Quarterly KPI planning

This playbook runs one quarterly KPI planning cycle for an operations or departmental planning team. It reconciles prior quarter actuals, metric definitions, and proposed targets from supplied spreadsheets or planning docs. The agent distinguishes measured results, unverified assumptions, and owner proposals, flags unrealistic variances against historical trends, collects missing baseline explanations from metric owners, and presents the aligned plan for leadership sign-off before updating planning tables. If tool access to planning systems is unavailable, exportable summary tables are prepared for manual transfer.

• Read historical actuals and submitted forward proposals from the designated planning source in Notion, Google Sheets, or Coda. Parse metric names, baseline measurements, proposed targets, measurement formulas, and designated metric owners. Identify any metric missing a historical baseline, unambiguous formula, or assigned owner.
• Reconcile historical performance against proposed targets. Calculate quarterly run rates, historical growth trajectories, and target variance percentages. Flag metrics proposing substantial deviations from historical capacity without cited structural changes, as well as targets where prior quarter actuals failed to meet previous commitments.
• Information request. Present flagged metric inconsistencies and missing baseline definitions to the respective metric owner. Ask for the specific operational assumption, resource dependency, or definition clarification supporting the proposed target. If the owner provides revised figures or operational justification within the planning window, incorporate them into the draft plan with source attribution; if no response is received, mark the baseline as unconfirmed and flag the target as unverified for executive review.
• Compile the reconciled quarterly KPI planning packet. Group metrics by department, showing prior actuals, proposed targets, variance analysis, confirmed assumptions, and owner sign-offs. Highlight disputed baselines, unresolved target gaps, and resourcing prerequisites.
• Approval. Submit the reconciled planning packet to the executive business owner or operations leader. Present the complete target table, flagged variances, owner justifications, and any unconfirmed baselines. The approver may accept the targets as submitted, modify specific target values, request further departmental justification, or decline specific KPIs.
• Upon receiving executive approval, apply approved target values, confirmed metric definitions, and ownership assignments to the canonical planning records in Notion, Google Sheets, or Coda. Read back the updated records to verify that target values, formulas, and owner fields match the approved packet exactly.
• Exception. If external write access fails, record updates partially succeed, or read-back verification reveals mismatched values, halt automated sync. Preserve the verified approved plan and discrepancy log, alert the planning coordinator with the exact failed records, and await explicit manual confirmation or access restoration before marking the planning cycle confirmed.
• A customer operations team plans quarterly onboarding targets in Notion. The lead proposes increasing onboarded accounts by 35% with flat headcount, citing process improvements. The agent compares this with the prior quarter's 8% gain and flags that manual account verification was the historical bottleneck. When queried, the lead clarifies that a batch-upload tool is launching in month two of the quarter, justifying a 20% target increase rather than 35%. The COO reviews the revised proposal with the flagged dependency and approves the 20% target.
• Complete the case by archiving the approved KPI document and audit log in the planning workspace, transitioning the run to Outcome confirmed once read-back verification succeeds. If executive approval is withheld, key departmental baselines remain unresolved, or targets are deferred, record the specific rationale and transition the run to Declined or unresolved with follow-up ownership assigned.