Cadenced Planning - What It Takes For It To Run Successfully

What is Cadenced Planning?

Cadenced planning is a process with a series of events held every quarter where teams and stakeholders prepare, plan, and prioritise work aligned with strategy for the next quarter ahead. Common examples of cadenced planning cycle include Quarterly Business Reviews (QBR), PI Planning or annual planning.

These events happen over three levels, Business Leadership, Product and People Leadership and finally the Team which we will explore.

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In essence, the events create the critical feedback loop needed to make an informed decision about what to do next and helps the organisation course correct to where it wants to go.  

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The key to cadenced planning is that it is done continuously, enabling the organisation to adapt and maximise value delivery to their customers. Would you keep funding an 18-month project that has delivered the necessary value in 9 months?

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Most cadenced planning follow similar events, you will start with goal setting at the highest level, review how last planning cycle went, then work with work the delivery teams to plan and align to the goals, maybe even set their own OKRs, and then this is all played back to ensure you are all aligned. (Ideal situation would be to have everyone in the room at the same time, I intentionally discuss these events as remote or hybrid format).  

In the book Sooner, Safer, Happier by Jonathon Smart et al this is known as the Golden thread of value which talks about how you can follow the big goal to the delivery detail.

TIP: You can read more about connecting and monitoring your OKR and QBR to ensure value delivery here.  

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One key step to an effective cadenced planning cycle is to understand how we can use our existing measures to enable you to make informed decisions. There are numerous options available depending on how you are working currently. To that end let us begin by working out how you most likely monitor your progress and then look at some more options.

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How you monitor your delivery during cadenced planning cycle

Let us begin with one of my favourite questions when working with leaders who are about to start setting the goals for the upcoming work, how do you know what your teams are working and if they’re aligned to the goals this planning cycle? If, like many others I have worked with, you answered Excel, PowerPoint or even JIRA, then welcome to the club. Having a partial view of what’s going on is a great start although not the whole picture.

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Now, how do you ensure you are reflecting the latest state of delivery?  

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Again, if you answered with steering committee, one to one’s, or even sending an email out with a deadline to update the Excel file. Then you are not alone. Wouldn’t it be great if this was done more often and was easily manageable? Critical to the success of delivering on your strategy is effective monitoring and reporting of progress, where are your risks? Do they need to be escalated?  

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Instantiating a series of weekly or fortnightly events to align is key to ensuring that you are not carrying too much into the next delivery cycle and that blockers are dealt with sooner rather than later. Product/Outcome and People leaders should be able to gather the latest insights and then update relevant parties on progress. This event is not about monitoring status via RAG (Red, Amber, Green), it is best used as an open forum to discuss those items which have real impact on delivery. It is best to do this without judgement as the outcome is shared, rather than on a single person’s shoulders.

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We can now look at the three personas highlighted above, the challenges they can face or creep in when you begin to use cadenced planning cycle and how you can help resolve them. Even if you are using cadenced planning processes, you may relate to some of the issues faced.

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Cadenced Planning for Business Leads

When using cadenced planning, often the pressure to deliver results leads to a rushed or ill-thought-out conclusion, lack of insight or appreciation of how your entire ecosystem impacted can stall delivery. In the 2024 edition of the Business Agility Report we can see something as simple as not communicating the message clearly, leads to a lack of alignment and impacts the ability for a team to adapt.  

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"This ability to defer taking real decisions and instil diligence now only increases cost of delay and delivery later. The ability to Empower with Accountability is one of the slowest to establish across organizations. Needing a combination of factors to take hold, most leadership behaviours establish at about 3 years, but often take over 8 years to become mature. - Empowerment Takes Time (Business Agility Report 2024 (p24))”

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So what are your options during cadenced planning to help break the cycle of delay and disappointment?

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It may sound obvious but there are two things here:

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1. Enable leadership at all levels - Enabling your people to make decisions without the need for you to be around. In the book Turn the Ship Around by L. David Marquet he makes the point of moving away from dictating actions and instead focus on clearly communicating the desired outcome. By shifting from followers mindset to one of leadership based you can engage those around you to move with purpose and know that they are delivering towards that shared outcome. ‍
2. Communicate, communicate, communicate - Don’t assume an email as read, a recording as watched or a meeting as people fully engaged. (I have done my fair share of what has felt like a 3 hour PowerPoint meeting when a single slide and a 10 minute conversation would have sufficed)

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Boldly state the vision, engage in communication, have regular check-ins and updates, measure and iterate and most importantly lead by example and create the right environment to challenge and ask questions.  

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These will improve messaging, enable your people to come together to solve the real problems and ensure that if the email doesn’t quite get the message across that your regular check-ins will, especially if you are using meaningful OKRs to help monitor progress.

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There are some anti patterns to be aware of, not all of these happen at once and if like me you have been guilty of applying any one of them, now’s your chance to stop, change and take a step towards better delivery.

