Welcome to the next lesson, "Remote PI Planning in the shoes of a Scrum Master". First of all, support your RTE as much as you can. He or she will gonna need it, especially if it's the first remote PI Planning you're preparing. During the PI Planning you protect your team so it can focus on the most important thing - Planning!!! That's what it is about... creating a plan to which every team can commit to. Use cheat sheets, checklists and whatever helps to facilitate your teams PI Planning. Provide a list of relevant links to the different conference calls, chats, the definition of ready, examples, reference material and workflows the team is going through during the PI Planning. Your goal is to make your teams life as easy as possible. One of the workflows should definitely cover how-to solve a dependency. This is the workflow I suggest:

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• The team creates the dependency on its board (this is the receiving team).
• The receiving team shares the dependency with the team providing support (that team is the producing team).
• The dependency sticky is now visible on both boards. Use a sticker to mark that the dependency isn't solved yet.
• Both teams agree on a time box when they will talk about the dependency and find a common plan to solve it. That time box is not necessarily at the time when the dependency is raised. The other team might be in a focused discussion about another feature. That is not worth to interrupt.
• The teams agree on a plan to solve the dependency
• The dependency gets visualized on the Program Board, marked as solved and linked to the Feature
• When the dependency is solved, it is visible on 3 Boards. On both Team Boards and on the Program Board

Sometimes I see Agile Release Trains not using a specific Dependency Sticky. Instead, they are visualizing and linking dependent Stories directly on the Program Board. I don't recommend that as the Program Board tend to get even more crowded. A specific Dependency Sticky is not only recommended by SAFe, it is also a great approach to keep visualization and collaboration clean and focused.

Be aware that Product Management, System Architects and Business Owners won't be in the same conference call most of the time. Support your team in bringing them in whenever it's needed. Use stickers and notes to visualize the gaps and missing information to trigger conversations and coordination. Having a dedicated chat including all Scrum Masters and the RTE helps to facilitate the remote PI Planning as a team of teams.

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