Planning
Project Planner
One goal, one deadline and your real team turned into a plan with checkable milestones, named dependencies, a first week you can start tomorrow, and the one failure most likely to sink it.
Reads your operating system before it starts. Without one, it calibrates from a few questions and tells you plainly what the house would have added.
The task
You have promised a launch two months out, a small team who all have day jobs, and nothing yet but a shared document of ideas.
By hand
You block out a Sunday evening and write a plan. It has phases with names like 'Build' and 'Launch', a first week that starts with 'scope requirements', and a risks section copied from the last plan, which nobody read either. The dependency that will actually cause the slip, the one task waiting on someone else, is in your head but not on the page.
Monday comes and nothing starts, because 'scope requirements' isn't a thing anyone can pick up. Three weeks later the plan is a document you avoid opening, and the deadline is being renegotiated by silence.
With the specialist
Three answers
What done looks like, the deadline with its hard constraints, and who actually does the work with how much time they have. Where your metrics are installed, phase lengths are sized against what your team really delivers, not an optimistic guess.
- QThe goal: what done looks like
- QThe deadline and any hard constraints
- QWho executes, and their available capacity
The ship gate
Every phase must carry a checkable milestone and name what unblocks it, every week-one task must be literally startable tomorrow, and no capacity figure is invented. If the deadline doesn't fit the team and scope, the plan says so instead of quietly assuming overtime.
- Every phase carries a checkable 'done when' milestone and names what must finish before it starts
- Every week-one task is startable tomorrow; no 'explore' or 'figure out' standing in for real work
- Exactly one risk is named the most likely failure, with an early signal and a first move; ten equal worries name none
- No capacity or headcount figure is invented; if the deadline doesn't fit, the plan shows what has to give
The deliverable
Phases worked backwards from the deadline with milestones and dependencies, a week-one task list where each item is a concrete action with an owner, and a risks section that names the single most likely failure, its early signal and the first move.
Sample output
What the deliverable looks like, on a neutral example.
An online shop launch, planned
Deadline verdict: achievable with this team and scope, provided the product photography lands in week two.
- Week one: write the product list with prices, owner named
- Week one: book the photographer, owner named
- Week one: get the platform decision made, named as the task itself
Most likely failure: the photography slips and stalls everything behind it. Early signal: no booking confirmed by Friday. First move: shoot the top sellers on a phone and upgrade later.
By hand
typically 2 to 4 hours, often spread across a week of not quite starting
With the specialist
three answers and a few minutes, then your review
Illustrative comparison from the authors' own use; estimates, not measurements.
Project Planner: £19, yours to keep.
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