I think I've been pretty successful in my career. But if I was better
at planning, I wouldn't have achieved half the things I've achieved in
my career! In fact, I wouldn't even have started some of them...
In
reality, there are some things you can plan, and some things you can't.
The trouble is, in most organisations we've come to expect a plan. And
to meet it whatever happens. And that's just not realistic.
Doing
detailed planning pre-supposes you know where you want to go and aren't
going to be influenced too much by what happens in the meantime - or at
least not without a substantial amount of re-planning. This, at least
in my experience, has a tendency to give project managers tunnel vision
at times.
Now don't get me wrong - I'm not suggesting for one
moment you embark on a project that doesn't have a clear and robust
vision. And I'm not suggesting for a moment you embark on a project
where you have no idea how to achieve it and whether it's a reasonable
(although hopefully challenging) goal with the available resources. And
forming that into an outline plan to provide some markers to aim for is
certainly a good idea, but ideally it's a high level roadmap rather
than a detailed plan.
Coming from a traditional software
development environment, I realise this sounds slightly mad. And I must
admit it takes a certain amount of maturity and experience to recognise
that you can't really plan in detail up-front if you want to retain any
flexibility, as the real requirements, risks, issues, priorities and
opportunities all tend to emerge when you start to build and see the
software in action.
Most organisations are not be ready to
accept such a radical idea - the idea of acknowledging you don't really
know what you want - certainly not for sure - and you don't really know
what you're going to get for your money, or when. So, as a minimum, a
clear vision and outline plan are essential, but be careful to keep
them to a high level.
Rather than a detailed plan, I prefer to
see a strong vision, a strategy, goals, and a roadmap (high level
outline plan). The tactics to achieve this, for example the precise
features and all the tasks to deliver them, can vary along the way and
are best not articulated up-front. This enables the team to discover
the details when they are in a better position to do so, and allows
them to change direction rapidly in response to changing circumstances.
This, when you think of it, is the very meaning of agile...
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