06 · Adopting It
Five stages, every week.
Gravity Scheduling runs as a loop: anchor the commitments, plot both schedules, fly, measure, then lift. Each pass through the loop is one week, and each Lift becomes the next week's anchor.
The stages
What happens in each stage, and when work is sent back.
- 1 · AnchorSet gravity · Uplink
Record commitments as gravity points on initiatives and epics. Mark each one fixed (a contract or announced date) or floating (computed from what depends on it).
Kick back any commitment with no owner or no source for its date.
- 2 · PlotRun both schedules
Run the forward pass for glide and the backward pass for gravity. Every task gets two dates and an altitude, and the critical path appears.
Kick back to Anchor if an integrity check fails. The item is Purple until it passes.
- 3 · FlyExecute · quiet orbit
Teams work. Stand-ups add, split and move tasks, so glide updates daily. Drag sources are logged as they appear.
Kick back unplanned work that arrives without a ticket. If it isn't on the board, glide can't see it.
- 4 · MeasureCompare · Downlink
Compute each item's state and trend. Report exceptions first, along with any item whose time to impact is shorter than its runway.
Kick back stale data. An item not updated since the last Downlink is Purple.
- 5 · LiftDecide · into next Uplink
Choose a Lift sized to the state and matched to the drag source. Black items go to leadership for a structural decision.
Kick back any Lift with no assigned task. A Lift that isn't on the board doesn't happen.
Tooling
Putting it in Jira.
- Initiatives and epics carry gravity. Fixed milestone dates.
- Stories and tasks carry glide. Flexible and updated every stand-up.
- Track all the work, including solutioning. Without it there's no closure rate.
- Map dependencies explicitly so the critical path is visible.
- Use the planning board to drive the meeting: compare, color, decide.
At scale
Three systems, one comparison.
- Work management platform for glide: the live execution data.
- Documentation system for gravity: the commitments, versioned and traceable.
- Integration layer that compares the two continuously, updates each item's state, and opens Lift tasks when an item turns Amber or worse.
Rollout
The first thirty days.
Leading the rollout? Run your own Flight Log for a week first, so you already know where the Purples are.
| Week | Do this | Done when |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Label every recurring meeting ↓ ↑ ↔ ✕ and cancel the ✕s. Write down current gravity points. | Every commitment has a date, an owner and a fixed or floating flag |
| 2 | Get all work on the board with dependencies. Run both passes. Fix Purple items. | No integrity check fails on a gravity path |
| 3 | First full Uplink and Downlink with packets. Report state and trend. | Every escalation has a Lift answer in the next Uplink |
| 4 | Review thresholds against what actually happened. Shorten meetings the packets have replaced. | Baseline metrics recorded for the 30-day review |
Measuring it
Is it working?
| Signal | What it tells you | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| Forecast accuracy | How close glide's prediction came to where work actually landed | ↑ |
| Escalation latency | Time from an item turning Red or Black to a leader knowing about it | ↓ |
| Loop closure | Share of Downlink escalations answered in the next Uplink | → 100% |
| Re-baselines | How often gravity itself has to move | ↓ |
| Meeting hours per person | Coordination drag | ↓ |
| Longest focus block, Tue–Thu | Health of the quiet orbit | ↑ |
Where the model goes next
From colors to confidence.
Once glide has proven reasonably accurate, the model can move from a single forecast to a range of outcomes.
- Confidence scoring
Use past velocity and risk history to put a probability on each glide, such as a 75% chance of hitting gravity.
- Simulation
Run many possible futures (resource loss, scope growth) to show the cone of uncertainty around glide and decide where to hold Lift in reserve.
- Weighted gravity
Not every commitment is equal. A Red on a high-weight gravity point gets a stronger response than one on a low-weight point.
- Lift cost
Estimate the cost of each Lift so governance can see when hitting the date costs more than moving it.
- Dependency confidence
When an upstream dependency turns Purple, lower the confidence of everything linked to it, even if their own glide is still Green.