There are moments in work life that you never forget.

I experienced one of these moments when we introduced our first Drum Beat in a pilot project.

The project team sat together in a meeting, planning the Drum Beat deliverables.

Everything should have been sorted out. Now we just needed to wait for everything to be implemented, and then we could celebrate our first successful Drum Beat.

The review day arrived, and the project team gathered to check off the Drum Beat results.

That's when a project management team member, who had taken responsibility for a Drum Beat deliverable, said:

"I didn't communicate the Drum Beat Deliverable to the project team because it's nonsense anyway. I had them work on the things that are really important."

I was shattered. My world collapsed.

But looking closer, I realized we had made serious mistakes in our Drum Beat planning.

Just quickly sitting together and writing something down isn't a sustainable planning process and doesn't create commitment.

Since I believe you must learn from your mistakes, we developed a concept for how Drum Beat planning must be organized to be complete, realistic, and reliable.

In this article, I'll introduce you to this concept, hoping you can avoid the negative experiences I had.

It’s a five-step process.

Drum Beat Planning isn’t something you can do in a single day.

It’s a process that takes several days.

The exact duration depends on:

* the complexity of the project,

* the size of the project team,

* and the experience of the project management team.

You should plan for at least one week. In many cases, more time is needed. However, it should not take longer than four weeks.

In the following sections, I will explain each stage so that you gain a solid understanding of the entire process.

Review

Unless it's the first Drum Beat in a project, every planning phase starts with assessing the current status.

For inexperienced teams, this is already the first emotional moment:

"Leave me alone. I still have time until the Drum Beat ends."

"I don't have time to explain in detail where I stand. I need to hurry to get finished."

Sound familiar? Does this happen with your teams, or does it only happen in my environment?

Write me your experience in the comments.

In my case, training helped.

The entire Drum Beat Process must be taught to all team members so that they understand the context of this exercise.

Then you have to take the teams by the hand and just do it. After a few repetitions, the value of the approach becomes clear, and resistance fades.

It is a fact that the project management team needs to get an overview of where the project stands before starting a new planning round.

It doesn't matter whether the work is already finished or not.

Shortly before the Drum Beat ends, you can already estimate pretty well where things are heading.

Will people manage to complete the Drum Beat Deliverables, or are shortcomings and spillovers already showing?

The review happens in well-organized meetings where service providers and service recipients jointly assess the situation, and the project management team gets a complete overview of all DBDs.

Based on this, the actual planning can begin.

Planning as Individual Work

In the next step, I usually encounter the next big challenge.

Everyone constantly complains about sitting in too many meetings.

But as soon as the planning phase starts, the project leader calls the first meetings to plan together.

I haven't figured out why this happens:

* Do people believe they'll achieve better results together?

* Do they want to save the time of individual work?

* Do they think the results of quiet work are flawed?

What's your opinion? Do you observe the same tendency? Do you have a theory about why this happens?

In my experience, planning in quiet isolation is a very important stage because it fosters a deep understanding of processes and priorities.

I like to say jokingly: "When the project management team finishes the plan, they can immediately throw it away."

Planning is valuable not because it's written down, but because the process of planning creates an understanding of how to achieve goals and what's most important.

That's why the project leader and every member of the project management team must take time to become clear about what exactly needs to be done in the next stage.

For this work step, project management team members need the following information:

* The review results:

* Are there catch up items?

* Are there any problems that need to be solved?

* Have priorities changed over the last period?

* The project description with the project goals.

* The project plan with its Quality Gate Dates and Deliverables.

* A planning template listing the Drum Beat Deliverables typically relevant in this project phase.

Ideally, this information should be provided in the form of a central planning document.

As an additional information source, it's possible to ask individual project team members for advice.

I also recommend peer coaching - getting opinions from employees from other projects.

However, everyone should do this individually according to their own needs, rather than in large meetings.

The result of this planning step is a DBD backlog with all DBDs that each project management team member has planned.

The DBD templates, as I presented in my last article, should be filled out in a first draft.

This planning phase should be very short. The goal isn't to make perfect planning - it's about each individual developing a basic understanding of the further process.

Prioritization

While creating the Drum Beat backlog, it it is advisable to prioritize the Drum Beat Deliverables.

Since prioritising is always a matter of judgement, I suggest the following procedure:

* The newly found deliverable is first written at the bottom of the backlog.

* Then you evaluate whether the deliverable above is more important than the newly entered one.

* If the answer is “No”, the more important deliverable moves up one position and the process repeats.

* If the answer is "Yes," the order remains, and prioritizing the new DBD is complete.

Swarm Intelligence Comes into Play

In the next step, the backlog developed through individual work is now jointly integrated and prioritized.

