Planning teams
What this page is — The standing teams your organisation plans with: who is in each team, in which role and at what share of their time, who leads it, and which projects it plans in. Teams live in Organization Settings; each project picks the teams that plan in it. What it is for — Setting up once who plans together, so that every PI session can simply tick its teams, and every team board shows the right people's capacity. The problem it solves — Without a team definition, "the Payments team" is a list someone retypes for every planning event, capacity is counted for the whole project instead of the people who actually do the work, and nobody knows whose lead should answer a dependency request.
Routes: Organization Settings → Planning Teams (/org/settings?os=org_planning_teams) · Project settings → Planning tab → PI Planning section (/org/projects/<project>?tab=planning)
Permissions: See the organisation's planning teams (read the list) · Create, edit and deactivate planning teams (every change) · Show Planning Teams in the Organization Settings hub. (the hub entry) · on the project section, Open PI Planning sessions read-only to read and Create, edit and close PI sessions to change
Module: Planning Teams · Entry points: Organization Settings → Planning Teams · Quick create → New planning team · the PI Planning page's settings gear · Link teams to this project in the session drawer
1. Teams belong to the organisation, not to a project
A planning team is an organisation-wide group. The same Platform team can plan in three projects; each project links the teams that plan in it. A PI session can only pick active teams linked to its project.
| Planning team | Project members | Session teams | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where it is kept | Organization Settings → Planning Teams | The project's team tab | Chosen per session in the session drawer |
| What it decides | Who plans together, their role and share of time | Who can be assigned tasks in the project | Which boards the session has |
| Changes affect | Every future session of every linked project | Assignment everywhere in the project | That session only; fixed once published |
A person may be in several teams — a shared specialist. In a session that includes both teams, that person's capacity is counted once on the Program board and their load is the sum of both teams' work (see Program board and risks).
2. Why you would use it
- Set up once, reuse every quarter. A new session pre-selects every team linked to the project; there is nothing to retype.
- Capacity that matches the team. Each team board's load bars count only that team's members, so a team sees its own headroom rather than the whole project's.
- The right person answers dependencies. The lead and scrum master of the team that owns the needed work get the bell for a dependency request and can accept or decline it.
- Early warnings. A team member who is not on the project is flagged in project settings and on the Brief tab, long before the commit would refuse the assignment.
3. The Planning Teams page — step by step
| Pip | Control | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | New team | Opens the team drawer, empty |
| 2 | Team row | Colour dot, name, short code, description, Lead, member count, and a chip per linked project. An inactive team is greyed and marked Inactive |
| 3 | Edit team (pencil) | Opens the team drawer with the team filled in |
| 4 | Deactivate team / Activate team | Asks first. An inactive team cannot be added to new sessions; sessions already using it are not changed |
| 5 | Show inactive | Adds inactive teams to the list (the button shows how many) |
The bin deletes a team after a confirmation. A team taking part in an open PI session cannot be deleted — close the session first, or deactivate the team instead. Deleting removes the team, its members and its project links from the list.
Create or edit a team
- New team (or the pencil on a row).
- Type the Name and an optional short Code (shown as a chip on boards and lists).
- Pick a Colour from the palette, or type a hex value. The colour marks the team everywhere in a session — dots, board rows, risk cards.
- Pick the Team lead. The lead answers dependency requests aimed at this team.
- Under Members, add people with Add a person…, then set each person's role and share of time.
- Under Projects this team plans in, link the projects with Link a project….
- Create team (or Save team). A toast confirms; errors from the server appear as a toast too.
4. Field reference — the team drawer
| Field | Control | Required | Validation and notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Text | Yes | Up to 80 characters — a longer name is refused with the team name is required (up to 80 characters). Must be unique in the organisation — "That name is already used" otherwise |
| Code | Text, upper-cased as you type | No | Up to 12 characters; unique in the organisation |
| Colour | Ten-colour palette or a hex field | No | Must look like #1E88E5. Drawn solid, never transparent |
| Description | Multi-line text | No | What the team works on; shown under the name on the list |
| Team lead | Searchable select of the organisation's active users, plus No lead | No | The lead does not have to be a member, but usually is |
| Members | Add a person… — a searchable select of active users, then one row per person | No | A person can be in the team only once |
| · Role | Select: Member, Lead, Scrum master, Product owner | — | Leads and scrum masters answer cross-team dependency requests for this team |
| · Share of time | Number, 0–100 %, steps of 5 | — | The team's share of the person's time, stored as 0–1 and returned by the API. It is a record for the team: a team board counts the person's full planning capacity (their hours per week from Planning), not this share — see the note below |
| Projects this team plans in | Link a project… — a searchable select of the organisation's projects; chips with an unlink × | No | Only linked projects can use the team in a session |
Where the lookups come from: people are the organisation's active users; projects are the organisation's projects. Removing a member or unlinking a project and adding them again later brings the old entry back.
