Cycle Planning
A quarter you never re-cut is a forecast.
The quarterly session sets the period. This is the loop inside it: 50 minutes, every one to four weeks, run by the team rather than by a facilitator. It ends with three things written down. What this cycle commits to, what it deliberately is not doing, and which condition each commitment leans on, so a commitment that slips tells you which condition gave way.
Before you map this onto something
What a cycle is not.
A cycle is not a sprint and this meeting is not a retrospective. A sprint plans work and asks afterward how much of it got done, which is a question about throughput. A cycle re-cuts commitments against the conditions underneath them, so that a commitment which slipped tells you WHICH condition gave way rather than only that it was late. The unit here is a commitment with a condition attached, not a ticket, and the output is a decision record rather than a velocity number.
The question a delivery cadence asks
How much of what we planned got done?
A question about throughput. Answering it tells you to plan less next time, which is sometimes right and never diagnostic.
The question this asks
Which condition gave way?
Attention was not actually protected, or nobody could decide, or the goal read two ways, or nothing changed when the situation did. Each has a different repair.
The loop, in full
Every step, what the team asks itself, and what gets written down.
Published in full rather than summarized, for the same reason the quarterly agenda is. A method that only works when it is hidden is not a method. There is no facilitator here, so each step carries the question the team puts to itself and the prompts somebody writes the answers into.
- 01
Read the cycle that just ended
Attention8 minWhat actually moved, stated before anybody explains it
What did we commit to last cycle, and what is observably true now?
How to run it
- Read last cycle’s commitments out loud, unedited.
- Mark each one done, partly done, or not started. No reasons yet.
- Only then, take reasons. Separating the two is the whole exercise.
What gets written down
What moved
Observable change, not effort spent. "We shipped it" rather than "we worked hard on it".
What did not
Name it plainly. A cycle that cannot say what it missed cannot re-cut against anything.
Leaves behind: What actually happened.
- 02
Name the drift
Alignment8 minWhere the quarter and the actual work have separated, and whether that is capacity or conditions
Where has the work drifted from what the quarter committed to, and is that because we ran out of capacity or because a condition is not holding?
How to run it
- Put the quarter’s outcome next to what the last cycle actually did.
- Name the gap in one sentence.
- Decide which kind of gap it is. The two have different repairs and are easy to confuse.
What gets written down
The gap
One sentence. If it takes a paragraph, there is more than one gap and they need separating.
Capacity or condition
Capacity means there was not enough room and the plan was right. A condition means the plan assumed something that is not true: attention is elsewhere, nobody can decide, the goal reads two ways, or nothing changes when the situation does.
Leaves behind: Drift from the quarter.
- 03
Commit this cycle
Authority12 minThree to five commitments, each owned by somebody who can decide
What will be observably different at the end of this cycle, and who owns each one?
How to run it
- Write commitments as changed states, not as activities.
- Give every one a single named owner. Not a pair, not a team.
- Ask the owner directly whether they can decide the things this needs. If not, it is not theirs yet.
What gets written down
The commitments
Three to five. More than five is a list of hopes, and the not-doing step below will say so.
What each owner can decide without asking
An owner who has to escalate every real choice is a reporter, and the commitment belongs to whoever they are escalating to.
Leaves behind: Commitments, with a named owner and a date.
- 04
Name what this cycle is not doing
Attention8 minAn explicit not-now list, which is what makes the commitments above credible
What are we deliberately not doing, and who needs to hear that from us rather than discover it?
How to run it
- List what was on the table and did not make it.
- For each, say deferred, declined, or stopped. They are different promises.
- Name who is expecting it, and who tells them.
What gets written down
Not this cycle
A commitment with no refusal beside it is a wish. If nothing was refused, the capacity was not real and the list above will not survive the week.
Who hears it, and from whom
An unannounced not-now is indistinguishable from being forgotten, and it is paid for in trust rather than in time.
Leaves behind: Not this cycle.
- 05
Name the condition each commitment leans on
Alignment8 minEvery commitment tagged with the condition it depends on, so a miss is diagnosable
For each commitment: which condition has to hold for this to land, and does it currently hold?
How to run it
- Take each commitment and name the one condition it most depends on.
- Say whether that condition holds today. Guessing here is worse than saying you cannot see it.
- Any commitment leaning on a condition that does not hold is the one to expect back next cycle.
What gets written down
Commitment, condition, and whether it holds
Attention (is the time actually protected), Alignment (does everyone read the goal the same way), Authority (can the owner decide), Adaptability (can we change course when this moves).
The one to watch
Name the single commitment most likely to come back unfinished, and say which condition would be the reason. Being wrong about this next cycle is useful; having no prediction is not.
Leaves behind: Conditions in play.
- 06
Set the early re-cut
Adaptability6 minThe signal that would stop this cycle before it ends, and who is allowed to call it
What would we have to see to re-cut this cycle before it ends, and who can say so without waiting for the next meeting?
How to run it
- Name one or two signals that would mean the plan is wrong rather than late.
- Name who can call it. If that is only the most senior person present, the cycle re-cuts at their calendar’s speed.
- Agree what happens in the first hour after somebody calls it.
What gets written down
The signal
Something you would actually notice this cycle, not a quarterly metric. A signal nobody will see in time is the same as no signal.
Who calls it, and what happens next
Waiting for the next scheduled meeting to re-cut is how a cycle becomes a small quarter.
Leaves behind: Re-cut trigger, with a named owner.
How long a cycle runs
The length is decided by how fast you can see whether the last one worked.
A cycle shorter than that re-cuts against noise. A cycle longer than it is a quarter with a different name. Pick the shortest length at which the evidence actually arrives.
One week
Conditions are moving fast enough that a two-week-old commitment is already about a different situation. Common during an incident, a reorganization, or the first weeks of anything new.
Two weeks
The default when nothing argues otherwise. Long enough that a commitment can actually land, short enough that a wrong one is cheap.
Three weeks
Work whose results take longer than two weeks to become visible. Re-cutting before the evidence arrives is re-cutting against nothing.
Four weeks
A stable quarter where the plan is holding. At four weeks the loop is barely a loop, so if this is the honest answer, the thing worth checking is whether the quarter is being re-cut at all.
Where it sits
The quarter sets the period. The cycle keeps it honest.
Above
The quarter
A facilitated session builds the operating period against the conditions a diagnostic measured. It sets the outcome this loop keeps re-cutting toward.
See the quarterly session →Inside
This loop
50 minutes, 6 steps, every one to four weeks, run by the team. Nothing here needs us in the room.
After
The debrief
At the end of the period, what it taught gets separated from what it delivered. The cycle records are what that reads.
See the debrief →Run it on Tuesday. Nothing here needs buying.
The whole method is above. If you want to know which condition to expect trouble from before you start, the diagnostic reads it in about twelve minutes, and the workspace carries the commitments between cycles.