SAFe Plan Naming Conventions

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SAFe hierarchy overview

1

Choose a naming scheme for each level

Adopt one naming pattern per level and apply it uniformly. The examples below match the patterns used in support tickets for enterprise SAFe deployments:

Level	Example Plan ID	Example Plan Name
Program Increment (PI)	PI-2401	PI 2401
Team Iteration	I-2401-1	Iteration 2401.1
Program Iteration	PI-2401-IP	IP Sprint 2401

Rules:

• Use only alphanumeric characters, dashes (-), and underscores (_) in Plan IDs.
• Dashes are safe from version 25.3.0 onward — do not use them on earlier versions.
• Keep the delimiter consistent within each level (all dashes or all underscores — do not mix).
• The Plan ID must be unique within the project; the Plan Name is the display label shown in column headers.

Encoding the year and quarter in the PI name (e.g. PI-2401 = 2024 Q1) makes boards self-documenting and simplifies the Last Plan Query when creating new plans from the board.

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2

Create Plan IDs in Polarion

When creating Plans manually in Polarion, set both the ID and the Name fields:

• ID — enter the pattern ID exactly (e.g. PI-2401). This is the value Planningboard stores internally and uses when syncing SAFe parent plans.
• Name — enter the human-readable label (e.g. PI 2401). This appears in the board column header.

If you are using Planningboard’s New Plan feature to create Plans from the board, configure the Plan ID Pattern and Plan Name Pattern widget parameters to match your chosen scheme. See Configure Plans (Columns) for parameter details.

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3

Configure Plan ID Pattern for board-created plans

Open the widget parameters for your Planningboard widget and locate the New Plan section:

Parameter	Value for PI level	Value for Iteration level
Plan ID Pattern	PI-${year}${quarter}	I-${year}${quarter}-${index}
Plan Name Pattern	PI ${year}${quarter}	Iteration ${year}${quarter}.${index}
Template ID	your PI plan template ID	your iteration plan template ID

The Plan ID Pattern and Plan Name Pattern fields are pre-filled with Team-aware placeholders when Teams are enabled. If you are not using Teams, replace the defaults with your SAFe pattern — otherwise newly created plans will not match your naming scheme and the Last Plan Query will not find them.

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4

Set `plansMode` to match the hierarchy level

The plansMode widget parameter controls which Plans Planningboard loads and how it groups them. Set it to the value that matches the board’s level in the SAFe hierarchy:

Board scope	plansMode value
Team-level sprints within a program	safeSprints
Sprints across the portfolio	safePflSprints
Program Increments within an ART	safePIs
Program Increments at solution level	safeSIs

In the widget configuration UI, plansMode appears as the Plans Type dropdown. Selecting a SAFe type changes which configuration fields are shown — for example, the Program Increment Parameter ID field appears only for the SAFe Sprints in Program (safeSprints) and SAFe Sprints in Portfolio (safePflSprints) modes, and the plan items section is hidden for SAFe modes (it is available only in Project Plans (PROJECT_PLANS) mode).

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5

Verify the `Plan Name Pattern` matches the `Last Plan Query`

When Planningboard creates a new plan, it finds the “last plan” to calculate the next plan’s date range using the Last Plan Query (defaults to the latest plan of the same template type if left empty) and Last Plan Sort (defaults to dueDate descending).If your IDs contain dates or sequence numbers, confirm that the query can still find the correct last plan after renaming. For example, if you use PI-2401, PI-2402, PI-2403, the default sort by dueDate finds the last PI correctly without a custom query.

If you add PIs out of chronological order, or your template has mixed types, provide an explicit Last Plan Query to pin the lookup.

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6

Validate Plan visibility on the board

After applying your naming scheme:

1. Open the Planningboard page in Polarion.
2. Check that the expected Plans appear as columns and that column headers show the display names (not the IDs).
3. Hover over a capacity bar to confirm the capacity tooltip shows a non-zero value. A zero capacity value is a symptom of Planningboard failing to parse the plan name — upgrade to 25.3.0 if this occurs on a plan with dashes in the name.
4. Confirm that plan shortcuts (the links in column headers) open the correct Polarion Plan pages.

If you rename existing Plans in Polarion and the board still shows old column headers, use the Refresh data toolbar button (circular arrow icon) to force a reload. The board does not auto-detect Plan renames.

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ASCII diagram — SAFe Plan ID hierarchy

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Common pitfalls

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You should now see

• All Plans appear as columns with the correct display names from your naming scheme.
• Hovering over a capacity bar shows a non-zero capacity tooltip (assuming capacity is configured).
• Plan shortcut links in column headers navigate to the correct Polarion Plan pages.
• The New Plan button (if enabled) creates plans whose IDs follow your chosen pattern.

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See also

• SAFe Planning Workflows — end-to-end SAFe board configuration by hierarchy level
• Configure Plans (Columns) — Plan ID Pattern, Plan Name Pattern, Last Plan Query, and other column parameters
• Bulk Plan Creation — scripted creation of multiple Plans with consistent naming
• Use Plan Templates — template IDs and how they interact with plan creation
• Capacity Calculation Issues — diagnosing zero capacity after naming changes