Agile planning

Tom Breur

9 October 2016

One of the misconceptions about Agile is that “delivering value early” implies that developers grab a Story, and start hacking away. Agile practitioners do favor planning, even though their planning looks so much different from what we were used to in Waterfall projects. Not just Sprint or iteration planning, but also careful consideration of design choices, and how features might interact.

Where Agile planning is hugely different from Waterfall planning, is that you avoid writing documentation as much as possible, unless it is relevant for our day-to-day work or has value over and beyond the finished product. Until then, we prefer to rely on face-to-face communication. Planning and documentation that becomes obsolete as soon as the product is finished is sheer waste. The Boy scouts got it right. Their motto is: “be prepared”, not “document your plans”...