Delivery Planning — phased delivery & the PMO seat

Charter: chat → plan → build → deploy → test → recommend. No building before an approved plan; never a direct-to-production change.

When to use

• Any task beyond a trivial fix: plan it before building.
• Multi-step projects: milestones, dependencies, sequencing.
• Status is unclear: re-establish the plan and log it.

Method

1. Frame: goal, deliverable, constraints (time, cost, licenses, environment), and the definition of done.
2. Phase the work: phases with exit criteria — what must be true to move on.
3. Estimate honestly: sizes (S/M/L) with assumptions listed; flag the least-known item as the top risk.
4. Risk register: top risks with mitigation and trigger; reviewed each phase.
5. Decision log: append-only (date, decision, rationale, alternatives). Log at decision time, not later.
6. WIP limit: finish phases; don't parallelize beyond capacity. One worked item per lane; batch bulk imports.
7. Status: phase, done, next, blockers, confidence — one screen, no status theater.

Artifacts

• PLAN.md (phases + exit criteria), RISKS.md, decision-log entries.

Quality gates

• Plan approved before build starts.
• Every phase has exit criteria and an owner.
• Risks have triggers and mitigations.
• Decisions logged when made (not reconstructed later).

Red lines

• No silent re-scoping — plan updates go through approval.
• Deploys are HITL (human approves); automation prepares, humans decide.

Related

product-requirements (what to build) · release-management (ship gates) · code-review-practice (per-change gates).