Things to consider for Business Leaders

Outputs over Outcomes

What is the difference to having outputs over outcomes, well, let’s take a look at an example. A team is tasked with selling 100 reams of paper, the team sell 100 reams of paper and celebrate meeting their goal. High fives everywhere. However after delivery it turns out the customers actually wanted high quality pre-printed paper and not recycled blank paper. The result? Whilst the team delivered on the output metric, it was not the right metric or guidance which led to loss of customer retention and hence customer value. Another way of achieving this goal and more would have been to be more outcome focussed. This would have looked like:

• Decreasing the number of returns to the warehouse by 20%
• Improving customer satisfaction and repeat orders by 10%

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By measuring things and not the outcome, you encourage busy work which may not be aligned to the overall goal. Who wouldn’t want their bonus if they only had to sell 100 reams of paper. Output goal achieved. But at what expense?

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Measuring the number of things delivered is an anti-pattern, anyone can game a system to show improved output. The goal here is to ensure an outcome or need has been met, as discussed in this link there are useful exercises to explore to help you align your goals to outcomes.

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Questions that Business Leaders ask

• What problem are we trying to solve?
• What do our customers need?
• What measurable business value should this work create?

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Relying on the wrong metrics

Anyone can pick a number and a target, an ill thought-out metric and return will create similar behaviour to relying on outputs over outcomes. The goal of a metric for cadenced planning is not to identify how many items you get but to give you enough information to make informed data driven decisions.

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As an example, if you were to ask for 20 new features in the next month how will you monitor this? Story points? Lead Time? Number of tickets closed? You should be able to identify how you will know something to be true, is it revenue increase, NPS scores improving or are you setting random targets such as 20 features delivered all being worth 80 story points. The problem with this approach is not the maths, it’s what you will get in those 20 features. Are they valuable, do they align?

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You want to ensure that you have an even and meaningful spread of qualitative and quantitative metrics to help understand which levers you can pull on and what the impact on the work will be. At the C-level you can think about some of the items expressed in this article on measuring the unmeasurable.  

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Relying on the wrong metrics can be costly but understanding what your metrics are showing you will give you the advantage to pivot when necessary and make those data driven decisions. A great exercise would be to map all the states to delivery and understand where your system gets impaired, for more information click here.

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Questions that Business Leaders should ask

• If we get X what are we leaving out this quarter?
• Does this Org Unit / Business Unit / Team have capacity and how do we know?
• Are the plans aligned to the organisations north star?

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Cadenced Planning for Product/Value and Capability Leads  

Value Leads (Product Manager, Chapter Leads) play a crucial role in the running of a successful cadenced planning cycle. Helping to create clarity around the business goals, enabling their teams to deliver actionable plans by unblocking the way to some realised value.  

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The roles focus can be on the product and customer needs, the people and career growth, training, and other opportunities. Creating a healthy tension between business needs and people needs.

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To avoid impacting the effectiveness of cadence planning at this level. Here are some common practices that can lead to failure and how to address them.

Things to consider for Product/Value and Capability Leads

Focusing Too Much on Tactical Details Over Strategic Alignment

Using the cadenced planning process described earlier, you can start to align the work to the overall business goals and ensure future work is directly connected to these priorities. There will be trade-offs, however using the strategic goals help to align and set the right focus. Your next steps will be to create the right actions and outcomes, which not only help with prioritisation and planning but ensures you can monitor progress effectively.

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Most businesses use some form of Objectives and Key Results (OKR), if you are unfamiliar with how to begin, I have added some great get started links below:

• ‍https://www.soonersaferhappier.com/old-training/quick-learn-outcome-canvas
• In the following checklist, you’ll also find some great questions to ask to make sure your OKRs are as good as they can be: https://www.soonersaferhappier.com/post/okrs-a-checklist
• If you’re unfamiliar with the background of OKRs here is a simple overview of how it was introduced to Google in the 90’s: https://library.gv.com/how-google-sets-goals-okrs-a1f69b0b72c7

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Failure to Identify and Manage Risks Early

C‍‍‍ommon issues that present themselves are:

• Not Addressing Resource Constraints or Team Capacity Issues
• Not Resolving Dependencies Early Enough
• Lack of Cross-Functional Collaboration or Communication

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Ensuring you have the right regular forums in place to discuss some of the common risks identified above early and often will help to prevent the often seen ‘just get it done’ approach. The aim here is to be able to make the best decision given the data and context you are operating in. To that end you should be having regular updates from your team leads or product leads to understand when you should be supporting them to resolve the risks early enough.

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Questions to ask‍

• How often are we meeting to discuss dependencies, risks, or blockers at the (team, leads, business) level?
• Are the right people in the meeting to help with the challenge?
• Should this challenge be escalated? What other options are available to us?
• What is the risk to waiting/doing nothing vs an action to resolve?

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Monitoring your performance

You should be having regular review sessions to extract any concerns or issues with the process itself. I am a firm believer that the process you start with should not be the process you have 6, 12 or even 18 months on from when you started.

