Make Planning Your Super Power

There’s a famous quote we all learn in Middle or High School that goes something like, “If you fail to plan, then plan to fail.” I think it was Ben Franklin or one of the other Founding Fathers who said it.

With the global (and some would say insidious) spread of Agile in the last 15 to 20 years, CPTOs have largely abandoned this fundamental concept in their zeal to embrace hyper-flexibility.

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But what has this rabid enthusiasm for not planning brought Product & Technology Leaders?

• Significant misses in terms of business value generation
• Cost overruns
• Disrupted teams, RIFS, and a multitude of people problems
• Product scope mismatches
• Product Market mis-fit
• Time-based goals not met
• Embarrassment & sadness

That doesn’t mean Agile is bad. It just means most leaders have completely thrown out planning in large part because of it. And this has done them, their teams, and their businesses a great disservice.

Just look at what 90% of Product Teams want these days: minimal roadmap commitments / no deadlines, no real scope adherence, massive cost-flexibility, and so on.

Most Product & Engineering teams don’t like to plan, and Agile is the perfect excuse for them to avoid doing it (to their detriment).

Here’s the approach under-performing Product & Engineering Teams typically take when it comes to planning on delivering major initiatives:

1. They don’t develop even a simple, high-level plan
2. If they do have a plan, they frequently ignore the plan and instead get bogged down with side issues
3. They don’t take the time to revise their plan on a periodic basis
4. When reporting on initiatives they don’t leverage the plan and instead provide updates using some other “source of truth”
5. Similar to #3, they don’t factor in changes to milestones or major dependencies quickly enough, so the plan starts to break down
6. They forget or don’t know how to socialize the plan with key stakeholders
7. They make unilateral changes to the plan that impacts business outcomes without communicating with stakeholders

On the other hand, what winning teams realize is that even lightweight planning together with Agile greatly improves their chances of success and therefore the act of planning is a skill that can be a team’s superpower.

(Before you lose your mind, remember that I said LIGHT-WEIGHT planning.)

The act of planning creates some of the following benefits for your business:

Benefits of Planning

• Makes sure you align initiatives to business goals
• Allows you to optimize your resources over time
• Lets you manage / predict your risk
• Enables you to communicate with external stakeholders
• Keeps your priorities clear
• Increases stakeholder confidence in your team
• Helps map work to measurable goals
• Forces you to think about the value you’re generating
• Empowers your team because good plans create clarity

Closing Thoughts

Learning the superpower of planning and putting plans in place transforms Product & Engineering Teams from being reactive and constantly firefighting to a proactive force that efficiently navigates the complexities of product development, ensuring that they deliver value consistently. It's the compass that guides the ship through both calm and stormy seas.

Counterintuitively, planning doesn’t make a team rigid; it offers structure so that stupid flexibility is prevented, and smart flexibility is encouraged.

Of course this is the crux of the misinterpretation of Agile most Product & Technology leaders have made — that somehow planning is the opposite of agility.

In reality, Agile + clear planning is the way to win. So make sure to develop BOTH superpowers.

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