore
- Threaded comments per page
- Read by the AI copilot to ground answers in your team's context
- Unlimited wiki spaces per organisation
- Nested pages with drag-to-reorder navigation tree
- Markdown editor with live preview
- Full version history, diff and one-click restore
Set up Agile Release Trains, Program Increments and team capacity in minutes
Most SAFe tools assume the hard work has already happened in spreadsheets. PlanTrain takes you from an empty workspace to a fully configured ART ready for PI Planning in under 30 minutes.
Define one or many Agile Release Trains in a single organisation, each with its own teams, members, roles, capacity unit (days or hours) and PI cadence. Roles map directly to SAFe — Owner, Admin, RTE, Product Manager, Product Owner, Scrum Master, Member and Viewer — and every action is gated by row-level security.
Generate Program Increments with a single click: pick a start date, the number of iterations (typically four development plus one Innovation & Planning) and an iteration length, and PlanTrain creates the entire iteration calendar for you, including labels, dates and weekend exclusions.
Capacity is captured per member, per weekday. A one-click 'fill week' button populates a full standard week (1 day or 8 hours) so RTEs and Scrum Masters spend seconds, not hours, on capacity housekeeping. Public holidays, time-off and partial availability flow straight into team breakout iteration grids.
- Multi-ART workspace with strict per-organisation isolation
- Auto-generated iterations (4 dev + 1 IP) with editable cadence
- Daily capacity per member with weekday auto-fill button
- Holiday calendars, time-off and partial availability
- Role-based access control (Owner, Admin, RTE, PM, PO, SM, Member, Viewer)
- Multi-ART workspace with strict per-organisation isolation
- Auto-generated iterations (4 dev + 1 IP) with editable cadence
- Daily capacity per member with weekday auto-fill button
- Holiday calendars, time-off and partial availability
WSJF-scored backlog with inline editing and feature deep-dives
Weighted Shortest Job First is the SAFe-recommended way to sequence features. PlanTrain makes it the path of least resistance: score in-line, sort instantly and drill into every feature without leaving the page.
Each feature carries the four WSJF inputs — Business Value, Time Criticality, Risk Reduction & Opportunity Enablement, and Job Size — editable directly in the table. The WSJF score (Cost of Delay ÷ Job Size) is recomputed on the fly and the backlog re-ranks instantly so Product Management can negotiate priority live with stakeholders.
Click any feature for a Jira-style detail view: rich-text description, acceptance criteria, linked epic, owning team, status, tags, custom fields, comments, attachments and a full activity history. Everything is keyboard-navigable and works on mobile during planning events.
Custom fields, statuses, tags and epics are inline-editable per ART, so PlanTrain adapts to your taxonomy without configuration projects, custom forks or expensive plug-ins.
- Inline WSJF scoring with auto-rank ordering
- Cost of Delay decomposition (BV, TC, RR/OE)
- Feature detail with comments, attachments, activity log
- Custom statuses, tags, epics and custom fields
- CSV and Jira import & export
- Inline WSJF scoring with auto-rank ordering
- Cost of Delay decomposition (BV, TC, RR/OE)
- Feature detail with comments, attachments, activity log
- Custom statuses, tags, epics and custom fields
Focused team workspaces with capacity, draft objectives and feature pull
Day-2 of PI Planning lives or dies in team breakouts. PlanTrain gives every team its own dedicated workspace — capacity grid, draft PI objectives, dependencies and a side-rail backlog — so noise stays in the room and signal lands on the program board.
The iteration capacity grid shows planned vs available capacity per iteration in either days or hours. As stories are added, used capacity updates live and over-allocations are highlighted in red so teams self-correct without an RTE walking the floor.
Teams pull features from the program backlog into their PI plan with a single click. Pulled features inherit team ownership, surface on the program board immediately, and are decomposable into stories with story points, acceptance criteria and per-iteration assignment.
Draft PI objectives are written next to capacity so trade-offs are visible. Each objective carries committed vs stretch business value, used later in the predictability calculation at end-of-PI.
