The composer/orchestrator pair chapter named the two roles every act of coordinated work passes through and identified the three phases that compose the composer's work. This chapter develops those three phases — specification, planning, and delegation. Each is dependency-ordered against the others, each carries its own discipline, and the depth of each is calibrated to what the work calls for.
Three Phases at Every Scale
Composing has the same three-phase shape whether the work is small or large. A friend asking another friend to grab a coffee on the way over runs through specification, planning, and delegation in a single phrase, in a fraction of a second, with no conscious attention to any of the phases. A company composing its annual strategic plan runs through the same three phases across three months, with multiple drafts circulated, multiple stakeholders consulted, and multiple working sessions devoted to each phase in turn. Across the full range, the architectural shape of the work is invariant. What varies is the time each phase consumes, the explicit attention each receives, and the depth of artifact each produces.
The phases are dependency-ordered. What specification produces is the specification — the component that names what the work is for. Planning operates on the specification and produces the plan — the component that says how the work will unfold. Delegation operates on the plan and produces the role assignment that binds the script to its performer. Together, the three components form the input script. No phase can run before the phase it depends on; no phase substitutes for another. Composers who work briskly often run all three in seconds and produce output that looks like the phases were merged, but the dependency relationships still hold beneath the speed. What appears as a single act of composing decomposes, on inspection, into specification followed by planning followed by delegation.
The three phases also answer the classical questions any coordinated act has to address. Specification covers what the work is and why it matters. Planning covers how the work will unfold. Delegation covers who will perform it, where ownership sits, and when the work happens. A composer who runs all three phases honestly produces an input script that answers every question the orchestrator on the receiving side will need answered to perform the work.
Specification
Specification is the phase in which the composer determines what the work is and why it matters. It establishes the objective the script will serve. Without an objective, the script has nothing to be a script of, and the phases that follow have nothing to plan or delegate against. Specification is what makes the difference between a script that pursues something and a list of activity that pursues nothing.
What specification produces is the specification itself — the component of the input script that records what the work is for. At minimum, a specification names the goal the work pursues. More elaborate specifications also name the standards by which the work will be judged and the larger mission the goal serves. At small scale, the specification fits in a phrase; at large scale, it becomes a document on its own. The specification is what the planning phase operates on, and it will become part of the input script the orchestrator receives.
Specification can be brief or elaborate depending on what the work requires. The friend asking for coffee specifies in a single phrase. A student recognizing the need for a study plan before the week begins has specified — the objective is to be ready when the week's tests come around. A company specifying its annual strategic plan may take three months, with multiple versions of the objective tested before one is settled on. The phase is the same in all three cases; what varies is the depth of work needed to determine what the objective actually is.
Specification can be inherited rather than authored from scratch. An orchestrator who has just received an input script of their own may compose sub-scripts whose objectives are derived from the parent script's objective. The volunteer coordinator working from a regional command's mission of restoring residential habitability in the affected zone specifies the day's drywall removal team's mission as removing water-damaged drywall from the houses on Maple Street so reconstruction can begin. The team's objective is local but inherited from the parent mission. Specification at the sub-level is partly an act of authoring and partly an act of translating what was already established at the level above.
Heavy specification gives the performer firm ground — standards explicit, parameters set, conditions stated. The performer focuses on execution rather than reconstruction, and coordination across multiple performers stays aligned because each reads the same ground. Light specification gives the performer wide latitude — room to read context, draw on judgment, and shape the work in ways the composer could not have anticipated from outside. The composer chooses where on the spectrum to sit, and what comes back reflects the choice: predictability and alignment toward the heavy end, responsiveness and the performer's own judgment toward the light end.
Planning
Planning is the phase in which the composer lays out how the work will unfold to meet the objective. It operates on the specification and produces, in turn, the structure that delegation will assign against. Planning is where the composer thinks through what work needs to happen, in what sequence, with what dependencies, with what resources.
What planning produces is a plan — a composite of everything the performer will need to carry out the work the specification named. A plan contains the instructions for performing the work — the steps to take, in what sequence, with what dependencies — the information the performer will draw on, and the priorities that determine what matters most when trade-offs arise. More elaborate plans also name the resources each part of the work draws on, the milestones the work passes through to completion, and the contingencies the composer can anticipate. At small scale, all of these collapse into the structure implicit in a single phrase; at large scale, each elaborates into its own section. The plan is what the delegation phase operates on, and it will become part of the input script the orchestrator receives.
Planning is the phase most readers recognize as the visible work of leadership. The coach diagramming a game plan is planning. The chef writing the kitchen's menu and prep order for the evening is planning. The student turning the recognized need for a study plan into a schedule of study time across the week is planning. Across all of these, the activity is the same — turning an objective into a structure of work that, if performed, would meet the objective.
Planning is bounded by what the composer is in a position to know in advance. Heavy planning gives the orchestrator a clear path to execute — sequence, dependencies, and resources laid out — useful when conditions are known and the work depends on coordination across many participants. Light planning gives the orchestrator room to plan in real time as conditions reveal themselves, drawing structure from the work as it unfolds — useful when conditions are uncertain and the orchestrator's situational judgment outpaces what the composer could state in advance. The composer reads the work and the conditions and calibrates the depth accordingly.
Delegation
Delegation is the phase in which the composer determines who will perform the planned work, where ownership will sit, and when the work will happen. Delegation binds the plan and specification to a specific role and performer through the role assignment, forming the input script the orchestrator will perform.
What delegation produces is the role assignment — the component of the input script that addresses the script to a specific role and the performer who will fill it. A role assignment names the role, the performer who will inhabit it, the latitude the role grants, the prerequisite context the role requires (the discipline the mutual-understanding chapter named), and when the work will happen. The standards established in the specification travel with the assignment so the performer knows the bar their work will be measured against; delegation conveys these standards rather than authoring new ones. At small scale, the role assignment collapses into a phrase that identifies the recipient. At large scale, it becomes a document on its own — a briefing, a commission, an assignment letter. The role assignment combines with the specification and the plan to constitute the input script. Together, the three components are what crosses the input boundary the boundary-conditions chapter named, and what the orchestrator on the performing side will act against.
Delegation includes the act of role assignment the role-playing chapter established. The composer determines which roles the work needs, which performers will fill those roles, and what each role's sub-script will say. A teacher delegating a group project writes the assignment, names the groups, and identifies each group's leader. A volunteer coordinator delegating the day's work assigns team leaders, names team members, and hands out the team briefings. In each case, delegation produces the sub-scripts that the orchestrators on the performing side will act against.
Delegation can be trivial when the composer is delegating to themselves. The shopper writing a list before a single trip to the store has delegated the work to themselves; the role of shopper will be performed by the same person who composed the list. The architectural shape is unchanged — there is a script and a performer — but no handoff between people occurs because the composer and the orchestrator are the same person. This is the smallest case of the pair, and it is genuinely the same pair, just collapsed into one participant.
Delegation can be substantial when the work calls for a network of performers. A regional director composing the response to a multi-county disaster delegates to multiple field coordinators, each of whom — performing their role — composes sub-scripts for the team leaders working under them, each of whom — performing theirs — composes sub-scripts for their team members. Delegation at the top of the network produces sub-scripts that, when performed, generate further delegations all the way down. The architectural shape is the same as the trivial case at every layer; what scales is the network the cascading composition generates.
What the role assignment leaves unsaid, the performer reconstructs from context. A volunteer arriving at a flood site with tools knows they are a volunteer; an employee getting a one-line message from their manager knows their role from their position in the organization; a craftsman accepting a commission knows what they have just taken on. The composer's discipline is to convey enough — through the document, the context, the relationship, or any combination — that the performer can hold the role.
Delegation entrusts responsibility to the performer; without entrustment, no work moves at all. The amount entrusted varies, but the dynamic — entrusting, observing, adjusting — operates whenever delegation happens. Modest entrustment keeps decisions close to the composer and lets the performer demonstrate competence at that level. Substantial entrustment hands ownership to the performer and reveals what they can do when they hold the goal themselves. Across performances, this is how composers discover what their performers can do and how performers grow into the roles they are given.
The Boundary
What the composer produces is an input script handed to an orchestrator. The three phases produce its three components: the specification names what the work is for, the plan lays out how it will unfold, and the role assignment binds the work to the performer.
The composer's work ends at the input boundary. What the orchestrator does with what crosses it is their work.
At every layer of a network, an orchestrator takes on the composer role and runs the same three phases against the script just received from the layer above.