Planning

Overview #

In this phase, you will take the following steps, and produce planning artifacts at multiple steps.

Break the design down into independent “workstreams”
Break down each workstream into a sequence of “milestones” with clear deliverables
Decide who will work on each workstream
Determine when each milestone will be done by
Identify risks to the plan, and add buffer time or resources
Get approval from management, and the people who will work on this

flowchart TD subgraph design[Design] d_approvals([Approvals]) d_c1[Component 1] d_c2[Component 2] d_c3[Component 3] end subgraph work_inventory[Work Inventory] subgraph wi_workstream_a[Workstream A] wi_m1a[Milestone A1] wi_m1b[Milestone A2] wi_m1c[Milestone A3] end subgraph wi_workstream_b[Workstream B] wi_m2a[Milestone B1] wi_m2b[Milestone B2] end wi_m1a -.-> wi_m1b -.-> wi_m1c wi_m2a -.-> wi_m1b wi_m2a -.-> wi_m2b end subgraph resource_allocations milestone_assignees[Milestone Owners] cost_by_project[Cost by Project] cost_by_assignee[Cost by Owner] end subgraph roadmap rm_approvals([Approvals]) subgraph workstream_A[A] wsa_owner[owner] wsa_goals[goals] end subgraph workstream_B[B] wsb_owner[owner] wsb_goals[goals] end end design --> work_inventory work_inventory --> resource_allocations work_inventory --> roadmap resource_allocations --> roadmap

A Note About Tools #

Your company may already have tools for project planning and management. Use your company’s tools. However, most tools don’t have much rigor “built-in”; You will still perform better by sticking to the following guidance.

Work Inventory #

The engineer in charge of the project will create a work inventory doc (LINK TODO). The work inventory establishes what work needs to be done and how much effort each piece of work will take (measured in SWE work time).

To simplify the planning process, split the work into “workstreams” which could be independently executed by other engineers.

Each workstream should be broken down into measurable, incremental goals (“milestones”). For each milestone, you need to describe:

Estimate of work to reach the milestone, assuming dependencies are already completed
Description of the work to reach the milestone - later will be broken into tasks
Any dependencies on other milestones that have to be done first

Roadmapping #

This step is a negotiation between people in multiple roles, generally driven by TPM or Manager. Here we determine:

Who will own which workstreams
When the milestones will be due

The final deliverable is a roadmap doc (LINK TODO). You may use a spreadsheet to check your resource allocations (LINK TODO).

Negotiation #

In order to get agreement from all stakeholders on the roadmap document, you also need to ensure any dependencies are handled in other roadmap documents.