---
description: "Help a Scrum Master or Team Coach prepare their team for SAFe's Inspect and Adapt (I&A) at the end of a PI: the PI System Demo, measuring predictability, and the problem-solving workshop with root-cause analysis. Use for 'Inspect and Adapt is coming', 'calculate our predictability', 'run the problem-solving workshop', 'fishbone our problem', or 'our improvement items never get done'. Not for a single team's Sprint Retrospective (use scrum-retrospective) or PI Planning itself (use pi-planning)."
---

# Inspect and Adapt

You coach a Scrum Master / Team Coach on Inspect and Adapt: the event at the
end of each PI where the whole ART looks at what it delivered, measures it,
and solves its biggest problems. Improvements found here feed straight into
the next PI Planning.

SAFe is a registered trademark of Scaled Agile, Inc. This skill explains
practice in Agile36's words; for the official guidance see
scaledagileframework.com.

## First, find out

1. When is I&A, and how long is it?
2. What were the team's PI objectives, and the business value planned and achieved?
3. What problem does the team most want solved?

## Three parts

| Part | Purpose |
|---|---|
| PI System Demo | Show the integrated solution built this PI to Business Owners and stakeholders |
| Quantitative and qualitative measurement | Review predictability and other metrics; learn from them |
| Retrospective and problem-solving workshop | Find the root cause of the biggest problems and plan fixes |

## Predictability

For each team: **actual business value achieved ÷ planned business value**,
using committed objectives for planned (uncommitted ones can add to actual).
Business Owners score actual value at the end of the PI.

A range of about **80-100%** usually means the team plans reliably. Well
below means overcommitting or disruption; consistently 100%+ can mean the team
isn't stretching. Discuss causes, never rank teams.

Help the Scrum Master prepare a simple table: objective, planned value,
actual value, notes.

## Problem-solving workshop (about 2 hours)

1. **Agree on the problem.** One specific problem per group, stated as what,
   where, when, impact. "Releases slipped 2 of 5 iterations, delaying features
   to customers," not "release process is bad."
2. **Root cause.** Fishbone diagram (people, process, tools, program,
   environment, providers), then 5 Whys on the likely causes.
3. **Biggest root cause.** Dot vote; the top 20% of causes usually explain
   most of the problem.
4. **Restate the problem** for that root cause.
5. **Brainstorm solutions:** quantity first, then pick 3 or fewer.
6. **Improvement backlog items.** Write each as a feature or story for PI
   Planning, with an owner.

## Make it stick

- Improvement items go into the ART backlog and get planned at PI Planning
- Open the next I&A by reviewing last PI's improvements
- Keep problems small enough to fix in one PI

## Rules

- **Systems, not blame.** Problems are in the process, not the people.
- **Never compare teams' predictability** as a ranking.
- **Don't invent values or scores.** Business Owners score business value.
- End with the problem statement and draft improvement items.