Program increments are time periods defined by you and a key component to structuring your programme delivery timeline in BigAgile.

You can create a Program Increment at any time by accessing the Admin view -> Program Increments -> Add PI, and populating the following fields:

1. Add PI Name: give your PI a name. 💡Tip: We recommend using a simple convention, which will make it quick and easy to track and manage your PIs. We call ours 'PI-1; PI-2; PI-3...'

2. Select a PI Status: There are 3 options here:

3. Connector: select the task management tool integration <<link to integrations setup>> you would like to sync your Features and Teams with for this PI. If you haven't already done so, here's how to setup an integration

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4. Jira Proj key: specify the key of the Jira Project you would like BigAgile to sync with. 💡Tip: This is typically a short abbreviation in capitals (e.g. ABC), which you can locate by logging into Jira-> Projects-> Search Project and finding the corresponding key in the 'Key' column.

5. Sprints: here, you can add Sprints to your PI, give them names, and specify a time-frame for each sprint. 💡Tip: Remember the simple naming convention we used for our PIs? You can apply this to our Sprints too - e.g. there are 6 Sprints in our PI-1, so we call them 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, and 1.6. Our Sprints for PI-2 are called 2.1, 2.2, 2.3...an so on)

6. Teams: When making a PI, the teams which have been created in Admin > Teams are added. In the PI, you can create and map team sprints too. 💡If there is a team you don't want to use in the PI, the solution is to simply not map any sprints for it.

Here is an example of Mapped Sprints in a team.

Here is an example of Unmapped Sprints in a team. These will not appear in the PI.

💡The sprints in the dropdown menu come from Azure DevOps, or Jira. These are mapped to BigAgile sprints.

7. Select Save & Post to confirm your changes.

Let's look at a typical example for an organisation which works in 3-month PIs, each 6 Sprints long (2 week Sprints) ...

As you start preparing for PI-1, you would create the PI in BigAgile with a status of 'Planning'. You would typically then get the Candidate Features ready for PI Planning. Throughout the PI planning event, PI-1 stays in 'planning' mode.

At the end of the PI planning event, when the plan is finalised, you would change the status of PI-1 to 'Active'. This takes a snapshot of the plan, which then becomes your Original Plan of the PI, which will feed into valuable reports like the Current vs Original << screenshot of delivery screens, highlighting the current/original toggle >> . All throughout the six delivery Sprints, the PI status remains as 'Active'.

Once delivery is complete for a PI, the status should be changed to 'Complete'.