Pull planning

Start at the finish and ask what must be complete immediately before it, and before that, until you reach today.

Planning forward asks what we can do next and discovers the handoffs too late. Pulling backward from a Milestone makes the dependencies visible while there is still time to act on them, because each step is named by the step that needs it. It is done as a group, with the people who will do the work in the room — at least four hours for anything that matters. The milestone goes on the wall. Each person writes the activities they will own, one per card, with a duration and what must be done before it. The cards are arranged backward. The room argues about the handoffs: what do you need from me, finished, so you can start? — and the answer is written down as Conditions of satisfaction. When the wall reaches today, it is walked forward once and the dates are checked.

It is load-bearing because everything downstream is computed from it. Out of the session comes The activity table; out of the table, by two arithmetic passes, come Critical Path and Float; out of the chain come the finish-by dates that make a commitment honest. Without the pull, a plan is a list of intentions in date order and the first surprise re-writes it.

It is run again, not once: at each turning a body re-pulls from its milestones, and when a marker is missed it re-pulls before the milestone is moved. It is the SHOULD of the cycle — what the plan says should happen — and it hands its work to The look-ahead, which asks what can.

Also called: Plan backward from the end · Pull Planning Stands on: Milestone · The Intent · Networks of Commitments Opens onto: The activity table · Critical Path · Float · The look-ahead · SHOULD-CAN-WILL-DID In play: table · Home · beyond Sources: The LIØNSBERG Operating System (book, draft v0) §4 · The LIØNSBERG Pattern Language — Synthesized (Element 11, Networks Of Commitments) · The Economic Case For IPD (wiki root page, unmarked) · Activity and Float (wiki term pages, drafts, unreviewed) · The DNA of Heaven, Part VII — lionsberg.wiki page name: Pull Planning Open: The canon names Pull Planning as a pattern with a body only inside larger pages; no single root page carries it.