- Per-iteration capacity grid (days or hours)
- One-click feature pull from program backlog
- Draft PI objectives with committed/stretch BV
- Story decomposition with story points and acceptance criteria
- Side-rail of team risks and dependencies
- Per-iteration capacity grid (days or hours)
- One-click feature pull from program backlog
- Draft PI objectives with committed/stretch BV
- Story decomposition with story points and acceptance criteria
Live program board with a cross-team dependency lane and milestones
The program board is the heart of PI Planning. PlanTrain renders it live, on every device, with a dedicated cross-team dependency lane that updates the moment a feature or dependency moves.
Rows are teams, columns are iterations, and dedicated lanes sit at the bottom for cross-team dependencies and milestones. Drag a feature card onto an iteration cell to schedule it; add a dependency from any feature, team or directly on the dependency lane.
Dependencies are first-class tracked entities with a producing team, a consuming team, a target iteration, a status and tags. They render as cards in the dependency lane and are mirrored as a small inbound chip on the consumer team's row at the requested iteration, so both sides see the same commitment.
Filter the entire board by team, status, epic or tag, and zoom in or out for room-size displays. PI objectives sit in their own row at the top of the board so the whole train can see what success looks like.
- Drag-and-drop feature placement on iteration columns
- Dependency cards in a dedicated lane (mirrored on the consumer team)
- Milestones row and PI objectives row
- Tag, status and team filtering; zoom in / out
- Realtime updates while the room plans together
Add a dependency from a feature, a team breakout, or directly on the dependency lane. Each dependency renders as a card at the producer's iteration and as an inbound chip on the consumer team's row at the target iteration.
ROAM risk register that survives the planning event
Risks raised in PI Planning have a famously short half-life. PlanTrain keeps every risk visible from the moment it is raised through Resolved, Owned, Accepted or Mitigated and into the next PI.
Capture risks in the moment from any feature, team breakout or directly on the program board. Each risk has an owner, a category (technical, dependency, capacity, external), an impact and likelihood, and a free-text description.
ROAM the risks during the management review: move them between Resolved, Owned, Accepted and Mitigated. Owners and categories stay visible on the risk register so nothing falls off the radar.
- ROAM kanban with drag-and-drop columns
- Owners, categories, impact × likelihood scoring
- Linked to features, teams and dependencies
- Stays visible from PI to PI
- ROAM kanban with drag-and-drop columns
- Owners, categories, impact × likelihood scoring
- Linked to features, teams and dependencies
- Stays visible from PI to PI
Anonymous fist-of-five vote with instant aggregation
The confidence vote is the most important moment of the planning event. PlanTrain delivers it as a single, calm screen — anonymous, real-time, and ready to re-run if the room is not at 4 or above.
Every participant sees a five-card vote on their device. Votes are anonymous by default and appear on the facilitator screen the instant they are cast. The aggregated histogram updates live, with per-team breakdowns so the RTE can see exactly where the doubt is.
Below 4? PlanTrain ships a guided re-vote workflow: capture the reasons for low votes, run a 15-minute adjustment, and re-vote. The full vote history is preserved across PIs so you can spot trends in confidence, predictability and team morale.
- Anonymous fist-of-five voting on any device
- Live histogram with per-team breakdown
- Guided re-vote workflow with reason capture
- Full history across PIs for trend analysis
- Anonymous fist-of-five voting on any device
- Live histogram with per-team breakdown
- Guided re-vote workflow with reason capture
- Full history across PIs for trend analysis
Committed and stretch PI objectives with predictability tracking
PI Objectives are the contract between the train and the business. PlanTrain captures committed and stretch objectives, scores them with business value and computes the SAFe Predictability Measure automatically at end of PI.
Each team enters its objectives during breakouts. Business owners assign Business Value (1–10) for committed and stretch objectives. PlanTrain rolls everything up to the ART level and produces a board-ready summary that the RTE and Product Management can present without rebuilding a slide deck.
