Saving you from Quarterly Planning - Part 4
What’s wrong with big batch planning, and how to undo it.
You have followed along these instalments with me, understanding the issues that Quarterly planning brings Part 1 , the ways to fix it Part 2 and also the pitfalls to avoid Part 3, but to really convince yourself to undertake this “un sticking” of Quarterly planning I’m sure you want to know the benefits right?
The Benefits
I’m going to share both qualitative and quantitative benefits that will make it a no brainer for you to try peeling away Quarterly Planning for your own teams.
The Ability to Adapt
By far one of the biggest benefits for any organisation is the ability to adapt. Organisations struggle to change tact and pursue the best most valuable changes they should make at the best of times, sometimes organisations are almost at failure point before they recognise that a change is needed. So much ‘industry’ is around large programs and portfolio management and the people that manage them that you start to believe that it’s too much hassle to be messing with plans, dates and commitments. That’s risky, instead you could have a better planning system that’s less hassle and more effective.
Putting in the mechanisms to change what you focus your precious time and people on is a competitive advantage. Do you want to flex this ability once a quarter or would you like to be more responsive to your market? Moving from Quarterly to a shorter cadence gives you this, and as I’ve demonstrated, with less time and effort.
Shared Artefact
The benefit of having all planning information in one place pays you back over and over again when you’re working with a large number of teams all delivering value at the same time. It has many uses, and if you can resist allowing plans to splinter into different tools and uses, you can reap the benefits:
The initial plans are logged somewhere centrally, once logged we can have a group discussion about them with input from other team members, therefore collaboration can be dialled up.
Management that aren’t free to engage (when you first implement your new planning system) can be across this central good quality view of the plan, and will be less likely to ask for multiple different reports, slide decks and spreadsheets to find out what’s going on. So it reduces the reporting burden on teams.
Management now has a realistic projection of what the teams are doing and also when they will be done, so better future decision making is possible for them.
It’s a tool that can halt conversations about cramming in too much additional Work in Progress, because you can have those conversations in light of what is already committed, and make reasonable negotiations about what can swapped in or out.
It’s an artefact that is updated and referred to frequently. Plans that are only updated one a quarter, or at a midpoint check become stale and useless.
Engaged Problem Solving
It’s very important to engage the people closest to the work in the planning of the work. This more frequent cadenced planning process that includes the right amount of detail means that team members can actively engage in discussions about the work, rather than unrealistic abstract impressions that are often given to management. When you have team members involved in the planning information and solving planning related problems for themselves, the accountability naturally increases.
Less Theatre
Removing the ‘Big Room’ and ‘Whole team of teams together’ elements from planning takes away a lot of the ‘Theatre’ of these events. The pressure of sharing back in front of 150 of your peers and only reporting the most optimistic of circumstances to appease demanding managers is removed. Instead time spent planning can be focussed on gaining a better view of how the team will tackle various challenges. The team is less likely to agree to anything such as poor unachievable commitments, in order to get out of the punishment of two hectic days in a room together, so you will get less anxious teams and better plans!
Saves Time and uses less of Team = $$$
You also have an overall net saving of people's time in planning. You don’t have to take the whole team into a planning review by default, and because you have more frequent smaller occasions, you also have more opportunities to bring them in if you have to. As I have demonstrated, cutting down to monthly 2 hour sessions is less than half of the time you would invest quarterly for 2 days. How was this possible? Well because a lot of those 2 days each quarter was actually wasteful for the teams to sit through. Even if it takes you a few months to get it down to 2 hours, you’re improving your planning measurably each time you try.
And if you want to put a business case to your Management to try this, we saved $1.1M within 12 months by moving a large team of teams from quarterly planning to a collaborative, adaptive planning approach focussed on strategic priorities. You could add up the time and cost element of your planning to convince them.
Better focus on Priorities and Fewer distractions
Prioritisation seems to plague every organisation these days, most companies suffer from the desire to do too much at once, and are often not very disciplined about prioritisation. Pet projects creep in, people want to be helpful and say yes to cramming more and more things into the plan. When people can see the teams not delivering what they committed to for a quarter, panic can set in and back doors are sought to get ‘just this high priority change made’ and unplanned issues make everything increasingly risky.
Instead of setting up teams for these inevitabilities we managed to cope with the constant needs of a business to shift priorities readily. You can become a force for delivering value by offering a very lightweight and neat process that serves your organisation better. Then paradoxically everyone can relax! Knowing that:
The team is working as effectively as they can on the highest priority work
If something changes we have a mechanism to cope with it quite rapidly
The constant and frequent focus on the highest priority work is a jewel in the crown of any organisation's performance.
Staying on top of Execution = Better Delivery!
Moving away from Quarterly Planning to a more frequent cadence allowed the teams I was facilitating to stay on top of their delivery. It enabled better forecasting of what was coming ahead because we were actually devoting some time to better quality planning on a regular basis. Isn’t this ultimately what we are striving for? We want to quickly move from the prediction to seeing the value start coming through!
We moved from a planning system that was failing and hostile for workers to engage in, to one where the teams were no longer victims of delivery date demands, they were actively part of planning. And managers who preferred to be on the receiving end of high quality information about plans were satisfied as the outcomes were more likely to be delivered.
When this virtuous circle of Planning-to-Delivery-Success is implemented, the whole way of working for the teams starts to improve on a cadence. I know the intentions of large quarterly planning is the same, but the reality is we could only achieve it once we moved away from that big process every quarter to a better process monthly.
Ready to make a positive change in your planning approach? In this blog, I've outlined compelling reasons to give it a try, emphasising the significant benefits. Before you embark on this transformative journey, stay tuned for the final instalment, 'Saving you from Quarterly Planning - Part 5.' I'll be sharing a wealth of recommendations to ensure a seamless transition as you embrace these new planning practices.
Stay tuned to unlock the final step in this planning approach that will be the making of your teams!