The 10 Commandments of Agile Planning
Agile planning is a subject that can cause a disproportionate amount of noise, frustration and misunderstanding across agile projects and programmes, departments and companies. Let's start at the beginning by quoting part of the Agile Manifesto: "...through this work we have come to value: ...Responding to change over following a plan. That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more." So, first of all there is value in following a plan, but we value responding to change more. The problem we are dealing with exists at a deeply engrained cultural and organisational level, and that is corporate governance. Most corporations run on an annual planning basis steming from accounting and investment cycles. Quarterly updates are expected against this plan and any deviation from this forecast (whether positive or negative) has an immediate impact on the share price, investor confidence and ultimately the well-being of the company. This f...