To be more accurate, only plans don’t work. I read Dushan Wegner’s interesting thought on why a plan in unnecessary. It comes of as a rebel post, but it does have very good points, at least it did stimulate my thoughts on it. Plans cannot work without identifying the problem and without skills to solve it.
I think plans don’t work in three cases
- when they are used to justify slackness elsewhere
- when the plan is built using best practices without understanding their necessity
- when the plan does not acknowledge that people are important
- when the plan is used to predict.
How many times have I tried to explain a manager that your plans cannot replace the skills of your team. Nor can they replace your process. This, I think, shoots from a deeper problem, calling people as resources. It is easy to replace a server, OS or a desktop; because they are resources which can be duplicated easily. People are not, it is never easy to replace a developer with another. Most of the plans I see assume that in case of attrition people can be replaced by just plugging in another one.
Another instance of abusing a plan is to make it elaborate only to justify the cost. The problem might not be as severe, and the solution might not be as elaborate, but the plan sure is. