• 67.1 Updating the plan
• 67.2 As the long term changes
• 67.3 Meeting the objectives

Related ideas

• Agile and spiral development methodologies
  • Both advocate working in increments, with defined goals for increments and re-planning before starting the next increment
  • Agile can lead to a random walk if not guided
  • Spiral can lead to a falsely detailed long-term plan
• Estimation
  • False precision leads to problems
  • Meaning of commitment to plan

• OKRs
  • Provide longer-term aspirational goals as well as concrete results that should lead to those goals
  • Can provide guidance in developing a plan
  • Often lead to out-of-date objectives and results that people stop taking seriously

Key ideas:

1. Create a plan that has multiple horizons
   • Iteration/sprint/week
   • Quarter
   • Year
   • Long-term
2. Plan current iteration/quarter/year plus drafts of the next one to three periods
   • Current iteration is a solid commitment
   • Drafts of upcoming periods are less certain
3. Define objectives (and possibly key results) at each horizon
4. Re-evaluate the plan each time one gets to a particular horizon

• Details for each iteration or sprint; more general for longer horizons
• Commit to the current iteration/quarter/year, draft plans out beyond
• Long term provides the general direction

67.1 Updating the plan

At the end of each iteration/sprint:

• Review how the iteration went
• Update the draft for the next iteration
• Add one more draft iteration
• Commit to the next iteration

At the end of a quarter or year:

• Similar process; maintain 1-3 draft periods

67.2 As the long term changes

When the long term goal changes, or when the plan needs to be rearranged:

• Change the longest term affected
• Work backward to see how to achieve that
  • Change the quarterly drafts or current quarter
  • Change the iteration drafts or current iteration

There’s no magic in this… just adjust the plan

67.3 Meeting the objectives

Keep moving toward a goal:

• There are long- and shorter-term goals to help make good choices about the plan for each iteration/sprint
• Having draft iterations and quarters promotes longer-term decisions, not just short-term reactivity

Flexibility:

• The drafts are still just drafts and can be changed as needed
• Draft iterations and quarters reflect uncertainty that changes over time

The plan is still a plan

• It expresses schedule and tasking information just as any other kind of plan
• Supports normal schedule analyses (e.g. critical paths, resource loading)
• It expresses task assignments for people
  • Staff have a longer-term view than with pure agile, but a more realistic understanding of uncertainty than a detailed long-term schedule