Macro planning: definition, example and free template

Scoping is a defining moment in project management: it's where you decide what you're going to deliver, when, and above all with whom. The macro planning is the tool that makes that decision readable: at a glance, everyone sees the upcoming deliverables, their deadlines and the teams that own them. It's the ideal communication medium for your steering committee, and it will feed straight into your flash report.

What is macro planning?

At the start of a project, building schedules is one of the first things you learn in project management. It's an essential asset for anyone who wants to deliver a project to a proper standard of quality, without blowing up the costs and while keeping to the deadlines.

This task usually falls to the project manager: the schedule will be a primary working tool for them and their team. A schedule must therefore be detailed enough to contain the key information the project needs to run smoothly.

But while the project manager uses the schedule to communicate with their team, they'll also need to discuss it with other players: their manager, the project sponsor, external providers, or even the future users of the product being built!

And that's where macro planning comes in!
Where the detailed schedule is often too complex for someone who isn't working on the project full time, the macro planning offers a "helicopter view": the deliverables that matter, their date, their owner, and nothing else. Ideally, it fits on a single page.

For all these reasons, the macro planning is considered one of the most useful communication tools in steering committees and leadership meetings. Every participant can grasp the project's main aspects at a glance, which makes discussions easier.

The macro planning is created at the start of the project and serves as the communication thread with everyone outside the project throughout execution. Like a classic schedule, it has to be kept up to date — but at the rhythm of milestones, not tasks.

Macro planning vs. micro planning: what are the differences?

To picture the macro planning, we used the image of a "helicopter view": it lets you rise above the detail and take in the project's key deliverables in a few seconds. If we had to picture the micro planning the same way, it would be more like a "microscope view" of the project schedule.

Because the micro planning is extremely detailed, it takes a long time to put together and stays vulnerable to the slightest surprise: it demands constant updating. The macro planning and the micro planning are therefore two very different tools at your disposal: use them smartly, depending on what you need.

Milestones, not phases: why it changes everything

Here's our stance, and it's not a neutral one: stop slicing your projects into phases. "Scoping", "Design", "Rollout"… these words are reassuring because they look like method. But look at what a phase actually tells the person reading it: nothing. It doesn't say what it produces, it doesn't say who owns it, and it doesn't say how you'll know it's finished.

A phase is a conceptual object: a container, not a commitment. And you pay for that three times over.

• It's impossible to act on. In a committee meeting, a phase calls for no decision. People comment on it, "push it back a bit", and no trade-off ever gets made.
• It's impossible to track. A phase is forever "in progress, at 60%". Nobody knows whether that's good news, and the percentage commits no one.
• And above all, it's impossible to own. You don't rally a team behind "Design". Leadership needs something concrete to champion — and a phase isn't it.

A milestone does exactly the opposite. It's a deliverable: something that either exists or doesn't. It has a date. And it has an owner — a team that raises its hand and says "that one's ours". A milestone is never at 60%: it's met, or it isn't — and if it isn't, there's a decision to make. Which is precisely what you expect from a committee.

One last point, the most underrated of all: the shared time frame. Anchor your milestones to the quarter, for every project. If each project lives on its own calendar, you can't compare or arbitrate anything — you're not steering a portfolio, you're lining schedules up side by side. The quarter creates a shared rhythm: every 90 days, everyone accounts for their deliverables, and the organization can reallocate resources knowing exactly where things stand. A phase gets discussed. A milestone gets owned.

The advantages of a macro planning

Let's take a classic example: a CRM rollout over one year. The macro planning fits in six lines — six deliverables, six quarters to anchor them, six teams to own them. Notice that not a single line is called "Design" or "Rollout": each one describes an outcome you can verify.

An executive committee member reads this table in ten seconds and knows three things: what's promised, by when, and who to ask. Try the difference in your next meeting — "where does the design phase stand?" opens a twenty-minute debate; "is the pilot in production?" gets a yes or a no, and moves straight on to the decision.

How to create a macro planning?

So you don't have to start from a blank page, we've prepared a ready-to-use Excel template: the milestones from the example above with their owners, a quarterly timeline, and a how-to in 5 rules. Direct download, no form to fill in.

Why use macro planning in project management?

Like the micro planning, the macro planning comes with its share of advantages and drawbacks. Here are the main ones.

The drawbacks of a macro planning

• Because it's concise, a macro planning is very quick to build
• All the project's major phases are summed up at a glance
• A document everyone can understand, including people outside the project
• The macro planning doesn't have to be constantly updated

The key steps to create a macro planning

• Offers too little precision to be enough for the project's internal team
• The macro planning isn't detailed enough to distribute the list of individual tasks and the workload.

The key tools to create your macro planning

The macro planning is built as early as project kick-off. It will become part of your project charter — at this stage, there's no specification document yet detailing the full list of tasks to be carried out, and that's perfectly fine.

