Your first 90 days with Span: pick one outcome and get results

A plan for your first 90 days: pick one question you need Span to answer, get that answer sent to the right manager every week, and use it to make one change before you add more.

Why it matters

Span measures a lot. Teams that try to look at all of it at once usually end up with dashboards nobody opens. Teams that start from one question get an answer in the first week and a change on a team within a month. By day 90 you should have:

• One outcome working: a manager gets a scheduled answer, the team agreed one change, and you can show before and after numbers.

• A routine: targets and digests that flag a problem without anyone opening a report.

• A second outcome started, and a readout you can give leadership.

How it works

1. Pick one outcome. Choose the question that would change a decision in the next 30 days. Each one has a guide that walks from the question to the screens, the Playbook to set up, and the change to try.

Not sure? Start with Team health. It needs the least setup, and checking the team roster first makes every other outcome more accurate.

2. Start with one team. Pick a team of 5 to 15 people whose manager will act on the answer.

3. Follow the 90 days.

Days 1–30: first answer, first change

• Kickoff with your Span team: outcome, owner and starting team chosen

• Admin setup done (see Setup below)

• The manager creates the outcome's Playbook and gets its first result

• The manager writes down a baseline: two or three numbers and their date range

• The team agrees one change and writes it down

• 30-day review with your Span team

Days 31–60: make it routine, then widen

• Turn the change into a team target, where the outcome has one

• Set up the same Playbook for two or three more managers

• Check each new team's roster and linked Git accounts

• Share Getting started with Span: for engineers with engineers before their team's numbers are discussed

Days 61–90: second outcome, leadership readout

• Pick a second outcome from the table

• Give a leadership readout: the agreement, before and after numbers, and the guardrails from the guide

• Plan the next quarter with your Span team

Setup

Your admin connects data, loads people and teams, and invites users by following Set up Span in your first two weeks: a guide for admins. Two steps in it matter most for this plan:

1. Let managers create Playbooks. Only Owners and Admins have Manage Playbooks by default. In Settings → Permission Groups, add it to the Managers group so each manager can set up their own. See Roles & Permissions in Span.

2. Connect Src to Slack if answers should go to Slack. Without it, Playbooks send to email only. See Src Slack Setup Guide.

Then the manager sets up the first Playbook:

1. Go to Playbooks and click New Playbook.

2. Pick the template the outcome's guide names.

3. Under Where should it go?, keep your email. A Playbook runs with your access, so a post to a channel shows everyone there what you can see. To post to a team channel, pick Service account under Advanced → Executor. An Owner can set one up that sees only that team: create it in Settings → Service Accounts, then add it to a permission group limited to that team (see Service Accounts).

4. Click Create, then Test run to see the first answer now.

For how Playbooks, digests and report subscriptions compare, see Get Span's answers delivered: Playbooks, digests and report subscriptions.

Things to know

• One outcome, one team first. Adding a second outcome before the first one has changed anything spreads attention thin. Each guide's "Make the change stick" section shows how to hold the change.

• Templates start private. A new Playbook is visible only to the person who made it and sends to their email until they change Where should it go?.

• History is there on day one. Span loads about 6 months of history, so a manager can record a baseline as soon as the data is checked.

• Team views use each person's current team. After a reorg, past values change, so record baselines again.

• AI spend: the Playbook covers adoption. Review spend itself in the report each month.

• Worked example: an organization picks Faster delivery and starts with a seven-person platform team. In week 1 the admin connects GitHub and Jira, links Git accounts, and adds Manage Playbooks to the Managers group. On day 9 the platform manager creates Open-PR review queue, sent to her email each weekday morning, and sets a Time to First Review target with Slack nudges to PR authors. On day 12 she records a baseline (Time to First Review 31 hours) and the team agrees a daily reviewer rotation. By the 30-day review, Time to First Review is 14 hours, and she lowers the target to 24 hours. In days 31 to 60, two more managers set up the same Playbook. On day 75 the team picks AI adoption as its second outcome, and the platform manager gives the leadership readout.

Related articles

Set up Span in your first two weeks: a guide for admins

Getting started with Span: for engineering managers and leaders

Getting started with Span: for engineers

Get Span's answers delivered: Playbooks, digests and report subscriptions

Using Src Playbooks

Targets: set team goals and get notified when work slips

Span products and use cases

Need help?

Contact your Span account team or reach out to support@span.app.

Before you publish (internal: delete this section)

• Is day 30 the right point for the review, given the Implementation-to-CS handoff? Confirm with Stephanie.

• Test-run Where time went and Team-health snapshot on Span's org before customers rely on them.

• If Managers get Manage Playbooks by default, cut Setup step 1.

• The worked example's numbers are illustrative. Keep them or swap in a real (anonymized) story.

• Set visibility to customer only: every guide in the table is customer only, so a public page would send readers to gated links.