VISIBLE PLANNING CALENDAR TOBIAS FORS, CITERUS

Quarter 1 Quarter 2 Quarter 3 Quarter 4

Iteration 1 Iteration 2 Iteration 3 Iteration 1 Iteration 2 Iteration 3 Iteration 1 Iteration 2 Iteration 3 Iteration 1 Iteration 2 Iteration 3

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 X 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 X 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 X 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 X

I created this simple illustration of a planning calendar after having an interesting conversation with David Schmaltz. David in turn gives
credit to Norm Kashdan of Computer Methods Corp. I have not myself studied Kashdan’s work, so this is simply my interpretation of the
few things I’ve heard. It may bear little resemblance to the real thing, but still seems useful to me.
In this calendar, whose purpose it is to simplify planning and heighten the visibility and understandability of plans, the year consists of
four quarters. Each quarter consists of twelve work weeks and one “sabbatical” week, possibly what Alistair Cockburn would call a
“decompression” period. These twelve weeks in turn are divided into smaller units.
David describes the next step as splitting the 12-week period into two 6-week periods, and those into three 2-week periods, which finally
can be split into two 1-weekers. Here though, I’ve tried to illustrate a setup when using Scrum, which would probably mean splitting each
quarter into three four-week iterations plus one decompression week.
Using this calendar, we would know that:
• Planning meetings always occur on a Monday.
• Demonstrations and retrospectives always occur on a Friday.
It’s also visible that:
• An iteration consists of exactly four weeks (i.e. it’s time-boxed at four weeks)
• We have decompression periods regularly
What would be the effect of synchronizing more and more of the development projects in an organization according to a visible rhytm
like this? Maybe something like this can help us take our development projects closer to what Ken Schwaber calls workload
management, by emphasizing the rhythm in which we work, and giving us some visible unit of time to fill with meaningful stuff. I also
found this research which might be related. On the other hand, synchronizing teams so that all plan on the same day will probably result
in us having to spend some extra time preparing the planning itself, so it can be done efficiently.