The agenda (two to three hours)

  1. Open (10 minutes). The milestone, what "done" means, and the ground rules: plan backward, be honest about durations, and name what you need.
  2. Pull backward (60–90 minutes). Start at the milestone and ask: "What has to be finished, and handed to whom, for this to happen?" Each answer is a note in that person's lane.
  3. Find the gaps (20 minutes). Walk the plan forward from today. Where is someone waiting on something nobody has a note for? Where does a lane go quiet, or get crowded?
  4. Make it fit (20–30 minutes). If the plan misses the milestone, change the plan, not the durations: re-sequence, overlap work that can overlap, or split a handoff into smaller pieces.
  5. Commit (10 minutes). Each person reads their notes back and agrees to them.

Each note, in 7SecondOS

  • On the Timeline, click + in a person's lane under the week it's due to add a note, and name it as a handoff: "Structural grid to architect", not "Structure".
  • Double-click the note to set its Responsible person, its dates and what it needs (the notes that must finish first). Needs draw the lines between notes.
  • Click a note to see what it needs and what waits on it.
  • Drag notes between columns and lanes as the conversation moves.
  • When something must happen that nobody can promise yet (a decision, an approval, information), log it in the RAIDD Log as an Action or Dependency with an owner and a date, and link it to the notes it holds up.

Durations and buffer

  • Ask for the duration someone would bet on, not the one that looks good. A plan built on hopeful durations fails quietly.
  • Don't let everyone pad their own work. Hold a shared buffer before the milestone instead, and agree as a group when it can be used.

Before everyone leaves

  • Every note has a Responsible person and a date.
  • Every open question is in the RAIDD Log with an owner.
  • Agree when you'll meet each week to check progress. See Keep the promises.
  • Use Print for a PDF of the Timeline, or Excel, to send round after the session.