At end of PI, mark each objective achieved or not. PlanTrain computes the Predictability Measure — actual BV / planned committed BV — per team and per ART, and tracks the trend across PIs to support continuous improvement.
- Per-team committed and stretch objectives
- Business Value scoring by Business Owners
- End-of-PI predictability auto-calculated
- Multi-PI trend chart per team and ART
- Export-ready PI summary
- Per-team committed and stretch objectives
- Business Value scoring by Business Owners
- End-of-PI predictability auto-calculated
- Multi-PI trend chart per team and ART
Modern retros with templates, voting and assignable actions
Retros should not feel like a chore. PlanTrain ships a full retrospective board with templates, voting, grouping and action items assigned to people.
Pick from built-in templates — Start / Stop / Continue, Mad / Sad / Glad, 4Ls (Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed for), Sailboat, Lean Coffee — or build your own by adding, removing and renaming columns. Every column is colour-coded with its own label.
Cards capture short or rich text from the team. Group similar cards by drag-and-drop, then run a vote (configurable votes per person) to surface the top topics.
Action items are first-class: assign to a person, set a due iteration and pull them automatically into the next PI's I&A workshop. Nothing falls through the cracks.
- Templates: Start/Stop/Continue, Mad/Sad/Glad, 4Ls, Sailboat, Lean Coffee, custom
- Add, remove, rename and re-order columns
- Drag-to-group and configurable voting
- Action items assigned to people with due iteration
- Anonymous mode for psychological safety
- Templates: Start/Stop/Continue, Mad/Sad/Glad, 4Ls, Sailboat, Lean Coffee, custom
- Add, remove, rename and re-order columns
- Drag-to-group and configurable voting
- Action items assigned to people with due iteration
First-class cross-team dependencies tracked from draft to delivery
Dependencies are where ARTs live or die. PlanTrain treats every dependency as a tracked entity with a producer, a consumer, a target iteration and a status.
Create a dependency from a feature card, from a team breakout, or directly on the dependency lane of the program board. Each dependency captures the producing team, the consuming team, the target iteration, a status and free-text notes, and supports the same tag system as features.
On the program board, a dependency renders as a card in its own lane at the producer's iteration, and as a small inbound chip on the consumer team's row at the target iteration — so both sides see exactly the same commitment without ambiguity. Milestones (release dates, regulatory submissions, market events) sit on a dedicated row and apply across teams.
- Producer / consumer mapping with status workflow
- Dependency cards in a dedicated board lane
- Mirrored inbound chip on the consumer team's row
- Tags, notes and link to the originating feature
- Milestone row across teams
- Producer / consumer mapping with status workflow
- Dependency cards in a dedicated board lane
- Mirrored inbound chip on the consumer team's row
- Tags, notes and link to the originating feature
Epics, lean business cases and portfolio rollups
Features roll up to epics; epics roll up to portfolio themes. PlanTrain gives Lean Portfolio Management a clean view without forcing you to buy a separate product.
Each epic carries a hypothesis statement, lean business case fields, MVP definition, and a Continue / Pivot decision tracker. Linked features inherit the epic's strategic intent and roll status up automatically.
The portfolio view shows epic health, total invested capacity and projected vs actual outcomes — enough to support quarterly portfolio reviews without exporting to a separate BI tool.
- Epic hypothesis statement and lean business case
- MVP / Continue / Pivot tracking
- Linked features with auto status rollup
- Portfolio view across ARTs
- Epic hypothesis statement and lean business case
- MVP / Continue / Pivot tracking
- Linked features with auto status rollup
- Portfolio view across ARTs
Decompose features into stories with story points and spillover tracking
PlanTrain ships a lightweight story layer so teams do not have to context-switch between PlanTrain and a separate Jira board during planning.
Stories live under their parent feature, carry story points, an iteration assignment and an acceptance criteria checklist. Capacity is consumed in the team breakout grid in real time.
Spillover stories — stories not finished by end of iteration — are tracked across iterations and PIs, and surface in the team retrospective automatically.
