Succeeding with Agile

Chapter 15. Planning

“We’re agile; we don’t plan” and “We’ll be done when we’re done” were common statements in the early years following the publication of the Agile Manifesto. I suspect that many people on some of the early agile teams that took this stance knew that they were giving up something valuable when they threw planning out the window. But, theirs was a natural reaction to the prior cultures in which they’d worked. Too many developers hated planning because the plan had never been of any personal benefit to them. Instead, plans were often weapons used against the developers: “You said you’d be done by June; it’s June. Make it happen.”

As inappropriate as it was for some organizations to use plans as weapons, it was equally inappropriate ...