Guidance on quarterly planning and HIT granularity

Bastiaan Terhorst

5 years ago
updated 5 years ago
Answered

Hey,

I'm getting started using Week Plan. I really like what I see so far, but have a question about the quarterly planning using OKRs and then defining and planning HITs.

I've set up objectives and KRs for them. When adding HITs to these objectives, I wonder how detailed I should get.

Many of the initiatives that I capture in a HIT will take many days and have many sub actions (for instance: "Implement engineering career progression framework". If I would be adding those the list would be extremely long. If I add those as subtasks and plan the subtasks I lose all my context in the planner (since the parent task is not clear when looking in the planner).

I wonder how this is supposed to work, especially since in the objective view I can plan a HIT to take place in multiple weeks. I am assuming this means that the HIT will span multiple weeks. Yet as soon as I complete the hit in week 1, it no longer appears in others weeks in which I had planned it.

I've looked around for an article explaining the best way to use this workflow, but I have not found it. If anyone can point me to something, or share their way of working with this system, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
Bastiaan

App:

Web app

Replies 5

Oldest first
Newest first Oldest first

Aymeric Founder

5 years ago
Answered

Hi Bastiaan,

thanks for the detailed and interesting question.

As you have said yourself, you have two main ways: all subtasks as HITs or only the initiatives as HIT and then smaller tasks as subtasks.

In your case, I suggest using parent tasks / subtasks. When the HIT appears in the Planner in the High Impact Tasks list, you can open the HIT and schedule the subtasks in the week by dragging them.

Only complete the HIT once all subtasks are completed.

Reply Link

5 years ago

Thank Aymeric, I will do that!

One little nag with this use case is that Week Plan will consider the HIT 'unplanned' and will keep complaining with the banner saying "You have 1 unscheduled HIT". That's why I thought this was not the 'right' way to do it. But this is manageable :)

Thanks for a wonderful and unique tool.

Bastiaan

Oh and one more question, I've noticed that when I create subtasks for a HIT, the subtasks do not take over the importance, urgence, role or objective that the parent task has. This would be very helpful, as those subtasks naturally work towards the same objective as the parent. In my use case it would also help me if they have the same role and are marked important just like the parent task, to help me identify them in the planner. I know I can do this manually, but it would be neat to save that step.

Best,

Quote from Bastiaan Terhorst

You are correct, it is a limitation. We should detect one of the subtasks is scheduled this week and stop nagging.

Thanks. Some people has different use cases for subtasks. For example, they might use a parent task as a project, and list all the tasks under the project as subtasks. in that case, the subtasks may have different importance / roles / etc... It is hard to set the right default behaviour to satisfy everyone...