Major Event OSEvent Director's Operating System
An event director at a wall of programmes and projects
How it works

Set up. Follow. Report.

The menu follows the order of the work: set up the plan once, follow it every week, report it every month. Every screen below is from the example event Gothenburg Ice Cup 2030. You can open it yourself on day one.

Set up · once, then kept up to date

Set up the plan first. Then add the money.

The leaders build the plan from the top down. It takes about two weeks of the director's time. The point is to answer the weekly questions with facts.

1 · Event

What are we organising?

Name, dates, currency, contingency. The key numbers the budget depends on: teams, participants, volunteers, fees. The milestones the event must hit, most of them set by the rights holder. Change a key number and every budget line that uses it changes too.

2 · Sources

Where does the work come from?

Contracts, law and authorities, operational needs, the strategy, the nice-to-haves. And the won'ts: what you decided not to do, with the reason written down. The source sets the priority: must, need, want, could or won't.

3 · Structure

How is the work divided, and who owns it?

A basket is a main area of the event. A program is a cost centre with one owner. A project is a deliverable with a date and a budget role. Work stays a draft until it is confirmed. Only confirmed work gets money and shows up in follow-up.

Event

Dates, key numbers and milestones.

Milestones belong to the event, not to a program, so they stay when people change. Each one says where it comes from (rights holder, contract, law or leadership) and what "done" means. Overdue milestones come first, with an owner.

Event · Milestones
Event milestones with source, owner and what done means
Sources

Where each piece of work comes from.

Every document gets a short code, and the programs that depend on it are listed under it. The system can read a contract or a strategy and suggest the obligations as rows; you confirm them. Work you decide not to do is written down with the reason, so it does not come back unnoticed.

Sources · Contracts and law
Sources: contracts and law with the commitments they carry
Structure

Basket, program, project.

A letter, a number, a decimal. When someone says "C2.3 is late", everyone knows who owns it, which contract it comes from and how much money it has. Use the board to arrange the work and the table to edit it. Same data, two views.

Structure · Projects
Projects table: code, name, purpose, program, lead, source, priority, budget role
Follow · every week

Four questions every week.

The leaders answer them from the data the managers already keep.

What is late?Progress
Are we on time?Timeline
Are we on budget?Budget
What could go wrong, and what would it cost?Risks
Progress

A daily update in 15 minutes.

Sub-projects are where the work is: what, who, when, how far, what is blocking, what is next. Six questions, no more. Projects show the worst status of the work under them, so a problem cannot hide under a green status. Rows nobody has updated are flagged. Blockers become issues with an owner.

Progress · Workspace
Progress workspace: projects by owner with status in words
Timeline

Are we on time?

Every program and project is placed in time and checked against the dates the event must hit. Overdue items come first, with the owner. A milestone that slipped stays visible with its note.

Timeline
Timeline: milestones, past due first
Budget

Are we on budget?

The first budget is built from confirmed projects, not from a list of accounts. Every line is quantity times price, with three codes: account, program, project. When a contract is signed, the signed sum is entered, and the expected total cannot drop below it. Five numbers on every line, every month.

Budget · Are we on budget?
Budget dashboard: the whole event in one number, the approved baseline beside it
Risks

What could go wrong, and what would it cost?

Probability times impact, in money, shown next to the expected total. Each risk has an owner, a trigger, a response and a backup plan with its own owner. The five most expensive risks go into the monthly report.

Risks
Risks register with probability, impact, exposure and owners
Report · once a month

One page a month.

Five numbers and how they changed since the last report. The dates that slipped. The top five risks in money. The decisions that need to be made. The numbers come from the system; nobody types them in. Save the month, and the next report shows the change. Print it for the steering group.

How the budget stays under control →

LOC report
The monthly one-page report
Next step

See if it fits the way you lead.

Two ways to start. Answer twenty questions and get a plain result, or book a 45-minute demo with Jesse on your own event.

Pricing starts at €497 a month.

Twenty questions · about eight minutesSee if it fits