Don’t make commitments that stretch too far into the future. Instead, only the PI Objectives of the next PI should be communicated to the stakeholders as committed to by the ART. The rest of the roadmap is just our current best guess, so the ART is able to make turns towards newly discovered opportunities (“being agile”, you know?).

Furthermore, remember that your Architectural Runway should be indicative and not a detailed plan of all upcoming enablers for the next couple of years. Instead, align the A.R. with your roadmap and encourage an emergent architecture based on the continuous feature discovery work.

For this to succeed, have Product Management and the System Architect align with each other frequently. Also, have the RTE coach the BOs on understanding that having tracks that reach all the way into the horizon is probably not what’s best for their business. So, instead of giving them a feeling of “control” by showing a committed delivery plan, build their trust in you as an ART by involving them often in what direction to take—not just at PI Planning and PI System Demo, but also during both discovery, refinement and development.