Mutual Action Plan Template
Three documents and four sheets that take the buyer's procurement apart into the steps it actually contains, each with a named owner.
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Critical path read, 8 September
Ostara Logistics Group, $284,000, signature target 30 September
| Steps in the plan | 17, after four collapsed rows were taken apart |
| On the critical path | 6 |
| Days lost so far | 35, across two steps, with the signature date unmoved |
| Deadline behind the deadline | 26 September, when Ostara's capital budget closes |
1. The path, backwards from signature
| Step | Side | Days it takes | Started |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accessibility conformance report | Us | 15 | No |
| Security review sign-off | Ostara | 19 | Blocked |
| Requisition raised and approved | Ostara | 8 | No |
| Redlines returned and resolved | Both | 26 | No, counsel back 15 Sep |
2. The arithmetic nobody had done
Sixty-eight days of remaining path against twenty-two days of calendar. The signature date moved three weeks ago; it just had not been written down anywhere.
3. The sentence
Tomas Ballard has to get the accessibility report booked for 9 September, or Hana Vance cannot sign off, the requisition cannot be raised, and Ostara's capital budget closes without us in it.
Five of the six steps on the path came out of a single row originally labelled Procurement and security. Nothing on that row had an owner with a name.
Search this and page one is unanimous on the method. Six to twelve milestones, an owner per milestone from the correct side, dates derived backwards from the buyer's go-live, and a status of on track, at risk or overdue. One guide states the doctrine outright: anything more granular belongs in the seller's CRM, not the shared plan. That advice is why procurement is a single row on every plan in circulation, and why the weeks nobody planned for are all inside it.
Procurement is not a step. It is a supplier registration in their portal, a tax form, an insurance certificate with additional insured wording, a code of conduct signature, a bank verification callback, and a requisition needing a cost centre code. A US buyer wants an IRS Form W-9 before anybody can pay you, and a W-8BEN-E if you are not American. Six pieces, four owners, two organisations, and lead times running from same day to a fortnight.
The second thing nobody ships is a memory. Dates get edited in place, so a step that has slipped four times reads exactly like one that never slipped. The original date stays in its own column; every movement is logged with who moved it. Durations come from your own closed deals, not a default. Then the redline that comes back, the proposal whose price has its own expiry date, and the buyer's own onboarding once security clears are somebody else's job, and the rest sits in the template library and the tool index.
What's in the pack
Mutual Action Plan
The shared document the buyer reads and edits, ending with the single step standing between them and the date, and the deadlines that are not yours to move.
Milestone Tracker
Every step decomposed until it has one named person against it, with the artifact it requires and the original and current dates in separate columns.
Dependency Register
What blocks what, counting missing artifacts and absent people as dependencies alongside predecessor steps, each marked by side so you know who to chase.
Slippage Log
Every date movement with who moved it, which side they are on, the reason they gave, and the running total per step. Blocked is recorded separately from moved.
Step Duration History
How long each step really takes across your own closed deals, with the sample beside every figure and no history written where the sample is short.
Buyer Process Interview
The questions that get a buyer to describe how their organisation actually buys, including the one about when their budget period closes.
Kickoff Note
Written on signature day for whoever runs delivery, carrying the commitments made in passing on calls that would otherwise survive only in the customer's memory.
How to use it
- 1
Open in River, or take it blank
Open the pack in River and describe the deal, or download the Word documents and CSV sheets and fill them in yourself.
- 2
Interview the buyer's process
Ask what actually happened the last time they bought something. A hypothetical process is an org chart; a remembered one has the delays in it.
- 3
Decompose until every row has a name
Procurement, security, legal and finance come apart into their real pieces. Where nobody can be named, the step stays with the owner marked unnamed.
- 4
Date it from your own closed deals
Durations come from what these steps have really taken here, then the critical path gets read backwards from signature and the answer is one sentence.
Frequently asked questions
Is this template free?
Yes. Three Word documents and four CSV sheets, downloaded as a zip, no signup. River is the optional half: it decomposes the buyer's process, dates it from your closed deals, and reads the critical path. Single-shot jobs live in the tool index.
Will the buyer actually fill this in with me?
They fill in the shared document, which is deliberately short. The tracker, the dependency register and the slippage log are yours. A buyer who sees a plan naming their own approval thresholds and their own budget close date usually starts correcting it, and corrections are the whole point.
Six to twelve milestones is the standard advice. Why break it?
Because that advice is what produces a plan with procurement as one row. A step nobody can put a name against is not a step. Keep the shared document short by all means; the tracker underneath it holds whatever number of rows the buyer's real process contains.
What if the deal is not enterprise?
Then most stages collapse honestly and the plan is short, which is a finding rather than a failure. The test is the same one either way: read each row aloud starting with a person's name. Where that works, leave it alone.
We have no history to date the steps from.
Step Duration History reads no history and says how many more closed deals it needs, rather than filling itself with a benchmark. Until then the plan uses the worst case you have observed, because a step you have never measured has simply not gone wrong in front of you yet.
What counts as a dependency worth recording?
Anything that stops a step from starting. A predecessor step, a person on leave, an approval threshold, portal access, and above all a document you do not have yet. An accessibility conformance report or a current audit report is weeks of lead time hiding as paperwork.
Where does the security review fit?
As several rows rather than one, and the answers themselves are a different job. The security questionnaire response pack handles what goes back to the reviewer; this space handles what their review blocks and how long it has been blocking it.
Find out which single step is holding the date
Take the Word documents and CSV sheets blank, or open this exact pack in River and let it take the buyer's process apart first.
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