Finishing the PI
Closing the increment
The PI ends with two linked activities. The PI System Demo shows the full ART's integrated solution to stakeholders and Business Owners, in the context of the PI objectives. Inspect & Adapt (I&A) then turns observation into improvement through three parts: the PI System Demo, quantitative measurement (metrics such as velocity, predictability, quality, and flow), and a problem-solving workshop where teams and the ART root-cause the significant issues.
The Scrum Master's contribution is facilitation and honesty: help the team assess how far it actually got against its PI objectives, surface the real data, and leave with improvement items that land in the ART backlog with owners and dates.
Concepts to name
- Planned versus actual business value on PI objectives, assessed by Business Owners.
- Carryover of unfinished work and its implications for the next PI's capacity.
- The IP iteration, which follows I&A and provides time for innovation, planning, and improvement work.
- Root-cause analysis (for example, a fishbone or five-whys approach) rather than a complaint session.
Traps
- Treating I&A as just another team retrospective - it is ART-level and includes a structured problem-solving workshop.
- Letting the Scrum Master assign business value; that belongs to the Business Owners.
- Assuming I&A is optional or can be compressed away when delivery slips.
- Improvement items with no owner, no date, and no place in the ART backlog.
- Confusing the PI System Demo with an iteration review.
Rule of thumb
If the problem-solving workshop produces no owned, dated improvement items in the ART backlog, it did not work. The measure of I&A is what changes in the next PI.