Captains' Meeting

The meeting to plan the date of the planning meeting

The Captains’ Meeting is a gathering of Feature Captains to plan the date when the DevOps Release Convoy™ will be assembled for Convoy Alignment. While this may sound straightforward, the process of synchronizing calendars across all Feature Captains, securing an appropriate venue, and establishing the alignment agenda requires its own dedicated coordination ceremony. Attempting to schedule Convoy Alignment without a Captains’ Meeting would be like setting sail without first agreeing on which ocean you are heading toward.

The Scheduling Process

The primary output of the Captains’ Meeting is a confirmed date for Convoy Alignment. Achieving this requires all Feature Captains to synchronize their calendars, which typically takes between two and four weeks of negotiation. The preferred scheduling tool is a Doodle poll, though the polls have a well-documented tendency to never converge. Each Feature Captain submits their availability, which is then invalidated by the next Feature Captain’s constraints. By the third round of polling, most Feature Captains have new conflicts on dates they previously marked as available, as the intervening weeks have filled their calendars with prerequisite meetings for other ceremonies. It is not uncommon for the Captains’ Meeting to require three or four sessions before a date is finalized.

Prerequisite Meetings

Before the Captains’ Meeting can take place, several preparatory activities must be completed. The Commodore must issue a Convoy Assembly Directive indicating that a new convoy cycle is approaching. Each Feature Captain must then hold a team-level pre-alignment readiness check to determine whether their team has capacity to attend a five-day planning session. The results of these readiness checks are compiled into a Pre-Alignment Readiness Report, which is reviewed at the Captains’ Meeting itself. Teams that report insufficient readiness are reminded that attendance at Convoy Alignment is not optional, rendering the readiness check a formality that nonetheless must be completed.

The Meeting to Plan the Meeting

Experienced SADMF practitioners will recognize the Captains’ Meeting as a natural consequence of the framework’s commitment to thorough planning. Planning the planning date ensures that alignment will not be disrupted by logistical surprises. The irony that planning the planning date often takes longer than anticipated is not lost on the organization but is accepted as evidence that complex coordination requires structured ceremonies. Proposals to “just pick a date” have been rejected by the Admiral’s Transformation Office as insufficiently rigorous and disrespectful to the ceremony’s role in the convoy lifecycle.

Agenda and Outputs

Beyond date selection, the Captains’ Meeting also establishes the agenda for Convoy Alignment, assigns conference room logistics, determines the sandwich collection schedule, and confirms which Feature Captains will present during the Management Address warm-up. The meeting produces a Captains’ Meeting Minutes document that is filed with the Convoy Manifest as evidence that proper pre-planning governance was followed. The minutes are rarely referenced again, but their existence provides organizational comfort.

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