Big Room Planning

Purpose

Big Room Planning brings multiple teams into one physical or virtual space to plan collaboratively. Unlike siloed team planning, it surfaces cross-team dependencies in real time and creates a shared commitment across the programme.

At a glance

How to run

1. Opening plenary (30 min) — Leadership shares context, vision, and priorities.
2. Team breakout 1 (60 min) — Each team drafts their plan for the planning horizon. Identify dependencies on other teams.
3. Dependency marketplace (30 min) — Teams post dependencies on a shared board. Dependent teams meet to negotiate and resolve.
4. Team breakout 2 (45 min) — Adjust plans based on dependency discussions.
5. Plan sharing (45 min) — Each team presents a 3-minute summary of their plan. Others flag conflicts.
6. Risk and impediment review (20 min) — Collect programme-level risks.
7. Confidence vote (10 min) — Fist-of-five across all teams.
8. Close (20 min) — Summarize commitments and next steps.

Materials needed

• Large programme board with team swimlanes
• Dependency cards or string for physical boards
• Breakout spaces for each team
• Timer and microphone for plenary
• Digital board for remote participants

Pitfalls & common mistakes

• No dependency marketplace — Teams plan in isolation and discover conflicts after the event.
• Too many presentations — Keep team summaries to 3 minutes; the value is in the breakouts.
• Remote teams as afterthought — Hybrid events need dedicated remote facilitation.
• No follow-up — Dependencies must be tracked after the event; assign owners.

Inclusion & accessibility

• Provide detailed agendas and materials at least one week before.
• Ensure the venue is physically accessible; provide virtual access for those who cannot travel.
• Use microphones in the plenary so all can hear.
• Offer quiet breakout spaces for neurodiverse participants.

Variations

• Multi-Team Increment Planning — A formalized two-day version within large-scale agile frameworks.
• Open Space planning — Let teams self-organize into dependency-resolution sessions.
• Virtual Big Room — Use Miro + Zoom breakout rooms with a shared digital programme board.

When NOT to use this

• If you have only one team — Sprint Planning is enough.
• If teams have no real dependencies — the overhead is not justified.

Source & further reading

• Leffingwell, D. (2020). *SAFe Reference Guide*. Scaled Agile Press.
• Larman, C. & Vodde, B. (2016). *Large-Scale Scrum*. Addison-Wesley.