Objectives, review, merge and commit
What this page is — The end of a PI session: the Objectives each team commits to (with business value), the Review tab with team demos and the confidence vote, the adjustment round, and Merge & commit, which turns every team's board into one plan written to the tasks. What it is for — Ending the event with a plan the whole room believes in, stated as outcomes the business can check, and committed in one step without anyone copying boards into tasks. The problem it solves — A multi-team plan usually ends as a set of separate boards that each team then "applies" in its own time, with objectives in a slide deck nobody scores. Here the boards are merged and checked together — capacity, dependencies, conflicts — and committed once, and the objectives are kept with the session so the PI can be scored at its end.
Route: /org/tasks/pi-planning?project=<project>&session=<session>&tab=objectives · …&tab=review
Permissions: Take part in a PI session as a team member (your team's objectives, your team's demo, vote) · Run a PI session or the named facilitator (the project objective, adjust, merge, close) · Planning's permission that begins Create and edit scenarios, move and assign tasks on the board (commit) · Create, edit and close PI sessions (the project objective, scoring after the PI)
Module: PI Planning · Entry points: the Objectives and Review tabs · End planning, Adjust and Merge & commit in the session bar · the PI plan committed bell and e-mail
1. From team plans to one committed plan
| Step | Where | Who | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Objectives | Objectives tab | Each team; the facilitator for the project objective | What each team commits to deliver, with business value |
| End planning | Session bar | Facilitator | Boards freeze; status Review |
| Demos | Review tab | Each team (or the facilitator) | Each team marked Demoed, with notes |
| Confidence vote | Review tab | Every team member and the facilitator | An average from 1 to 5, per team and overall |
| Adjust (optional) | Session bar | Facilitator | A shorter round with the boards open again; then back to Review |
| Merge | Review tab / Merge & commit | Facilitator | One program plan and Planning's commit review |
| Commit | Merge drawer | Facilitator with Planning's commit permission | Tasks, iterations, dependencies and goals written; status Committed |
| Close, score | Session bar, Objectives tab | Facilitator, session manager | Status Closed; delivered value per objective, predictability |
The commit is Planning's own commit, run on the merged plan: the same preview, blocking problems, warnings and task changes as a commit from the Planning page, and afterwards the same commit history, notifications and webhook.
2. Why you would use it
- Objectives the business can hold you to. Each team's objectives carry a business value from 1 to 10; stretch objectives are visible but not promised.
- A measurable PI. After the PI, scoring each objective's delivered value gives a predictability figure for the programme.
- Confidence before commitment. The vote tells the facilitator whether to commit or to run a short adjustment round first — before anything is written.
- One commit, everything consistent. Every team's placements, the accepted cross-team dependencies and the goals are checked together and written in one step, with one notification.
3. The Objectives tab
| Pip | Area | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Project objective | What the whole programme commits to in this PI. Set by the facilitator or a session manager. At merge it becomes the PI phase's goal |
| 2 | A team objective | Title, details, Business value n, and Stretch when it is planned but not committed |
| 3 | BV n | The team's committed business value — the sum over its non-stretch objectives |
Add (the + on a card) opens the objective drawer; the pencil edits and the bin deletes (with a confirmation). A team member edits their own team's objectives; the facilitator edits all. Objectives can be written from Briefing through Adjusting.
Field reference — the objective drawer
| Field | Control | Required | Validation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Objective | Text | Yes | Up to 300 characters |
| Details | Multi-line text | No | |
| Business value (1–10) | Number | No (team objectives only) | 1 to 10; business value is 1 to 10 otherwise |
| Stretch objective | Switch (team objectives only) | — | Off by default. A stretch objective does not count in the PI goal or the predictability figure |
After the PI — once the session is committed or closed, the facilitator or a session manager sees an Actual value box (0–10) beside each committed objective. Type the value delivered and leave the box; the objective shows Delivered n, and a banner shows the programme's predictability: the delivered value divided by the business value committed, over the objectives already scored.
4. The Review tab — step by step
- End planning in the session bar (Move to review? — confirm). The team boards freeze.
- Team demos (pip 3). Each team walks the room through its plan, objectives and risks. A member of the team, or the facilitator, types optional notes and presses Demoed; the undo arrow sets it back to Planning. The card shows the team's number of tasks and its status (Planning, Demoed, Committed).
- Confidence vote (pip 4). Everyone taking part presses one of 1 to 5 — hover for the meaning: No confidence, Little, Some, Good, High — with an optional reason in Why?. One vote per person per round; pressing another number changes your vote. Below, the average and the number of votes, a histogram (red 1–2, amber 3, green 4–5), and the average per team.
- Under 3 on average the facilitator sees The room is not confident (under 3). Consider an adjustment round — Adjust in the bar above.
- Either Adjust (§5) or Merge the team plans / Merge & commit (§6).
Who voted what (facilitator only) lists each vote and its reason; everyone else sees only the distribution and their own vote. Observers do not vote. When the project has switched the confidence vote off (Project settings → PI Planning), the card says so.
5. The adjustment round
Adjust (facilitator, in Review) opens Start an adjustment round. Type the Length of the round — 45 minutes by default, at least 15 — and press Start the round.
- The status becomes Adjusting, the round number goes up (Round 2), and a new clock starts with that length and no breaks.
- Every team board opens again and every team is back to Planning (its demo mark is cleared).
- The allocation on the Brief can change again — a category moved to another team takes its tasks along, keeping where they were planned.
- The previous round's votes are kept; the new round is voted fresh.
End planning brings the session back to Review.
