PI Planning sets the tone for the next increment. Teams walk in with ideas, assumptions, and a rough sense of direction. They walk out with aligned objectives, committed features, and a shared understanding of what value they will deliver.

Without structure, though, PI Planning can slip into a feature-counting exercise that ignores the user’s journey. This is where User Story Mapping becomes a powerful tool. It helps teams see the product through the user’s eyes, slice work around value, and expose dependencies early.

In this guide, you will see how Story Mapping fits into PI Planning, how to run it in a SAFe context, and how different roles across the Agile Release Train (ART) contribute to it.

Why Story Mapping Belongs in PI Planning

If you have ever sat in a PI Planning session where teams debate what a feature really means, you have seen the problem. Story Mapping gives everyone a shared visual of the user experience and turns scattered backlog items into a coherent flow.

During PI Planning, Story Mapping helps you:

• Create a shared mental model: Everyone looks at the same map of user activities, not separate interpretations of the same feature.
• Prioritize slices of value: The map shows which parts of the workflow are critical for this PI and which can wait.
• Expose cross-team dependencies early: Dependencies become visible because you see how steps connect across the user journey.
• Speed up backlog refinement: Once the map is clear, breaking work into Features and Stories becomes faster and more focused.

This way of thinking aligns strongly with what leaders practice in a Leading SAFe certification, where the focus is on value streams, customer-centricity, and end-to-end flow across the ART.

Key Concepts: PI Planning and User Story Mapping

PI Planning is the cadenced event where Agile teams in an ART align on a shared mission, objectives, and a realistic plan for the next Planning Interval. It is typically a 2-day event that brings business stakeholders, Product Management, Product Owners, Scrum Masters, and teams together to plan the next 8–12 weeks of work, review risks, and agree on PI Objectives.

User Story Mapping is a visual technique, popularized by Jeff Patton, that lays out the user’s journey horizontally as key activities, and vertically as the smaller steps and Stories that support those activities. Instead of a flat backlog, you get a map that shows:

• Who the user is
• What goal they are trying to accomplish
• Which activities they go through
• Which Stories support each activity
• Which slices of the map form a meaningful release or PI

If you want a deeper dive into the origins and structure of Story Mapping, resources like Jeff Patton’s work and practical guides such as the Avion step-by-step story mapping guide and Atlassian’s user story map template provide helpful real-world examples.

Where Story Mapping Fits in the PI Planning Flow

Story Mapping can happen just before PI Planning or as part of the early activities on Day 1. The sequence usually looks like this:

1. Business context and product vision are shared.
2. Teams collaborate to create or refine the Story Map.
3. The ART uses the map to decide what slices of value to target in the PI.
4. Teams translate those slices into Features, Stories, and PI Objectives.

Used this way, Story Mapping becomes the bridge between a strategic vision and a concrete, deliverable plan.

Step-by-Step: Using Story Mapping During PI Planning

1. Start with vision and outcomes

Before anyone writes Stories, the ART needs clarity on why this PI matters and which outcomes it should support. Product Management, Business Owners, and sometimes customer representatives provide:

• Business context
• Key problems to solve
• High-level features or solutions in mind

This vision gives your Story Map direction. It also anchors the conversations you will later have about priorities and trade-offs.

2. Define the user and core goals

Next, teams identify the main users or personas involved. A single PI might focus on one key user type, or on one side of a multi-sided product.

For each primary user, ask:

• Who are they?
• What are they trying to get done in this domain?
• What outcome defines success for them?

This is where skills from a SAFe Product Owner and Manager certification really show up. POPMs bring customer knowledge, market context, and backlog ownership into the conversation to keep the map grounded in real user goals.

3. Map the backbone: high-level activities

Once the user and their goal are clear, you create the backbone of the Story Map: the main activities they go through to achieve that goal. These activities become the horizontal axis of your map.

For example, if the domain is a subscription product, your backbone might look like:

• Discover the product
• Compare plans
• Sign up
• Configure account
• Use key features
• Review usage and billing

The backbone gives the ART a shared narrative. Everyone can see the flow at a glance, which is much easier than interpreting a flat backlog of mixed Stories and Features.

4. Add user steps and details under each activity

Under each backbone activity, you now list the detailed steps the user takes. These steps are still at a functional level, not yet written as full User Stories, but they are specific enough to drive conversation.

For example, under “Sign up” you might see:

• Choose sign-up method
• Enter basic details
• Verify email or phone
• Set up password and security options

Teams across the ART join in to enrich these steps. This is where different perspectives collide in a useful way. Engineers, testers, UX designers, and Product Owners see gaps, edge cases, and dependencies that might otherwise appear late in the PI.

Articles such as the Nielsen Norman Group’s guide to user-story mapping in Agile show how this layered structure helps maintain visibility of the whole experience while still enabling iterative delivery.

5. Slice the map into meaningful increments for the PI

Once you see the full map, you resist the temptation to “do everything.” Instead, you ask:

• What is the minimum end-to-end experience we need to deliver in this PI to create real value?
• Which user activities are essential for that outcome?
• Which steps can be simplified or postponed?

You draw one or more horizontal slices through the map:

• Slice 1: The most essential path (often an MVP or “first usable” version).
• Slice 2: Enhancements that deepen or refine the experience.
• Slice 3: Nice-to-have or future experiments.

PI Planning focuses on the slices that fit this PI’s timebox and capacity. This aligns neatly with the idea that teams should prioritize value and keep work within a realistic scope, a principle echoed in guides like Easy Agile’s ultimate guide to PI Planning.

6. Turn slices into Features, Enablers, and Stories

Once you agree on which slices belong in the PI, Product Management and Product Owners work with teams to translate them into:

• Features that align with the ART’s backlog
• Enabler Features for architectural or technical foundation
• User Stories that teams will deliver during iterations
• Spikes where exploration is needed

The Story Map keeps context visible. When a team discusses a single Story, they can still see where it sits in the overall journey, similar to how Atlassian describes the relationship between stories, epics, and larger initiatives in its epics and stories guide.

7. Estimate, align, and shape PI Objectives

With Features and Stories emerging from the map, teams move into estimating, dependency identification, and risk analysis. Here:

• Scrum Masters facilitate discussion, keep conversations moving, and surface risks and blockers.
• Teams check capacity, refine Stories, and validate whether slices fit within the PI.
• Product Owners refine acceptance criteria and clarify edge cases based on the map.

From there, teams write PI Objectives that describe the outcomes they plan to deliver, not just the list of Features. The Story Map strengthens those objectives because everyone can see the end-to-end value those objectives represent.

Scrum Masters who are skilled at facilitating these conversations often build that capability through programs like the SAFe Scrum Master certification and SAFe Advanced Scrum Master certification training, where they learn to connect team-level planning with ART-level flow.

How Different SAFe Roles Contribute to Story Mapping During PI Planning

Story Mapping during PI Planning is not the job of a single person. It is a collaborative exercise where each role brings something essential.

Product Manager

• Provides the vision and context for the PI.
• Shapes and prioritizes Features that emerge from the map.
• Ensures slices align with market strategy and roadmap.

Product Owner / POPM

• Brings deep understanding of user needs and workflows.
• Breaks Features into Stories that match the Story Map.
• Keeps the conversation user-centric and value-focused.

These responsibilities align closely with the skills developed in a dedicated POPM certification training, where Product Owners and Product Managers learn to connect strategy, backlog, and flow.

Scrum Master

• Facilitates Story Mapping workshops during PI Planning.
• Helps teams manage time and focus on outcomes rather than technical rabbit holes.
• Surfaces issues that may turn into risks or dependencies later.

Release Train Engineer (RTE)

• Ensures Story Mapping supports ART-wide alignment, not just team-level clarity.
• Helps coordinate cross-team dependencies that the map reveals.
• Uses the Story Map as a visual artifact to guide discussions across the two days of PI Planning.

These facilitation and coordination skills are developed deeply in a SAFe Release Train Engineer certification, where the RTE role focuses on end-to-end ART effectiveness.

Benefits of Using Story Mapping Inside PI Planning

Once you embed Story Mapping into your PI Planning rhythm, you start to see clear benefits:

• Stronger alignment: Everyone can see the same end-to-end journey and how their work fits into it.
• Better prioritization: Slices of the map make it easier to decide what truly matters for this PI.
• More realistic plans: Dependencies and risks show up earlier, when there is still time to adjust scope.
• Cleaner backlogs: Backlog items are grounded in user flow, not created in isolation.
• Clearer PI Objectives: Objectives describe value delivered across the journey instead of just listing features.

Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

Teams new to Story Mapping inside PI Planning often run into a few predictable problems. Here is how to avoid them:

1. Turning the map into a technical diagram

Story Maps should describe user activities and steps, not system components. Keep the language user-focused. Technical discussions are important but should support the map, not replace it.

2. Skipping the “why” behind the map

If you try to jump straight into mapping without revisiting the PI vision and outcomes, the map becomes a mechanical exercise. Always connect the map to the business and customer goals first.

3. Overloading the PI

When teams see the entire map, there is a temptation to pull too much into the PI. Use slices to keep scope realistic. It is better to deliver one strong, end-to-end experience than half-finished fragments across the map.

4. Treating Story Mapping as a one-time event

The map should stay alive across the PI. Teams revisit it during refinement, iteration planning, and even Inspect & Adapt sessions to see what changed and what to adjust next.

5. Leaving facilitation to chance

A Story Mapping workshop without structure can easily drift. Skilled facilitation from Scrum Masters and the RTE keeps energy focused and inclusive, which is one of the reasons advanced training such as Advanced Scrum Master training becomes valuable for complex ARTs.

Bringing It All Together

Using User Story Mapping during PI Planning turns planning from a feature-centric exercise into a value-centric one. It shifts the conversation from “What can we build?” to “What experience do we want this user to have by the end of this PI?”

When Story Mapping is integrated into the ART’s cadence, teams plan with more clarity, identify dependencies earlier, and write PI Objectives that actually reflect customer outcomes. Over time, this leads to better PIs, more predictable delivery, and a stronger connection between strategy and execution.

For teams that want to deepen their capability in this area, investing in structured learning paths like Leading SAFe, SAFe POPM certification, SAFe Scrum Master certification, Advanced Scrum Master training, and RTE certification can help build the skills needed to run Story Mapping and PI Planning with confidence at scale.

 

Also read - Refining your User Story Map with customer feedback

Also see - How User Story Mapping supports MVP thinking