Stage Planning in LYNX provides a structured, high-level view of your project’s major phases. It enables better communication, progressive planning, early resource and budget estimation, and powerful scenario exploration. This guide introduces the purpose of Stage Planning, explains how to set up your workspace, and walks through the methods for building and integrating Stage Plans with detailed schedules.

DOWNLOAD THE MANUAL - SEE BOTTOM OF THIS ARTICLE

Introduction

Stage Planning forms the top planning layer within LYNX. It supports high-level timelines, financial and resource estimation, and the definition of major project phases. This level of planning helps teams stay aligned on direction while keeping detailed planning flexible until execution is closer.

Stage Planning also ensures a smooth connection to detailed task plans and Agile delivery workflows, enabling a full multi-level approach to project execution and communication.

Levels of Altitude in Planning

Stage Planning corresponds to the highest planning altitude. At this level you define overall project phases, expected timelines, and major constraints. Beneath this, detailed task plans and team-level execution workflows operate in alignment with Stage boundaries.

The three altitudes work together:

• Level 1 – Stage Plan: high-level timeline, phase durations, budgets, resource estimates
• Level 2 – Detailed Plan: task networks, dependencies, critical chain, execution planning
• Level 3 – Tasks & Cards: daily team operations, Kanban/Agile boards, TameFlow workflows

This structure ensures consistent priorities and flow across the entire project.

Stage Plan Applications

Stage Planning can be applied across multiple areas:

Scenario Planning

• Create alternative Stage sequences
• Explore delivery options
• Run scenario simulations at Stage level, detailed level, or both
• Automatically size Stages when simulating different conditions

Financial Management

• Assign Stage budgets
• Distribute budgets across tasks
• Track planned vs. actual costs
• Manage cash flow across long-running phases

High-Level Timelines

• Prepare executive timelines and roadmaps
• Communicate clearly with stakeholders and customers
• Communicate progress at a phase level rather than thousands of tasks

Additional Applications

• Progressive elaboration: avoid premature detailed planning
• High-level resource requirement estimation
• Identification of future phases long before detailed work is known

Setting up a Space for Stage Planning

To use Stage Planning, enable the following in your Space settings:

• Stages
• Budgeting

Once enabled, the Stage Planning interface and related budgeting functions become available throughout your projects.

Adding a Stage Plan

Where to Add Stages?

Stages are added directly in the Stage Plan area of your project. This area provides a dedicated view for phase-level planning, separate from detailed tasks.

How to Add Stages?

Adding Stages follows the same process as adding tasks.
You can create a sequence of Stages, define their durations, and position them along the project timeline. Start and end dates of a Stage are manually controlled and act as the baseline for the high-level plan.

How to Select Stage Types?

Two Stage types are available:

• Virtual Drum – optimized for scenario planning
• Stage – optimized for budgeting and high-level financial control

Choose the type depending on whether the Stage is part of a scenario flow or financial planning flow.

Adding Stage Milestones

Milestones can be added to emphasize key events or constraints.

• Fixed Milestones: enforce a specific date and automatically determine the duration between fixed points during scenario planning
• Floating Milestones: allow LYNX to reposition the Stages dynamically and are primarily used for visualization

How to Add Skills / Resources?

Skill and resource requirements can be added directly to individual Stages. This provides early high-level resource demand insight before detailed planning is completed.

Combining Stage and Detail Plans

Why Integrate Stage with Detail Plans?

Integrating Stage Plans with detailed task structures allows:

• Monitoring actual execution progress against the Stage baseline
• Enhanced scenario planning at multiple levels
• Automatic recalculation of remaining Stage durations
• Budget distribution from high-level Stages to detailed tasks
• Better visualization and simplified management across altitudes

Methods for Integrating Stage and Detail Plans

1. Link Tasks to a Stage (via Task Properties)

Tasks can be assigned to a specific Stage using the Staging tab.
This method allows filtering tasks by Stage and provides automatic aggregation of task durations as a chain within the Stage Plan.

2. Stage–Task Dependencies (Anchor Points)

Define Stage predecessors and successors directly based on milestones or task positions.
This method is especially stable in dynamic projects where tasks are frequently updated, as only the start and end anchor points need to be maintained.

Recommendations

• For budget management, always connect each task to a Stage (Method 1)
• For scenario planning, either method, or a combination, can be used
• Anchor points are ideal for stable integration without micromanaging task-to-stage mapping
• Linking tasks is ideal when you want clear grouping and filtering

Portfolio Timeline Visualization

The portfolio timeline allows users to switch between multiple timeline views:

• Stage-only timeline
• Critical Chain timeline from the detailed plan
• Combined view

This makes it easy to compare high-level and detailed perspectives across all running projects.

Summary: LYNX Stage Planning Examples

Stage Planning supports multiple use cases within LYNX, including:

• Two-level scenario planning combining Stage and detailed plans

• Financial management through hierarchical budget distribution

• High-level communication using Stage-based roadmaps and timelines

Stage Planning helps you stay agile at the front end of complex projects while maintaining a clear connection to detailed execution and team-level workflows.