rocks

rocks — the 3-7 outcomes that make this quarter a win

A quarterly priority is an outcome the team commits to in a 90-day window. Not an activity. Not a wish. An outcome with a done-check.

The rules

• Pick 3-7. More than 7 = everything is a priority = nothing is. Fewer than 3 = sandbagging the quarter.
• Outcomes, not activities. "Launch X feature to 100 paying customers" — yes. "Work on X feature" — no. "Ops team makes decisions from data weekly" — yes. "Build dashboards" — no.
• One owner per priority. "The team owns this" means no one owns it. Name one person whose name goes next to the outcome.
• Done-check written at the start. Measurable, time-bound, single owner. If you can't write the done-check on day one, you don't have a priority — you have a vague hope. Send it back.

Weekly check-ins (this is where the discipline lives)

At the weekly sync, every quarterly priority gets called: on track / off track / done. That's it. No paragraph. One word.

• On track — move on.
• Off track — surface as an issue. Route to issues-ids in the same meeting.
• Done — celebrate it; remove it from the list.

Re-scope at the 4-week mark, not the 12-week mark

The first time a priority is off track, you re-scope. Not the second. Not at the end of the quarter. Late re-scoping is a failure of weekly check-ins, not a failure of the priority.

Three re-scope moves: cut the scope (deliver less), extend the window (push to next quarter, name what gives), kill it (admit it was wrong and free the owner). All three are honest. "Just push harder" is not a move.

Anti-patterns

• 15 priorities — leadership couldn't choose, so the team is choosing for them by missing most of the list.
• "Improve X" — not measurable, not a priority. Rewrite as a specific outcome with a number and a date.
• No done-check — guaranteed end-of-quarter argument about whether it counts.
• End-of-quarter scramble — you skipped weekly check-ins. The scramble isn't the problem; the silence for 12 weeks was.
• Shared ownership — no one will do the unowned work.

Triggers

Quarterly planning. Mid-quarter check-in. End-of-quarter retro. "We're three weeks in and nothing's moving." "We have a quarter but no one can tell me what success looks like."

Pairs with weekly-sync (where the check-ins happen), issues-ids (where off-track priorities get solved), and scorecard (leading metrics often predict whether a priority will land before the check-in catches it).