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Taking the time to understand the root causes of what is and is not working can lead to better delivery and outcomes for you, the teams, the business and ultimately your customers.

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Start with some simple metrics and ranges, such as: Lead Time, Cycle Time, Throughput along with eNPS (employee Net Promoter Scores). Use these as a guide in discussion with the teams to understand what could be improved, why does testing take a long time and how can we make this process better?

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Questions you could ask during any meeting

• Who is available?
• Who wants to grow / do something different?
• Do we have the right skills for now? vs delaying, hiring, training, and having someone ready for next quarter, even two quarters?
• Are these features consistent with the OKRs / Strategic vision?
• Do I have evidence / feedback from customers the market needs this?

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Cadenced Planning for The Team

Welcome to the engine room, so far, we have explored communication and direction helping to align the teams to the outcomes for the next delivery cycle. Almost time to start working on those items. Some of the best practices encourage everyone to input and help steer the direction for the next quarter, how you will be measured and who can help you get there.

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As a valued team member, let’s look at how you can have an impact on delivery as we look at the following issues that can crop up and actions to get back on track.

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Things to consider for the Team

Dependencies and blockers

During cadenced planning you may realise that you have a need on another team or be a key part of delivery for another team. This is where you need to have your goals to hand and have key people in the room to discuss what gets done first!

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It is ideal to remove dependencies where possible to improve the flow of delivery often you will find your team or organisation is not set up in an optimal way for the strategic goal. The Team Topologies approach to team structuring, finds ways to ensure your value teams are supported the right way. Read more here.

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‍As an example, Team 1 is dependent on Team 2 who are not even focussed on the task at hand this quarter.

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It is often vital to bring transparency to the issue as early as possible. The sooner you can resolve any potential delay during this planning stage then this will lead to improved decision making managing your risks appropriately and possibly accepting the trade off in the short term if it can’t be resolved.

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What can lead to this issue arising starts with planning and be as simple as not inviting the right people into conversation early enough, or if the right people are “too busy,” we may have found your blocker. For more details, click here.  

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Questions to ask‍

• Are the right people in the meeting to help with this challenge?
• Could someone else with authority help to make this decision?
• Should this challenge be escalated? What other options have I/we exhausted?
• Does this align to the overall goal this planning cycle?
• Can it be prioritised between us?
• Would it help if someone was able to sit with the team to help development?
• What teams are dependent on us and who are we dependent on?

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Feedback

One of the most critical actions you can take is to ensure you communicate early and often the status of development. Ensuring you have a regular cadence or communications channel to bring to light problems or even acknowledge the help of others to resolve challenges.

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Too often the reason most challenges stack up is not the lack of effort but due to the lack of communication between people, having a more proactive approach may cause upset short term but longer term it will enable better delivery and improved ownership.

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Questions to ask‍

• How can we gather feedback and measure usage/satisfaction?
• Which goals align to this feature?
• How can we actively promote our latest delivered item?
• Have we taken too much on this planning cycle?

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Other key considerations to running a successful cadenced planning

People

Having explored all the vital roles, it would be remis to not tie this all back to the people. Now is also a suitable time to check in and make sure your team are happy to take on these items. If there are any upskilling opportunities (raised in career conversations) and have not overcommitted to delivering too much too soon to find yourself in the same place last delivery cycle.

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Questions to ask

• Who has been stuck on this piece of work for too long?
• Is there a challenge beyond next quarter that would be worth upskilling our people on this delivery cycle?
• Given what I now know, what is my real capacity this planning cycle? And Who has public holidays/leave coming up?
• Did we commit to too much last planning cycle?

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Tooling

Imagine having to manage all of that in Excel and you only have a piece of the data puzzle. TeamForm can help your organisation resolve these problems and improve visibility to all. By capturing where people are allocated, what skills they have and help your cadenced planning process for future quarters whilst giving you some indication of the financials enabling you to balance delivery against costs.

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Questions to ask

• Is there a better way to planning?

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Closing the Feedback Loop for Continuous Success

In any cadenced planning process, the most critical step is closing the feedback loop. Throughout the article, it has been stressed many times that for a successful cadenced planning, having regular chances to review where you are at all levels is vital.

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While reviewing performance, assessing outcomes, and setting future goals are important, the true value of a cadenced planning comes from listening, iterating, and continuously refining your approach to work.  

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By actively gathering feedback from all levels—whether business leaders, product managers, chapter leads, or teams—you ensure that each cycle is more effective than the last, allowing the business to pivot quickly, maintain alignment, and drive continuous success.

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Finally, by looking after the needs of the people over the next planning cycle, you’ll keep employees engaged and highly motivated to do their best work and delight your customers.

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Questions to ask

• Given our last planning cycle, what can I do differently to make this planning cycle even better?
• How can I engage those around me to support cadenced planning and make it more effective?