Saving you from Quarterly Planning - Part 5
What’s wrong with big batch planning, and how to undo it.
To remember where we’ve come from, you can go back and read all the prior instalments in this series of ‘What’s wrong with big batch planning, and how to undo it.’
Part 1 - Issues with Quarterly Planning
Part 2 - Fixing It
Part 3 - Avoiding Pitfalls when you do
Part 4 - The Benefits you’ll get
We’ve arrived at the finale of this how-to-save-yourself from a big batch wasteful, ineffective, and unenjoyable planning process. In this instalment, I want to provide you with practical recommendations that can equip you with the confidence to remove quarterly planning for yourself, your teams, and your organisation.
Recommendations for You!
Don’t overcomplicate it
Even though it is a complicated task to get many teams to plan their work on a regular basis and share it back, a good piece of advice is to not overcomplicate it. Don’t spend too much time looking for the perfect tool or presentation format to use; start simple. A spreadsheet is fine if that’s the easiest way that everyone can share with each other; focus on the same style of information that’s highly visible and editable by all.
It’s more important to get people together, actually having them turn up with their own prep done beforehand so we can have conversations about the work. That’s where the effort should be spent, prompting people to be ready and attend, and this could be a cultural change for your teams. They may not be used to sharing and improving their plans in that level of detail with other people.
Show the people who are coming that it’s not a big fancy meeting, nor do they have to come with shiny slide decks. It’s a simple conversation about planning, it’s a simple view of the work, and give them some prompts of what to think about before the sessions.
Set the tone when you kick off by devoting some time to ensuring that the purpose of the regular cadence and artefact is clear, and that it will be something that gets better over time and overall it’s about better delivery outcomes.
People who care about how we create VALUE
When thinking about what kind of people and skills you would need to do this for yourself in an organisation, it’s not so much the technical skills - those can be learned - it’s having people who care about the broader picture of how we create value, and that means as a larger set of people rather than ‘just me and my team.’ If people don’t care about value, they won’t get more value out of this process. They also won’t get value out of a quarterly process, though, so it’s worthwhile trying to create this condition, that is, a concern for higher value.
As we know, we can’t just change how people think, so, therefore, the quandary becomes how to get people to care about value.
One thing that helps is for senior leaders to bring a focus to what’s really important to them and what they feel is important to the overall company or group. Repurposing the other occasions such as Town Halls or other large group events to have leaders reiterate goals at a high level, and ensuring there is a connection between what is said at that level and the value that teams deliver helps to set this tone. E.g. Objective “themes” can be something that is tagged per team in the shared artefact to help draw that line.
Ground up
You really want this new planning process to be an activity that is designed for the teams by the teams. You want the teams to want to do it because it is valuable for them. There are two aspects to that, firstly, it helps them move their own work forward, so it’s in their own self-interest that they engage. Secondly, the reason it helps them is because the dependencies they have on others will be better managed via this process, so it helps them out of the issues that come when teams depend on each other.
When teams are able to engage in the process and drive the outcomes for their own self-interest, the planning activity ceases to become a burden and turns into a place that teams use to get clarity and improve their delivery success. No one wants to be in a chaotic state getting interrupted with dependencies or unable to release their value. In a few cycles - taking only months, not quarters - teams will start to feel the calmness and predictability pay them back. At this stage, if you took away the monthly planning cadence, the teams would start to demand it back!
Provide space
There’s no point investing in a more effective planning process if you are going to overload the teams consistently each time you bring them together, that’s a recipe for disengagement. Instead, space must be provided for those teams to focus on priorities, only the highest ones!
At one company I was working out, we had priorities that came from three different groups. The technology leadership, the Tech area lead with his own pet projects, and the wider business. All three of those had representatives who would try and push their work onto teams. Without having a shared artefact showing what the teams were doing that was invisible. Showing all the work in progress and the transparency of that ceased the manipulation of people and teams to work on way too many things, slowing all activities down and stressing the teams.
Use the shared artefact to make a case for space, the more reasonable you can make planning, the more that high-value work can be prioritised and delivered. It’s important to stick to the simple short cadence, protect the priority work, and over time you will demonstrate that this discipline leads to better overall performance of your set of teams.
Asynchronous activities
Set the expectation that having planning go well means that there will be asynchronous activities outside the planning that will need attention. This prep time is part of the team leader's role (whether that is tech, delivery lead, or another role) and important for delivering value. e.g. If you're ever going to have a dependency, we expect you to be going and talking about those dependencies, not waiting until some central planning authority takes the burden away from you. With this type of activity as a regular habit, all teams will be well-equipped to engage in the monthly sessions effectively.
The value of the planning sessions is there because you can do a lot of preparation asynchronously away from the whole group, and then when you’re in the planning and unexpected things come up, you’re in a good position to defend what you know needs to be done, or adapt to a new changed priority.
Mature into Shared Prioritisation
We found that a lot of work was needed at the start just to make multiple teams' work visible and get it shared, several cycles, in fact. Prioritisation is challenging, and we found we needed a smaller session with a smaller group of people before the monthly planning just to get clear on priorities. This helped us keep the monthly session tighter. So we started simple and eventually matured to the point where we could discuss priorities easily in the session.
It might be that you need to separate these two activities depending on the scale of your teams. Eventually, you can get to a point where prioritisation is also a disciplined process and can be done coupled with planning.
Evolve it
You might be getting the idea that we didn’t instantly jump from big batch planning to small and continuous to overnight success, and that is correct. However, we did make this move without incurring additional cost and effort to do so. We saved several millions of dollars in planning waste annually and increased our ability to deliver value more effectively at the same time.
A mindset of experimentation, testing, learning, and evolving your process can be entered into. However, unlike a large big room planning session, you won’t need an army of coaches, a massive amount of training, and certification to start this. You can start where you are and apply the tips I have shared and avoid the pitfalls.
In summary
All of the pomp and circumstance around big room planning/ quarterly PI planning, there's a lot of waste in that. As I have demonstrated, it also doesn't achieve the results you're really looking for because it ignores uncertainty while demanding precision. Flip the script by embracing this approach to undoing your quarterly planning. You too can reap the benefits, soaring team performance, heightened value delivery, and an experience your teams will actually enjoy!
If you need help with your big batch Quarterly planning get in touch with me for some more customised help just for you!