Rolling Wave Planning Strikes Again
Photo by Paolo Nicolello on Unsplash
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how I realized that I was planning my entire holiday season using a project management technique called rolling wave planning. I realized that especially with the COVID, I would need to plan and re-plan my time spent with friends and family. As Christmas came and went, I can say that I continued to apply those practices as several people in my friends and family circle tested positive for COVID and various plans needed to be up-ended (and various parties relocated- shout out to EMILY for making Christmas Eve happen!!).
As I got home from Christmas, I was looking forward to a trip my partner, Todd, and I had been intending to take- we were going to go to Hawaii in the last two weeks of January! We’ve since decided that now is not the right time to go, and though I am disappointed, I’ve come to see how rolling wave planning has been benefitting me yet again throughout this process.
It all started a few months ago when we got the idea to take a trip. At the time, all we knew for certain was that neither one of us had work commitments in the last two weeks of January, so that would presumably be a good time period for us to be gone. This was before omicron was a big threat, and while we knew COVID was a risk, we figured that things had been pretty calm, and with airline tickets being more change-able than ever, it was a risk we were willing to take.
So, we bought tickets, blocked calendars, and told ourselves, “We are going to wait and see what happens with the virus, and by December 26th, we will start making other reservations.” From a rolling wave planning perspective, December 26th was our first stake in the ground- the point at which we compare what we know to what we don’t know, and start to plan in detail everything we know for certain. Note: This technique is very useful especially in the early days of a project, when uncertainty is very high. The idea of the rolling wave is that you plan everything you are certain of upfront, and decide to plan the rest later, as more and more details become clear.
In our case, December 26th arrived, omicron was a BIG deal, so we decided, “OK, uncertainty is still high, so let’s give ourselves until January 3rd to see what happens, and then we’ll book tickets if we feel more comfortable.” So we waited until our next stake in the ground- January 3rd, and well, that was this morning. Today, we woke up to fresh reports of breakthrough cases, and projected peaks of omicron in the next week ahead, and we decided that now is definitely not a great time for us to be getting on an airplane (even if it is to paradise)… We are now hoping to travel sometime in late March, and our next stake in the ground will likely be March 1 (and please keep your fingers crossed that omicron is under control by then!).
I’m finding more and more that rolling wave planning is helping me feel more empowered to plan my life, even in the face of COVID. What’s so useful about it right now is that nothing is ever set in stone. The whole idea is that you factor in uncertainty, and only plan for things you have at least a certain amount of detail about. I like that I have the room to plan and re-plan, and for some reason, it doesn’t hurt nearly as much to reschedule this vacation when I approach with a rolling wave perspective.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Are you with me on leveraging rolling wave planning in every day life? Or are you an anti-planner? Leave me your thoughts & comments below!