What Is an Inspect and Adapt (I&A) Event in SAFe?
Inspect and Adapt (I&A) is a SAFe event held at the end of each Program Increment, combining a review of progress against PI objectives with a structured, ART-wide problem-solving workshop — the SAFe equivalent of a sprint retrospective, but conducted at the larger, multi-team ART scale.
Quick facts
- I&A happens once per Program Increment (every 8-12 weeks), unlike team-level retrospectives which happen every sprint.
- It combines both a quantitative/qualitative review and a structured retrospective and problem-solving session.
- This connects to What Is a Sprint Retrospective and How to Run One, the team-level equivalent of this ART-level event.
The three parts of a typical I&A event
| Part | What it involves |
|---|---|
| PI System Demo | A comprehensive demonstration of everything built across the full Program Increment |
| Quantitative and qualitative measurement | Reviewing actual progress against the PI's stated objectives, using both data and team input |
| Retrospective and problem-solving workshop | A structured, ART-wide session identifying root causes of significant issues and committing to specific improvements |
Why I&A matters at the ART scale
Individual team retrospectives, held every sprint, are valuable for team-level process improvement, but they don't surface larger, systemic issues that span across teams — a recurring cross-team coordination problem, for example, might appear in multiple individual team retrospectives without any single team having full visibility into the pattern or authority to address it alone. I&A specifically addresses this gap, bringing the whole ART together to identify and problem-solve genuinely systemic issues that require broader, coordinated attention.
How the problem-solving workshop typically works
Rather than a loosely structured discussion, the I&A retrospective often uses a more formal problem-solving approach — identifying the most significant issues affecting the ART's performance during the PI, digging into root causes (sometimes using a technique like the 5 Whys or fishbone diagram), and committing to specific, measurable improvement actions for the next Program Increment, with clear ownership assigned to ensure follow-through.
A worked example
At the end of a Program Increment, an ART's I&A event reveals through the quantitative review that several teams consistently underestimated stories involving a specific shared testing environment, causing recurring delays. During the retrospective and problem-solving portion, representatives from across the ART dig into why this kept happening, discovering the shared environment had inconsistent availability that individual teams hadn't previously connected as a systemic, cross-team issue — each team had assumed it was their own team's specific estimation problem. The ART commits to a specific improvement action for the next PI: dedicating infrastructure investment to stabilize the shared testing environment, with clear ownership assigned to the relevant team, directly addressing a root cause that no single team's individual retrospective would have fully revealed or had the authority to fix.
Common mistakes with Inspect and Adapt
- Treating I&A as just a larger status report rather than a genuine, structured problem-solving and improvement session.
- Not following through on committed improvement actions, undermining the event's real value and the team's trust in the process going forward.
- Skipping genuine root-cause analysis, addressing only surface symptoms rather than the systemic issues actually driving recurring problems.
- Not including the right cross-functional representation, missing perspectives needed to fully understand and address genuinely ART-wide issues.
FAQ
How long does a typical I&A event take? This varies by ART size and complexity, but the combined System Demo, review, and problem-solving workshop often takes the better part of a full day.
Who attends the I&A event? Representatives from all teams on the ART, along with the RTE, Product Management, and often broader stakeholders and business owners interested in the ART's Program Increment progress.
Is I&A the same as PI Planning? No — I&A happens at the end of a Program Increment, reviewing what happened and improving the process; PI Planning happens at the start of the next Program Increment, planning what's coming next — they're related but distinct events in the SAFe cycle.
What happens to the improvement actions identified during I&A? They should be tracked and revisited, ideally incorporated into the next Program Increment's planning, with clear ownership to ensure genuine follow-through rather than being identified and then forgotten.