The key steps to create a macro planning

1. List the milestones that matter: 5 to 8 deliverables that, when the day comes, you'll be able to say exist or don't. Phrase them as outcomes ("pilot in production"), never as activities ("design phase").
2. Name an owner for each one: a team, with an identified lead, that publicly agrees to carry the deliverable. A milestone without an owner isn't a milestone, it's a wish.
3. Anchor every milestone to a quarter — the same unit of time for all your projects, otherwise nothing can be compared or arbitrated.
4. Make the dependencies explicit between milestones: which deliverable gates another, and therefore which delay knocks over what.

Ideally, get the future owners of those milestones around the table — not just the project manager. They're the ones who can give a realistic estimate, and above all they're the ones committing: a milestone announced in front of peers carries a whole different weight than a line typed into a spreadsheet. With the right people in the room, the exercise is quickly wrapped up: your macro planning will be drafted in under an hour.

The key tools to create your macro planning

You probably already have a tool that lets you create and manage your macro planning day to day.

• A perfectly simple Excel spreadsheet
• A well-crafted PowerPoint slide
• A collaborative project calendar tool
• Your usual project management or task management software, such as Trello or Asana

What matters most is that the tool lets you easily visualize the project's main phases, its key milestones and its dependencies. The more readable it is, the better it will be taken on board by the teams who need it.

Can you do without a Gantt chart for your macro planning?

The Gantt chart is a bit of a "must-have" for every junior project manager trying to reassure stakeholders. Yet reading one is a real passion-killer! A bit like the days when we invited colleagues into tools like Excel or MS Project! The whole point of the macro planning is precisely that it speaks to everyone. You need clarity on milestones and deadlines — not on tasks.

The macro planning is a global, strategic plan that identifies the major steps and the objectives to reach, while the Gantt chart is a detailed, operational tool for scheduling tasks and their duration. The first serves communication and decision-making, the second serves execution. Best practice: use the two as complements — and only ever show the first one in committee meetings.

Agility as an alternative approach to planning

A quick reminder of the origins. In February 2001, in the United States, 17 software development specialists proposed a change of approach in project management. More empirical and less predictive, this alternative rests on the assumption that classic software development cycles no longer match the constraints and demands of organizations in constant evolution. The Agile Manifesto was born! 4 values and 12 key principles.

Using a macro planning in an agile context is an effective way to visualize the important deliverables of a project while staying flexible in the face of changes in reality. Here's how to go about it:

1. Identify the value increments: in agile, these are the versions or features you actually put into users' hands. Involve all stakeholders to agree on their order and on what each one contains.
2. Define the key milestones: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound (SMART). A milestone can be a deliverable, a software release, a successful acceptance test, a training session, a rollout…
3. Lay out the timeline: place the milestones in time with their owners, update the view regularly and share it with all stakeholders to make communication easier.
4. Stay flexible: the macro planning is a global roadmap, not a rigid plan. Any milestone can be revised, added or removed as priorities shift and obstacles come up.

In an agile context, the macro planning helps you both plan resources, deadlines and costs more accurately, and communicate better. Provided you stay genuinely flexible and ready to adapt to the changes of that famous VUCA world (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous).

No estimate: a radical and honest approach to macro planning?

Have you heard of the no estimate movement? In France it was popularized by agile coach Frédéric Le Guedois, whose talks play to packed rooms!

It's a way of working based on mutual trust, prioritization and agility. In a way, it works like a time-and-materials model, with billing based on time spent. While the budget stays variable for more flexibility, the mission's duration and the teams dedicated to the project can be fixed in advance.

5 arguments in favor of "no estimate":

1. Time savings: project estimation can take a lot of time without guaranteeing accurate results. "No estimate" lets you focus on the important tasks instead of trying to predict the future.
2. Avoids bias: estimates can be skewed by cognitive biases (halo effect, confirmation bias) that distort the results.
3. Encourages adaptability: when estimates are treated as firm commitments, they can breed resistance to change. "No estimate" allows much more flexibility in the face of the unexpected.
4. Reduces stress: estimates can be perceived as strict, hard-to-meet commitments. "No estimate" lets the team focus on quality and delivery rather than on deadlines.
5. Improves transparency: "no estimate" puts the emphasis on collaboration and visibility of real progress rather than on unverifiable numbers.

Macro planning at project portfolio level

Everything above works perfectly well… for one project. But what happens when your organization is steering thirty of them in parallel? Each project manager maintains their macro planning in their own corner — an Excel file here, a slide there — and consolidation becomes a project in itself: the day before every committee meeting, someone spends hours stitching together versions that are already out of date.

At project portfolio level, the macro planning becomes a consolidated roadmap: the milestones of every project on a single quarterly timeline, each with its owning team, readable by an executive committee. This is where the shared time frame really pays off: when all projects report on the same rhythm, you can finally arbitrate between them instead of enduring them one by one. That's exactly what AirSaas does: each owner updates their milestones in their own space, and the portfolio view — like the flash report — consolidates automatically. The macro planning stops being a document you have to produce: it becomes a by-product of steering.

Conclusions — key takeaways

The macro planning complements the micro planning, which offers a more detailed view of tasks and resources. It proves to be a must-have, especially if you're steering a sizeable project portfolio. To go further, check out our article on another key challenge: project tracking to keep stakeholders aligned.