November 18, 2024

💡 How to Make Planning Better (and more)

Hey friends, just a quick note here this week. It seems like the Product People have finally arrived on Bluesky! There’s been so much activity there over the past few days. If you want to check it out, here’s a “starter pack” of PMs to follow. And you can also find me there.

Have a good week!
-Rian

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How to Make Planning Better

Lots of great planning advice in this First Round article . There are two things related to Strategy that I especially like. First, this definition (Strategy is not a vague vision statement!):

Strategy is the sequencing of how you take a very long-term end goal and break that down into more digestible components. Done right, it gets you a really clear picture of what’s in your long-, mid-, and short-term plans, where you stack up in the market, and how you’ll win.”

And then, the importance of org design in executing that strategy well:

Org design is how you deliver on your plan. Instead of meticulously planning all of the ‘what,’ the right org design will give you the ability to hand a talented group of people a new goal, and have them continuously come up with the best way to achieve it.

The post also covers another topic I’ve been thinking about a lot, which is the cadence for planning, and how to make the quarterly (or however often you do it) planning cycle less painful/stressful. We’re in our annual planning cycle right now—once we’re done I will write a post that touches on these topics, and more.

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What does a date actually mean?

James Stanier has a good argument for why deadline-driven development is so… difficult :

Given that non-technical people don’t understand why software is hard, dates become the stick that they beat you with when you don’t deliver on time. Don’t ask me why, it’s just human behavior. I’m sure you’ve done it when roadworks have taken longer than were specified on the sign, or if a delivery of a package was late. Dates mean something to people, so handle them with care. In fact, perhaps we could do something entirely different instead.

What’s the “something different”?

So, instead, you should take a forecasting approach that follows the uncertainty curve that we outlined above. You start wide, and you taper in. At the beginning of a given project, you might even just have the year that you’re aiming to ship. Then, as you progress, you can start to narrow it down to a quarter, then a month, and finally a specific date.

This is why I will always advocate for time horizon roadmaps .

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Thanks for reading Elezea! If you find these resources useful, I’d be grateful if you could share the blog with someone you like.

Got feedback? Send me an email.

PS. You look nice today 👌