The share of time does not reduce anyone's capacity on a team board. Someone in two teams shows their full capacity on both boards; the Program board then counts their capacity once against the sum of both teams' load, and the merge warns when that is over. Plan a shared person's work with that in mind, or lower their hours per week in Planning for the PI.
5. Project settings → PI Planning
The section sits under the Planning settings of a project (also reachable from the gear on the PI Planning page). It needs Open PI Planning sessions read-only to see and Create, edit and close PI sessions to change; without the second it reads Read-only.
| Pip | Setting | Control | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Planning page opens on | Two-way switch: Single-team planning / PI Planning (multi-team) | Single-team | With PI Planning (multi-team), the single-team Planning page of this project shows a banner This project plans with several teams in PI Planning with Open PI Planning →. Both pages keep their own sidebar entries |
| 2 | Default session length | Stepper, minutes, steps of 15 | 240 minutes (4 h) | Between 15 minutes and 3 days (4,320 minutes). Pre-fills the agenda of every new session |
| 3 | Default facilitator | Searchable select of the project's members, or No default facilitator | None | Pre-fills the facilitator; without it the creator is the facilitator |
| 4 | Confidence vote | Toggle | On | Off hides the vote on the Review tab for this project |
| 5 | Teams that plan in this project | Add a team… select of the organisation's teams; one row per linked team with an unlink × | — | A chip warns when n members are not on this project — add them to the project, or they cannot be assigned the team's tasks |
Save PI Planning saves both the settings and the team links; the footer shows when it was last saved. Linking a team here is the same as linking the project in the team drawer.
6. Worked example
The organisation creates three teams:
| Team | Code | Colour | Lead | Members (role, share) | Projects |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Payments | PAY | blue | the delivery lead | delivery lead (Lead, 100%), a developer (Member, 100%), the scrum master (Scrum master, 50%) | Optima Orbit |
| Mobile | MOB | green | the mobile lead | mobile lead (Lead, 100%), an app developer (Member, 100%), the same scrum master (Member, 50%) | Optima Orbit |
| Platform | PLT | purple | the platform lead | platform lead (Lead, 100%), a product owner (Product owner, 100%) | Optima Orbit |
In Project settings → PI Planning the programme manager sets the default length to 480 minutes and herself as default facilitator, and leaves the confidence vote on. The Teams that plan in this project list already shows the three teams, with no warning chip — all members are on the project. When she clicks New PI session, all three teams are pre-selected and the agenda starts at 8 hours. Because the scrum master is in two teams, the first session's Brief shows 1 person is in more than one team, which is allowed.
7. The admin contract
- Grant the team permissions in the Planning Teams module to whoever maintains teams; the hub entry needs Show Planning Teams in the Organization Settings hub.
- Add team members to the project (project team tab). Team membership does not make someone a project member.
- Keep leads and scrum masters set. Dependency requests go to the leads and scrum masters of the team that owns the needed work; a team with neither can only have its links answered by the facilitator.
- Deactivate, don't delete, a team that took part in sessions you still want to read.
8. Don't confuse this with…
- Project members — who can be assigned work in a project. A planning team is who plans together; both are needed.
- Planning → Define — skills and hours per person for a Planning scenario. A team's share of time is recorded on the team; capacity on a team board still comes from the person's planning capacity (hours per week).
- Planning → Capacity — the capacity grid of one scenario. On a PI team board, the same grid counts only the team's members.
- Organisation roles — permissions. A team role (Lead, Scrum master…) grants no permission; it decides who answers dependency requests.
9. Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Planning Teams is not in Organization Settings | The role lacks Show Planning Teams in the Organization Settings hub. | Grant it |
| "Ask your administrator for the View planning teams permission." | The role lacks See the organisation's planning teams | Grant it |
| No New team, pencil or bin | The role lacks Create, edit and deactivate planning teams | Grant it |
| "That name is already used" | Another team (active or not) has that name or code | Pick another name, or reactivate the old team |
| "this team takes part in an open PI session…" when deleting | The team is in a session that is not closed | Close or abandon the session, or deactivate the team |
| The team does not appear in the session drawer | It is inactive, or not linked to the project | Activate it; link the project |
| n members are not on this project | Those people are not project members | Add them under the project's team tab |
| A new member cannot be picked in Add a person… | They are not an active user of the organisation | Activate or invite the user first |