Why Use Agile Planning

I think the main benefit that this approach has is that you don’t accumulate assets and invested time around the original plan (which was inevitably wrong). Rightly or wrongly people are always reluctant to admit something is wrong. The more time you put into creating the perfect project plan, the more reluctant you are to change it. The more outputs required from the planning process, the more effort there is in any change in direction.

In contrast, in agile planning, you have a bunch of cards on a board. You can move them around, chuck them in the bin, add new cards without any real negative impact. The whole process is designed upfront to accommodate change. I usually find the board becomes out of date about every week – sometimes we manage 2, but quite rarely. I’ve just totally refreshed the board to reflect our current situation, and the whole thing took a couple of hours.

The process is totally visible and accessible to anyone who wanders into the room. The easier it is to see what is going on and become involved, the more thought people put into features that are being proposed.

It’s always the case that you learn more about what you’re building as you build it. The problem is how to make the best use of the additional learning that you pick up as you go.