Turning a plan inside out

Big plan, no idea whether it delivers what is needed, no mappings back to original stuff that needed to be done.

The (successful) approach we've taken is to turn the plan inside out thus:

Pass 1:

• Each team to list every deliverable from the 'plan backwards' activity as a 0 day milestone.
• Each team to connect each milestone back to the tasks which deliver it.
• Each team to create tasks for the milestones that have no dependencies.

Pass 2:

• Each team to disconnect dependencies on other teams tasks and reconnect them to the other teams deliverable milestones.
• Each team to list deliverables they expected and didn't appear.
• Each team to weave new set of deliverables, and therefore tasks, back into plan.

Pass 3:

• Each team to remove its teams tasks from the plan, leaving only milestones and create their own workplan from the tasks.

Result

• Management can manage by milestone.
• Each team can manage by input/output milestone and change their plan as they see fit (modulo not moving agreed milestones)