Most of us know the quote of Dwight D. Eisenhower about planning. You can find it in multiple other forms as well.
- In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable
- Plans are useless, but planning is essential
- Plans are nothing; planning is everything
The planning topic remains a hotly debated one in the software community and often leads to a stalemate between agile enthusiasts and more planning-oriented groups (waterfall, PRINCE II, or another project management methodology). I want to steer away from this discussion and look at some basic elements.
- Dividing your work into activities makes it more manageable. You thereby think about a problem from a distance and decide on a course of action before you get into the weeds.
- Some activities have dependencies, some are unrelated and can be done simultaneously. This gives a great insight into how you can execute the activities and also prevents you from trying to paralyze activities that can’t be parallelized (the 9 women 1 baby analogy)
- Some activities require a specialism, a specialism that you only need for a very short period of time. You will need to hire this person at some point for a certain duration. Having some idea when and how long is key.
- Activities need to be distributed amongst team members. It pays off to think about who does what. Some people can work in close cooperation with the customer others prefer to stay in the background and dive deep into technicalities.
I have found it highly beneficial to think about the items above and do some form of planning. It keeps you from constantly wondering about the next step so you can stick to the execution, hence the title: “The Plan-Execute Cycle”.
Another phenomenon happens when you are in the weeds… you tend to see only the weeds and not the bigger picture and the roadblocks ahead.
Photo source: http://go.rainmakervt.com/resultsmailvt/2019/1/15/plans-are-useless-but-planning-is-indispensable
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