🪜 What we’re trying instead

We’ve started prototyping a milestone approach through our Mission Boards and sprint design. Here’s how we’re doing it:

1. Start with outcomes, not just tasks

We ask: what are we trying to shift in people’s lives, not just what needs to be delivered?

2. Surface what’s slowing us down

Our Mission Control Team facilitates pre-sprint sessions where teams map blockages and “invisible” dependencies.

3. Map enabling contributions by stage

Instead of vague requests for “support from finance/legal/IT,” we define when, how, and what kind of contribution is needed.

4. Build shared milestones

These are visible to everyone — project leads, corporate services, community teams — with responsibility clearly agreed.

5. Run light-touch check-ins

We keep things adaptive. Checkpoints are regular, but not bureaucratic.

The result? More shared ownership. Fewer last-minute fire drills. And more delivery that sticks.

💡 How you can try this in your organisation

If you’re stuck in delivery bottlenecks — or feel like the strategy-delivery gap keeps widening — here are a few ways to test shared milestone planning:

• Name the enablers early
  Don’t wait until things go wrong. Involve legal, finance, procurement, and digital from day one. Ask them:
  “What does this project need from you — and when?”
• Co-create a delivery map
  Get the whole team together and sketch it out. Whiteboard, Miro, post-its — whatever helps people see the journey ahead.
• Flag hidden dependencies
  Ask: “What could delay us even if we do our part?” This is where contracts, approvals and slow system changes often emerge.
• Assign clear ownership to each milestone
  Not just for doing the work, but for unblocking it. Ownership doesn’t mean more work — it means clarity on who moves the needle.
• Review milestones monthly
  Keep it light, visual, and human. A quick red/amber/green and one key learning or next step can go a long way.

🌍 Where we’re learning from

This isn’t unique to Adur & Worthing. Others are reshaping how teams prioritise, share responsibility and make complexity deliverable:

🇬🇧

Inside JRF Team

JRF’s Emerging Futures programme

Encourages collaborative milestone planning as a way of turning imagination into action — especially when the work is community-led and experimental.

📖JRF: Exploring collective imagination

🇸🇪 Vinnova (Sweden’s Innovation Agency)

Uses “mission tracking tables” to help partners from across public, private and civic sectors stay aligned on shared missions.

📖 Vinnova’s Mission-Oriented Innovation Framework

🇬🇧 TPXimpact’s Adaptive Delivery toolkit

Frames milestone planning as a cultural habit — helping teams navigate uncertainty through shared visibility and iterative planning.

📖 TPXimpact: Adaptive Delivery

💬 Why this shift matters

It’s tempting to see missed deadlines or stalled projects as personal failures. But they’re often signals of shared invisibility — gaps in how we plan and support work together.

Building shared milestones helps move us from reactive firefighting to proactive collaboration. It creates space for enabling services to lead, not just respond. And it invites us to shift from “delivery pressure” to “delivery alignment.”

In a world of rising demand and shrinking resources, that shift could be the difference between just surviving change — or shaping it.

🤝 A call to connect

If you’re working in strategy, delivery, participation or missions — and you’re grappling with these same questions — let’s talk:

• How do you make enabling services visible in milestone planning?
• What tools or rituals help you turn ambition into coordinated action?
• Where have shared milestones helped you go further, together?

We’re learning by doing — and we’d love to hear what you’re learning too.

Thanks for reading. If you’d like to swap ideas, reflect on practice, or co-write something together — my inbox is open.