Imposter tip: don’t get attached to your plans, they’re going to change anyway

We all know that planning is essential, otherwise we won’t be able to do anything: define schedules, commit, sync teamwork, allocate money, resources, content… and yet we also know that 90% of projects are late anyway.

There are tons of planning approaches out there, and mine is no different from most: eventually I lay out the project goals, the tasks, the resources, the risks, the buffers for the unknown — and build some kind of a plan. The difference between most people plans and mine is this:?I already know that the plan isn’t going to happen anyway, so it’s just an estimate & I don’t get emotionally attached to any of it.

I also don’t invest too much time & effort in building the plan. When you’ve spent many years planning, you basically can do it with your eyes closed.?If I get into too much details, I’m doing the wrong thing, because I’m diving into planning the things I cannot control.

This could sound like I’m being irresponsible, and here’s why that’s not true:?instead of the plan, I spend time & effort thinking about my input factors & my true goals. They are the things I actually need to monitor & control, not the plan itself.

For example, I do really get to know my work estimates, my team's resources I need available, critical integration points & dependencies between teams, external resources. Why? Well, because normally, if none of these things change, I should be fine reaching the goals I’ve set.

I have a really good team & I know them well, so if our estimates were correct, and if none of my people get sick or sucked into unexpected higher priority activities, and if other teams are more or less on track, and if we get all the resources we were promised — there’s no reason the original plan won’t be executed. I do try to make sure the whole team understands the goals, and then,?as long as my input factors are stable & the goals are clear, I’m calm & confident.

Newton’s law #1: A body continues in its state of rest, or in uniform motion in a straight line, unless acted upon by a force.

But this almost never happens. People do get sick unexpectedly, we do run into technical difficulties that make original estimates irrelevant, we do get urgent bug fixes, external resources get re-prioritized & the same happens to other teams we depend on. Now, these are my true alarms.?When input factors change, I know that at that very moment my original plan is cancelled, and I need a new one.

Very mportant: no, I don’t need to adjust my old plan! The plan itself has no value & no meaning. The plan is just a derivative of the input factors & goals.

So I re-plan, in the same way as before: quickly & without too much details, and I do invest into getting to know my new & updated input factors & I keep my goals in mind all the time.

That’s it. I repeat this as many times as needed, even every day if it so happens. It’s not complicated, because all I ever do is build a high-level draft of a plan with clear goals & clear inputs, so for any decision I make my motivation is very simple & logical, and it’s never looking back, it always looking forward: how do I get from here, wherever I am, to the place I need to be.