We’ve arrived at the finale of this how-to-save-yourself from a big batch wasteful, ineffective, and unenjoyable planning process. In this instalment, I want to provide you with practical recommendations that can equip you with the confidence to remove quarterly planning for yourself, your teams, and your organisation.

You have followed along these instalments with me, understanding the issues that Quarterly planning brings , the ways to fix it and also the pitfalls to avoid,  but to really convince yourself to undertake this “un sticking” of Quarterly planning I’m sure you want to know the benefits right?  

Now you have some concrete steps you can take to remove large batch quarterly planning that I shared in Part 2. It's time to explore some naturally occurring pitfalls you can avoid to make removing it more effective and less risky. Learn from my experience and ensure your success by navigating through these with me. 

So what can be done to address the issues of Quarterly planning I laid out in Part 1? How can we allow conversations and ideas around what we might get our valuable teams to spend their time on to form and solidify, including the permutations and risks and challenges that they are going to face? How did I help this become a reality in a very large corporation who were invested in this process? 

In this multi-part blog series, I'll delve into the problems inherent in large batch quarterly planning, drawing from my challenging experience at two of Australia's largest banks, as well as other large corporations. I'll also highlight the common pitfalls you should avoid and the tangible benefits you can reap, including significant time savings and the early delivery of value.

My book Empowered Agile Transformation - Beyond the Framework was released in August 23 I had so much content for the book that there were parts that just had to be cut. This part was perfect for a solo blog, enjoy!

My book Empowered Agile Transformation - Beyond the Framework is coming soon. I had so much content for the book that there were parts that just had to be cut. This part was perfect for a solo blog, enjoy!

By Damian Heffernan

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.

H. P. Lovecraft