Why Annual Planning Alone Isn’t Agile, and Ad-Hoc Decisions Aren’t Either

So far in this series, we’ve looked at three common traps:

• relying on reports to make portfolio decisions
• setting priorities without checking capacity,
• and asking teams for too much detail too soon.

The fourth trap is treating portfolio agility as a choice between annual planning and constant reaction. Always-on decision-making should not mean always interrupting teams.

Annual planning can give the organization direction. It helps leaders align on goals, budgets, and major initiativesInitiativesSynonym for → ProjectA project is a time-limited undertaking with defined objectives and resources that delivers unique results and often includes complex tasks.. The problem starts when annual planning becomes the only real moment when portfolio decisions are made.

At the other extreme, organizations try to stay agile by reacting to every new request as soon as it appears. That may feel responsive in the moment. At the portfolio level, though, constant ad-hoc decisions can create the same problem as rigid annual planning. They disconnect decisions from the bigger picture and make it harder for teams to stay focused.

The Problem With “ASAP” Planning

Every organization has urgent requests. Some of them really are urgent. The trouble starts when “ASAP” becomes the planning process.
A request arrives with urgency already attached, and leadership wants to know how quickly it can start. Another team is already working on something important, but the new request has visibility. Someone asks whether people can move now. Someone else asks whether the work can be added to the next sprint, the next roadmapRoadmapA roadmap is a strategic overview of one or more projects, their progress, milestones, and objectives. update, or the next steering meeting.
For teams, this creates churn. Work is started, paused, restarted, and re-explained. Priorities change before teams have had time to deliver on the last priority. People spend more time switching context and renegotiating expectations than moving work forward.

For portfolio leaders, each urgent decision may make sense on its own, but the combined effect is hard to see. A small shift here, a delayed projectProjectA project is a time-limited undertaking with defined objectives and resources that delivers unique results and often includes complex tasks. there, one team reassigned for a few weeks, another team asked to help “just this once.” Over time, the portfolio becomes reactive.

Annual Planning Creates a False Sense of Stability

A yearly plan is useful as a starting point. It is much less useful as the only structured place to revisit what should move forward, what should wait, and what needs to change.

Portfolios do not stay still for twelve months. Over the course of a year, new opportunities appear, market conditions change, dependencies move, and teams learn more. Some initiativesInitiativesSynonym for → ProjectA project is a time-limited undertaking with defined objectives and resources that delivers unique results and often includes complex tasks. become less important while others become more urgent, which is why a plan created once or twice a year cannot carry all of those decisions on its own.

When the annual plan becomes too rigid, teams keep following a roadmapRoadmapA roadmap is a strategic overview of one or more projects, their progress, milestones, and objectives. that no longer reflects reality. Leadership may know the plan needs to change, but without a clear decision point, those changes often get delayed until the next planning cycle or handled through side conversations and escalations.

That is how annual planning and ad-hoc decision-making start to reinforce each other. The official plan is too slow to adapt, so the organization compensates with urgent exceptions.

Ad-Hoc Decisions Create a Different Problem

Ad-hoc decisions often look agile because they happen quickly. A decision gets made, the plan changes, and the organization feels like it is responding.

The hidden cost is focus. Teams can adapt to change, but they cannot absorb constant shifts without losing momentum. Agile teams expect priorities to evolve, but they still need a stable planning window to understand which goals matter now, which work has been committed, and which new requests should wait until the next decision point.

When portfolio decisions happen randomly, teams are told to be flexible, but the process feels more like interruption than agility.

Why This Happens in Jira Environments

This problem shows up often in organizations using Jira because Jira contains a lot of useful delivery information. Teams can use it to manage backlog items, epics, sprint plans, status, and delivery progress.

For leaders outside the agile teams, though, that information is not always easy to translate into portfolio decisions. A Jira board may show what is happening now, but it does not automatically explain what that means for future plans, which initiativesInitiativesSynonym for → ProjectA project is a time-limited undertaking with defined objectives and resources that delivers unique results and often includes complex tasks. can realistically move forward, or when a new request should be considered against everything else already in motion.

That is where ad-hoc decision-making can creep in. When leaders need answers quickly, the request often goes straight to the teams: Can this move up? Can this start sooner? Can we fit this into the next planning window? Can someone shift to it now?

Those questions may be understandable, but they still need a portfolio-level rhythm. Without one, Jira can become another place where urgent requests enter the system faster than the portfolio can absorb them.

That gets harder when portfolio decisions affect teams working in different systems. A change made through one Jira board may also affect teams planning in Smartsheet, MS Planner, Asana, spreadsheets, or lighter processes. Without a shared cadence, every group hears about changes at a different time and replans in a different way.

The Better Question

Instead of asking, “How fast can we change the plan?” ask, “When should we turn new information into portfolio decisions, and what do we need to make those decisions well?”

A good portfolio process does not wait a full year to respond to change. It also does not ask teams to reorganize every time a new request appears. It creates a regular decision cadence. That is portfolio governance in practical form: decisions happen often enough to respond to change, but not so constantly that teams lose focus.

For many organizations, that might mean reviewing portfolio decisions every four to six weeks. The exact timing can vary, but the purpose is the same: give leadership a predictable way to evaluate new demand, review current commitments, check capacity, and decide what should change.

What This Looks Like in Practice

When a new initiativeInitiativeSynonym for → ProjectA project is a time-limited undertaking with defined objectives and resources that delivers unique results and often includes complex tasks. is proposed, instead of asking teams to shift immediately, the request enters a portfolio intake process.

Before the next portfolio review, the request is prepared for discussion. The goal is clarified. Relevant delivery information from Jira or other team tools is translated into portfolio-level inputs: likely teams, rough timing, capacity needs, and major dependencies.

At the portfolio review, leaders look at the request alongside the existing portfolio. They can ask:

• Does this initiative matter enough to move forward now?
• What current work would be delayed, reduced, or stopped?
• Which teams or roles would be affected?
• Is this a true exception, or should it wait for the next planning window?

Once the decision is made, teams get a clear message. The important difference is that any change is intentional, not scattered across a series of urgent side conversations. Teams know what continues, what changes, and what needs to wait.

Urgent exceptions can still happen. A regular review rhythm does not mean the organization ignores real emergencies. Rather, emergencies are treated as exceptions, not the default way the portfolio is managed. 

Why This Matters

A predictable decision cadence protects both leadership agility and team focus. Leadership gets regular opportunities to adjust the portfolio based on new information. And teams get enough stability to do the work they have already been asked to deliver.

That rhythm also makes portfolio decisions easier to trust. People know when decisions happen, what information is needed, and how changes will be communicated. New requests do not disappear into a yearly planning document or explode into immediate disruption.

Annual planning can set the direction. Ad-hoc decisions can handle true exceptions. A regular portfolio cadence gives the organization a better way to steer between the two.

The point is not to slow decisions down. The point is to make them deliberate enough that the organization can respond to change without constantly pulling teams away from the work that matters.

Want to Go Deeper?

This is just one of five patterns that make portfolio decisions harder than they need to be.

In our full white paper, Avoiding the Downward Spiral of Portfolio Management with Jira Data, we break down:

• what’s not working in portfolio planningPortfolio PlanningPortfolio planning is the process by which companies decide which projects they want to carry out. This ensures that projects are in line with the company’s objectives and that the… with Jira data,
• why these problems keep happening,
• and how organizations can build a better portfolio and resource planning process around Jira.