For project delivery teams, that result might be a system ready for testing, a qualification milestone or an agreed handover. Rather than starting with a list of tasks and pushing them forward, the team asks: what must be complete before this milestone can happen?
How does a pull plan work?
- Agree the milestone. Define the required outcome and target date with the people responsible for delivery.
- Work backwards through the hand-offs. Identify what each activity needs from its predecessors and connect those dependencies.
- Bring parallel systems together. Show where independent flows can progress and where they share an activity or depend on one another.
- Identify constraints. Record the decisions, information, materials or access needed before work can proceed.
- Check capacity and commitments. Review the people and functions required, then agree a realistic plan together.
- Review and adjust. Update progress, discuss missed hand-offs and revisit the plan as conditions change.
How is pull planning different from a Gantt chart?
A Gantt chart is a way of displaying activities against time. Pull planning is a collaborative way of developing the sequence and commitments behind the schedule. They can work together: a time-based canvas helps a team see the pull plan it has agreed.
What is a constraint in a pull plan?
A constraint is something that must be resolved for an activity to proceed as planned. Examples include an approved requirement, a completed installation check, available equipment or a decision from another team. One constraint may affect several activities across different systems.
Task duration is not the same as resource effort
An activity lasting five working days does not necessarily require five days of work from every function involved. For example, a function allocated 20% of an eight-hour day across five working days represents eight hours of planned effort. The remaining time may involve waiting, parallel work or contributions from other functions.
Resource loading should therefore consider effort allocation alongside activity dates, individual availability and the capacity of each function.
Where does a site master schedule fit?
Individual pull plans help teams coordinate detailed work. A site master schedule brings plans into a wider view so shared activities, cross-system dependencies and competing demands can be discussed together.
How FullPlan supports the process
FullPlan combines a visual pull-planning canvas with parallel flows, shared activities, dependencies, constraints and resource loading. Teams can reuse templates, review a site master schedule and share plans through Excel and PDF exports.