Planning meetings are organised, during which the leadership team creates a common Drum Beat Deliverable backlog based on their individual functional experience and perspective.

The DBDs are sharpened, priorities are agreed on.

Now attention is also paid to available resources:

* Can the team handle all of this?

* Which compromises make sense and which don't?

* What are the effects of the compromises?

* What influence do these effects have on the Drum Beat planning of the current and future Drum Beats?

This stage of Drum Beat planning can't be completed in one day. To ensure everything is evaluated and nothing is forgotten, several days of planning are necessary here. Consultation with the project team is now more intensive.

At the end of this phase stands the prioritized backlog of Drum Beat Deliverables for the new Drum Beat with formulated Drum Beat Deliverables and assigned responsibilities.

I just wrote "consultation of the project team." But these words contain emotional volatility once again.

Direction versus Grassroots Democracy

Yes, there's the management philosophy that the team should find its own way and management should stay completely out of it.

My experience with this approach isn't good.

If you ask a team of 1,000 people for their opinion, you will get 1,000 answers. These 1,000 people will always agree that there is insufficient time and too few resources to successfully complete the project.

Then 1,000 pairs of eyes look at you questioningly and signal: Project leader, now tell us how you want to solve this Gordian knot.

I know what I'm saying now is controversial. If you disagree, please write it in the comments. I'm curious about alternative suggestions.

I expect the project management team (6 to 10 people) to find the right Drum Beat Deliverables and formulate them accurately. If they can't do this, they're the wrong people.

I expect the project team to find a way to complete the necessary Drum Beat Deliverables with available resources in the available time.

Since my second expectation also needs a plan, the next phase of Drum Beat planning must follow.

The Project Team Plans Its Activities

After the Drum Beat Deliverable backlog for the following Drum Beat is ready, the complete project team must be involved in planning the activities required to achieve the DBDs.

Since we're now dealing with not just a handful of people, but many hundreds or even several thousand, many planning workshops now take place in parallel.

Each work team now plans its concrete approach to completing the Drum Beat Deliverables.

The focus is now on coordinating all sub-steps with each other:

* Who needs what, when, from whom?

* What exactly is needed?

* What exactly will be done when by whom?

* Are the prerequisites available?

* If prerequisites aren't given, who can create the prerequisites?

* Which matter must be decided by whom during the Drum Beat so work can proceed without delay?

The process is organized and moderated by the project team member responsible for the respective Drum Beat Deliverable.

The line supervisors of the functional departments must be involved in this planning phase.

It's important that they know what their people have planned for the Drum Beat, what capacities are needed, and what contribution they must make.

Here again lies an emotional challenge.

The highly decorated department heads must accept that it's not in their power to question the Drum Beat Deliverables specified by the project management team. On the contrary, they're co-responsible for achieving the DBDs and thus factually accountable to the project management team.

I experience that this isn't easy for some - not to say many - top managers to accept.

Of course, the project management team is allowed to adjust its DBD backlog or individual DBDs if it realizes during planning that this makes sense. However, the decision to do this lies solely with the project management team.

Putting the Finishing Touch - in the PED

The PED (Planning Event for the Drum Beat) represents the conclusion of planning.

In the Planning Event, the result of the planning activities is formally completed and made binding.

Since very, very large project teams are involved in vehicle development projects, it's usually not possible to gather everyone in one place.

That's why it's important to very consciously select and invite participants.

The criterion is the question of which people must make the most important contribution for the next Drum Beat.

These can be project team members but also line supervisors.

The project management team is naturally always there.

The PED has a standardized process:

* The project leader communicates the overarching goal of the Drum Beat.

* Each Drum Beat responsible person briefly presents their Drum Beat Deliverable and asks if there are still open points that urgently need clarification. These points are recorded and scheduled for breakout sessions.

* In breakout sessions, the affected team members clarify the open points.

* The Drum Beat planning is formally concluded.

Now It Begins

If planning is conducted according to this process, it should no longer happen that project members question the plan, as happened to me in my first Drum Beat.

Nevertheless, not all questions are clarified and all problems solved with the PED.

For this reason, the ToDo’s written down in Drum Beat planning represent only a starting point.

From now on, all work teams look at their ToDo’s every two weeks and make the planning more concrete.

There are regular short planning meetings for this during the curse of the Drum Beat.

How working with ToDo’s in the functional departments works in detail will be examined more closely in my next article.

Do you have questions about this? Then don't hesitate to ask them in the comments—I'll try to answer them to the best of my knowledge.

We can also chat.

I'll dive deeper into the details in the coming articles. Please subscribe to the newsletter so you don't miss them.

If my newsletter resonates with you, please consider sharing it with others.

Get full access to Uwe Mierisch at uwemierisch.substack.com/subscribe