6. Merge and commit
Merge the team plans (Review tab) or Merge & commit (session bar) opens the drawer and merges straight away. Merging:
- puts every team's board into one program plan — for a task on two boards, the decided team's version (else the category's team);
- keeps each team's own dependencies and adds the accepted cross-team links;
- counts each person's capacity once (a shared person's capacity is not doubled);
- sets each iteration's goal to the teams' goals joined (Payments: Refunds end to end on the web · Mobile: In-app checkout on Android · …), the PI phase's goal to the project objective, and its success criteria to the committed team objectives (Payments: Refunds end to end on web and API (BV 8)).
Merging writes nothing to the tasks and can be repeated — reopening the drawer merges the current boards again. A toast confirms, for example 189 tasks from 3 teams — review the changes and commit.
| Pip | Area | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Counters | Teams, Tasks in the plan, Tasks changing, Cross-team links (accepted), Conflicts decided, Committed hours against capacity |
| 2 | Blocking problems / warnings | Red: problems that block the commit (for example an assignee who is not on the project, or a dependency cycle). Amber: warnings (for example a person over or under their load ratio) |
| 3 | Commit despite the warnings | Must be ticked when there are warnings |
| 4 | Commit the PI plan | Commits. Disabled while there are blocking problems, while warnings are not acknowledged, or when you lack Planning's commit permission |
Below the warnings: Shared people (one capacity, every team's load), Task changes — every field that will change on every task, with a Write tick box per task (untick to leave that task out of this commit), how many dependencies will be added, and the goals that will be set.
The footer always says what is needed next: Committing also needs the Planning manage permission — ask someone who has it., Fix the blocking problems on the team boards (Adjust), then merge again., Tick "Commit despite the warnings" to go ahead., n tasks left out — they stay planned. or Ready to commit.
When you commit:
- the tasks get their iteration, assignee and estimate; the accepted cross-team links become task dependencies; the iteration and PI goals are written;
- one commit appears in Planning's history, and Planning's usual plan committed e-mail and
planning.committedwebhook go out once; - every participant except the committer gets a bell PI plan committed, and the facilitator and the team leads get the e-mail PI Planning Session Committed with a summary;
- the session becomes Committed and the teams Committed.
If you untick tasks, the commit writes the rest and the session stays in Review, so the remaining tasks can be dealt with and committed later.
Close (facilitator, once committed) asks Close the session? — "The live feed stops. Everything stays readable, and objectives can still be scored after the PI."
7. Worked example
At 16:00 the facilitator ends planning on PI 2026.4. Payments demos — "Refunds end to end in iterations 1–2; the invoice redesign is a stretch" — and Mobile — "Checkout on Android first; iOS depends on the store review." Platform has not demoed yet. The room votes: 4 and 3, 3.5 average — no adjustment recommended.
She presses Merge & commit: 189 tasks from 3 teams. The counters read 3 teams, 189 tasks, 36 tasks changing, 1 cross-team link, 1 conflict decided, 598 h of 1,536 h. There are 28 warnings — people planned under their load ratio, expected on the first day of a PI where most work is still in the backlog — and no blocking problem. She reads the warnings, ticks Commit despite the warnings, and presses Commit the PI plan. The Payments and Mobile tasks now sit in their iterations with their assignees; the refund dependency is on the tasks; the phase PI 2026.4 has the goal "Customers can pay and get refunds from the mobile app" with four success criteria, one per committed team objective.
Six weeks later she scores the objectives: Refunds end to end 8 of 8, In-app checkout 7 of 9, iOS parity 3 of 6, Rate-limited gateway 7 of 7 — 83% predictability. The stretch Invoice PDF redesign is not counted.
8. The admin contract
- Planning's commit permission (the one that begins Create and edit scenarios, move and assign tasks on the board) must be held by whoever commits — facilitating is not enough.
- Everything Planning's commit checks applies: assignees must be project members; creating or changing sprints and phases needs the milestone permission; the project's commit rules (drift, warnings) apply.
- Team leads receive the committed e-mail; set them on the teams.
- E-mail templates PI Planning Session Committed (and Planning's own plan-committed template) must be active to be sent.
- The confidence vote can be switched off per project in Project settings → PI Planning.
9. Don't confuse this with…
- Planning → Scenarios and commit — the same commit review, for one scenario. Here it runs on the merged plan of every team.
- Planning → Goals — goals per time box, where the merged iteration goals and the PI goal end up, and where the goal check and burndown then work as usual.
- Demoed vs Committed — Demoed only records that a team presented; nothing is written until the commit.
10. Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| No Merge the team plans button | You are not the facilitator, or the session is not in Review | End planning first; ask the facilitator |
| "A task is on two team boards — pick which team keeps it…" | A conflict has neither a decision nor a default | Decide it on the Program board or the Brief |
| Commit the PI plan stays disabled | Blocking problems, unacknowledged warnings, or you lack Planning's commit permission | Read the footer; Adjust and fix, tick the acknowledgement, or ask someone with the permission |
| "Someone else changed the session just now — try again." | Two people pressed a lifecycle button at the same moment | Try again |
| The preview changed / "stale" when committing | A board or a live task changed after merging | Close the drawer and merge again |
| After commit the session is still in Review | Some tasks were unticked | Deal with them, merge again and commit the rest |
| The vote buttons are disabled | The session is not in Review, or you are an observer | Wait for review; join a team |
| No Actual value box | The session is not committed yet, or you are neither facilitator nor session manager | Score after the commit |
| No predictability figure | No committed objective with a business value has been scored | Score at least one |