Why Planning Fails and Why Agile Planning Works
Creating the plan for a project has always been one of the key activities undertaken by the project manager. The complexities of what has to be done by whom and when are itemised and organised in a project plan. Milestones are inserted at critical stages, like the sign-off of requirements by the customer, or the completion of system testing. The project budget is estimated in great detail, hours and days of effort are calculated, resources are allocated at task level and dependencies are identified. The project plan is then agreed and signed off and the project is initiated and run according to its contents. The project manager monitors and manages the project, estimating percentage completion of tasks and reporting on progress regularly to interested stakeholders.
This form of planning works well for projects that are well-defined and predictable, like building construction, where you have to start with building the foundation. When it comes to projects with a high degree of uncertainty, like software development, they can fail, even though there is an established value chain for any software project, the SDLC (software development life-cycle) or ALC (asset lifecycle). There are different types of failures, such as:-
- the project that was estimated to cost 1 million and came in at 3 million
- the one-year project that took 5 years to complete, and
- the project that came in on time and under budget but delivered something that no-one wanted
When it comes to Agile planning, while a project can fail, project overrun on time or money cannot happen, because the project is time-boxed and the resource costs are fixed. If an Agile project is going off the rails for some reason, it can be halted until its trajectory is corrected or it can be cancelled right away. This minimises the waste of cost and effort. But most importantly, an Agile project is focused on delivering the product the customer wants and needs, so there should be no failure in this respect.
Recommended Further Reading
The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course: