I think backchaining becomes much more powerful when done on several different timescales.
To use the chess example, on the baseline timescale, the game looks like a sequence of moves and positions. Zooming out to higher timescale, the game looks more like strategic maneuvering (e.g. what is material balance, is the queenside/kingside is strong/weak, is the king in a vulnerable/safe position, etc.) So, on the higher timescales, you think in terms of gaining strategic advantages instead of making specific moves. But you can still think of it as backchaining.
To use another example, suppose you’re working on a software product. Your ultimate goal is (for example) selling your company for a certain sum of money. You backchained from that, and the current subgoal in the chain is releasing a new version of the product. Zooming-in to a lower timescale, you backchain from releasing a new version and the current subgoal is fixing a particular bug. Zooming-in even further, you backchain from fixing the bug and the current subgoal is adding a few lines of code that emit some useful data to the log file. Et cetera. But what you don’t do is try to plan in detail the release of next’s year’s version: you don’t zoom-in to a low timescale on subgoals that are too far along the high timescale chain.
On the other hand, it’s often important to think in terms of several disjunctive / branching scenarios rather than a single linear chain.
I think backchaining becomes much more powerful when done on several different timescales.
To use the chess example, on the baseline timescale, the game looks like a sequence of moves and positions. Zooming out to higher timescale, the game looks more like strategic maneuvering (e.g. what is material balance, is the queenside/kingside is strong/weak, is the king in a vulnerable/safe position, etc.) So, on the higher timescales, you think in terms of gaining strategic advantages instead of making specific moves. But you can still think of it as backchaining.
To use another example, suppose you’re working on a software product. Your ultimate goal is (for example) selling your company for a certain sum of money. You backchained from that, and the current subgoal in the chain is releasing a new version of the product. Zooming-in to a lower timescale, you backchain from releasing a new version and the current subgoal is fixing a particular bug. Zooming-in even further, you backchain from fixing the bug and the current subgoal is adding a few lines of code that emit some useful data to the log file. Et cetera. But what you don’t do is try to plan in detail the release of next’s year’s version: you don’t zoom-in to a low timescale on subgoals that are too far along the high timescale chain.
On the other hand, it’s often important to think in terms of several disjunctive / branching scenarios rather than a single linear chain.