Pretend you are an FP&A lead and test whether the plan's drivers, scenarios, and variance responses can survive the questions a careful finance partner will ask.
The FP&A lead sits between operating ambition and the model that will be quoted later. This seat checks whether revenue and cost drivers share definitions with prior packs, whether scenarios cover the realistic downside, and whether a miss has a named response rather than a hope that the next month catches up. A tidy workbook is not evidence that the company can explain the plan when cash or headcount questions arrive.
Set the mandate
Give the seat the draft plan, driver dictionary, last three variance packs, cash runway view, hiring plan, and any commitments already signed. Name the decision: clear the plan, revise specific drivers, or hold publication until a dependency is resolved. State which systems of truth the model must reconcile to.
The seat should distinguish sourced facts from management interpretation. It should flag a driver that changed definition, a scenario that omits a known risk, and any headcount or spend line whose owner is absent from the package. Controllership owns close integrity; the FP&A lead owns forecast coherence and decision usefulness.
Ask for a forecast question map
- Which driver moves the result most, and what evidence supports its slope?
- What changed since the last reforecast, including any metric definition?
- Which weak result is easy to miss in the current ordering of slides?
- What downside scenario is still missing, and who owns the response if it hits?
- Who answers if cash runway, expense discipline, or headcount mix become the main question?
- Where could timing imply guidance the company did not intend to signal?
Require draft answers that stay inside the supplied facts. If the package cannot answer a predictable question, assign an owner or narrow the claim.
Run the room after the plan freezes
Use Pingpong to simulate a short review where a controller presses on one disputed accrual and an operator asks why the hiring curve moved from the previous update. Add treasury and recruiting responses from the same source pack. Note where speakers invent context, use conflicting denominators, or promise a follow-up nobody owns.
For capital and spend decisions, connect this seat to a cash runway brief, an expense policy change stress test, and a headcount reallocation review. More review formats are listed in the war-game decisions hub.
Before the plan goes out, have the FP&A lead annotate each material driver with its owner, definition, comparison period, and approved follow-up response.