- Story points and per-iteration assignment
- Acceptance criteria checklist
- Spillover tracking across iterations and PIs
- Two-way Jira sync (Business plan and above)
- Story points and per-iteration assignment
- Acceptance criteria checklist
- Spillover tracking across iterations and PIs
- Two-way Jira sync (Business plan and above)
ART health dashboards built on the SAFe metrics that matter
PlanTrain reports on the SAFe metrics that actually drive improvement: Predictability, flow, dependency burndown, risk burndown and confidence trends.
Out-of-the-box dashboards show predictability per team, velocity and throughput, risk and dependency counts, and confidence-vote history. Every chart is filterable by PI, team, epic and tag.
- Predictability per team and ART
- Velocity, throughput and flow distribution
- Risk and dependency counts over time
- Confidence-vote history
- Predictability per team and ART
- Velocity, throughput and flow distribution
- Risk and dependency counts over time
- Confidence-vote history
Bend the tool to your taxonomy, not the other way around
No two organisations run SAFe the same way. PlanTrain lets RTEs adapt the tool to their language without filing a backlog ticket with IT.
Statuses, tags, epics and feature custom fields (text, number, single-select, multi-select, date) are editable inline per ART. Bulk-apply changes across the backlog with one action.
- Inline editable statuses, tags, epics
- Custom feature fields per ART
- Bulk-apply across the backlog
- Inline editable statuses, tags, epics
- Custom feature fields per ART
- Bulk-apply across the backlog
Per-organisation isolation and role-based access — out of the box
PlanTrain is built on per-organisation isolation. Every table is protected by row-level security and every action is gated by your SAFe role.
Sign in with email and password or with Google. Each user belongs to one or more organisations, and roles map directly to SAFe — Owner, Admin, RTE, Product Manager, Product Owner, Scrum Master, Member and Viewer. Row-level security on every database table guarantees that data from one organisation is never visible to another, regardless of the entry point.
Enterprise controls such as SAML/OIDC SSO, SCIM provisioning, audit log, data residency and formal ISO 27001 / SOC 2 attestations are not yet part of the product — they are on the roadmap and we're transparent about it.
- Row-level security on every table
- Email + password and Google sign-in
- Per-organisation data isolation
- SAFe-aligned roles & permissions
- Multi-organisation membership for consultants
- Row-level security on every table
- Email + password and Google sign-in
- Per-organisation data isolation
- SAFe-aligned roles & permissions
Frequently asked questions
How does PlanTrain show cross-team dependencies on the program board?+
Each dependency is a first-class entity with a producing team, a consuming team, a target iteration, a status and free-text notes. It renders as a card in a dedicated dependency lane at the producer's iteration, and is mirrored as a small inbound chip on the consumer team's row at the target iteration so both sides see the same commitment.
Which retrospective templates are included?+
Start/Stop/Continue, Mad/Sad/Glad, 4Ls (Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed for), Sailboat and Lean Coffee ship out of the box. You can also create custom templates, add or remove columns, rename columns and re-order them.
Can retrospective action items be assigned to people?+
Yes. Action items are first-class entities with an owner, a due iteration and a status. Open actions roll into the next Inspect & Adapt workshop automatically.
Does PlanTrain support multiple Agile Release Trains?+
Yes. A single PlanTrain organisation can host an unlimited number of ARTs, each with its own teams, members, PIs, backlogs, program boards, risk registers and retrospectives. Permissions are scoped per ART.
How is WSJF calculated in PlanTrain?+
WSJF = Cost of Delay / Job Size, where Cost of Delay = Business Value + Time Criticality + Risk Reduction & Opportunity Enablement. Each component is editable inline on every feature and the score and rank update instantly.
What security controls does PlanTrain ship today?+
Per-organisation isolation enforced by row-level security on every database table, email + password and Google sign-in, and SAFe-aligned role-based access (Owner, Admin, RTE, PM, PO, SM, Member, Viewer). Enterprise controls such as SAML/OIDC SSO, SCIM, audit log export, data residency and formal ISO 27001 / SOC 2 attestations are on the roadmap and not yet part of the product.