Our leadership team's quarterly Rocks are constantly falling short because we write them too broadly, resulting in massive scope creep by week six. How do we write and scope Rocks so they are highly binary and achievable in ninety days?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Rocks fall short because teams mistake a massive multi-phase project for a single quarterly goal. A Rock must be specific, measurable, and highly binary, meaning at the end of ninety days, any outsider can look at it and say yes or no to whether it is done. There is no such thing as an eighty percent complete Rock.

To stop scope creep by week six, you must implement a strict vetting process during your quarterly planning session. When a leader proposes a Rock, the entire team must pressure-test the definition of done. Do not accept vague verbs like improve, streamline, or analyze. Instead, use precise milestones. If the Rock is to implement a new customer relationship management software, the definition of done cannot be rolling out the software. A better, binary definition is that all sales reps are actively using the system to log calls, with old data fully migrated, by day eighty-nine.

If a proposed Rock is too large to fit this level of specificity, you must break it down. Slice the project into three distinct phases and make phase one your Rock for this quarter.

Once the Rock is set, the owner must draft a clear scope of work with three to five milestones within the first week of the quarter. This scope must be shared with the Integrator. If the owner tries to add new deliverables mid-quarter, the Integrator must hold the line and push those additions to the next quarterly backlog.