Quarterly Planning is the process by which delivery teams, the Portfolio Leadership Team, and key stakeholders collaborate to plan the next quarter’s delivery based on the priorities generated by the Quarterly Portfolio Review and the potential value and cost of the work.
The planning process should cover innovation, change and run. For each delivery team, a primary output from planning should be an agreement on the rough allocation of the teams capacity across these, and potentially (if applicable) across the different products the team is responsible for.
A secondary output from planning is a commitment from each delivery team to the delivery of a set of change outcomes for the quarter, based on just enough dependency and effort planning. Teams should not commit to the delivery of a plan or a set of outputs, and should be free to identify new and better ways of delivering their committed outcomes during the quarter.
Decisions in Quarterly Planning should be collaborative between the delivery teams, the Portfolio Leadership Team, and stakeholders. This means that deadlines, plans, or priorities should not be imposed on Delivery Teams. Instead, the relative priorities of different change initiatives should be clearly articulated, and then collaborative decisions made on the best response to those.
This therefore means that Quarterly Planning is both informed by and informs the portfolio roadmap, ensuring the roadmap is achievable and has the buy-in and commitment from delivery teams.
It is recommended that big room planning events are used for Quarterly Planning, ensuring that all required people are together and able to effectively collaborate and make decisions.