Planning backwards

A big goal gets clearer if you start from the last step.

The decision researcher Gary Klein proposed a simple technique — the premortem. The team imagines that the project has already failed, and each member independently writes down the most likely causes. An imagined failure removes the social duty to be an optimist: the risk has supposedly already materialised, and all that is left is to explain where it came from.

This is neither prophecy nor an invitation to gloom. The method is useful precisely before the work starts, while a cause you have found can still be turned into spare time, an extra check or the rejection of a bad design.

What has to exist at the moment of completion? Who has to accept the result? What conditions must be met immediately before that? What is needed earlier still?

Backward planning helps you find dependencies, real deadlines, critical decisions, late actions that have to be started early, and the points after which changing course becomes expensive.

Build not only a calendar but a budget. The price of a project includes a reserve, maintenance and the cost of your own time.

The calculation shouldn’t be false precision, though. Distant stages are known less well than near ones. So the plan contains ranges and review points.

A good order:

1. define the result;

2. set the criterion for “done”;

3. lay out the dependencies;

4. estimate the resources;

5. add a reserve;

6. name the next action;

7. review once new information arrives.

Working backwards drags out first of all the deadlines that don’t obey us. To move into the flat in September, the kitchen has to be ordered in June: it takes eight weeks to make. To order the kitchen you need exact measurements, which means the walls are already levelled. To level the walls you need to know where the wiring runs, and that is decided together with the layout of the appliances. Working forwards, a person starts by choosing wallpaper, because wallpaper is clearer, more pleasant and doesn’t require calling strangers.

Planning from the end is unpleasant because it uncovers not work but a queue. Usually it turns out that the longest stage should have started some time ago.

Planning from the end doesn’t mean living for the finish alone. It simply stops a beautiful goal from hiding the absence of a road.

Sources and further reading

Franklin, B. (1772, September 19). Letter to Joseph Priestley [Letter].

Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (1990). A theory of goal setting and task performance. Prentice Hall.

Arkes, H. R., & Blumer, C. (1985). The psychology of sunk cost. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 35(1), 124–140. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(85)90049-4

Buehler, R., Griffin, D., & Ross, M. (1994). Exploring the “planning fallacy”: Why people underestimate their task completion times. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(3), 366–381. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.67.3.366

Gollwitzer, P. M. (1999). Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 54(7), 493–503. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.54.7.493

Klein, G. (2007). Performing a project premortem. Harvard Business Review, 85(9), 18–19.

Part II