01Planning a volume campaign
The plan document itself: objective, constraint, parameter block, pacing curve, stage gates and stop rule, written in that order because each line constrains the one below it.
Head plan Open the note
Planning: deciding what a volume campaign is actually for
Planning is the part of a campaign that happens in a document. It settles four things: what the run is supposed to achieve, how that ambition is rewritten so it can be marked afterwards, where the run is cut into stages with a decision at each seam, and what the closing report will be required to contain. None of it depends on which tool executes the run.
The order matters more than the content. An objective written after the parameters have been chosen will always be an objective the parameters happen to satisfy, and a report drafted after the run will always find the reading that flatters it. Writing both first is the only cheap way to keep a campaign honest.
- In this section
- Objectives, stage design, gate conditions and the closing report template.
- Not in this section
- Wallet count, swap size and interval, which live in the parameter sheets.
- Standing rule
- Nothing here promises an outcome, and no figure in an example describes a real run.
4 plan notes in this section
The decisions taken before any field is filled in: what the run is supposed to achieve, how that objective is written so it can be tested, how the work is split into stages, and what the closing report has to contain.
02Setting an objective you can test
Most stated objectives cannot be checked after the fact. The three properties that make an objective testable, and the rewrite that turns an ambition into a measurable claim.
Framework Open the note
03Staging a campaign
Splitting a run into a baseline, a probe, a main stage and a close, with a written gate between each pair so the decision to continue is taken on evidence rather than on momentum.
Procedure Open the note
04The report you write first
A campaign report drafted before the run has its fields fixed while nobody knows the answer yet. The template, the sections that must be filled in advance, and the ones filled at the close.
Reporting Open the note
Where to go once the plan document exists
A finished plan hands three numbers to the parameter sheets and one template to the reporting note. Those are the next two stops.
Parameters
Three settings carry most of the behaviour of a run. Each one is written here as a trade-off with a named failure at both ends of its range, because there is no value that is correct independently of the objective.
Open the sectionReporting
The closing document drafted before the run starts, with its fields fixed while the answer is still unknown and its verdict lines written in advance.
Open the report noteThe desk
What this desk plans, what it deliberately leaves to other people, and why no page here carries a benchmark it did not measure itself.
Read about the desk