Plan · Before production

Strategy, ideas, and the quarterly roadmap

Capture editorial intent before an episode number and folder exist. The strategy workspace helps you choose what deserves production—not merely store a longer wish list.

Strategy decides; Planning schedules

Use Strategy for audience, purpose, mix, capacity, and idea selection. Use Planning for the dates and tasks that make chosen work happen. An idea can remain in Strategy without creating an empty episode workspace.

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Strategy question

Should this exist, for whom, and why now?

Planning question

What must happen, on which day, and by what deadline?

Start with the plain-English guide

Open Planning, switch to Strategy, and choose the quarter you want to shape. The built-in guide explains each concept and can add a clearly labelled worked example made from normal editable records.

  1. State why the quarter exists. Add goals with an objective, an observable measure of success, a target date, and an honest status.
  2. Define the editorial point of view. Content pillars describe recurring themes, the audience each serves, and a target share of the slate.
  3. Add campaigns only when useful. A campaign is a time-bounded initiative with an objective. Evergreen work does not need to belong to one.
  4. Set realistic capacity and cadence. Monthly capacity is measured in effort points. Per-series cadence expresses intended releases per quarter.
The worked example is removable

Edit or promote its items like real records, delete them one by one, or remove the labelled example as a group. Removing it does not delete episodes or planning tasks.

Capture and evaluate an idea

A useful idea record contains more than a title. Add a short premise, the intended audience, the outcome it should create, and any research risks. Optionally connect a series, pillar, campaign, goal, and target release date.

FieldUse it to answer
PriorityIs this Parked, Later, Next, or Now?
ValueHow useful or strategically important could it be?
ConfidenceHow strong is the evidence behind that value?
EffortHow much of the channel’s real capacity will it consume?
Target releaseDoes the idea belong to a particular date or window?

The comparison score is value × confidence ÷ effort. It is a conversation aid, not an automatic decision. A difficult episode can still be the right choice.

Read the roadmap health signals

Capacity Committed effort compared with monthly production capacity.
Content mix Actual pillar share compared with each active pillar’s target.
Cadence Planned releases compared with each series target.
Roadmap state Backlog, Planned, In progress, Delayed, Ready, or Completed.

“Open capacity” is not a command to fill every point. It is room for iteration, support work, and the unexpected. Missing effort estimates make the capacity signal less reliable, so estimate before treating it as a constraint.

Greenlight the idea into production

  1. Mark the idea Greenlit. Confirm its title, summary, series, and intended release.
  2. Choose Create Episode. The new-episode sheet is prefilled from the strategy brief.
  3. Review the real workspace details. Confirm series or Single, episode number, recording date, description, folder creation, and the workspace preview.
  4. Create the episode. The idea becomes “Episode created,” retains its strategic context, and links to the durable production record.

A dated idea appears as an idea target in the calendar. When it becomes an episode, the episode-owned planned release replaces that target rather than creating a duplicate.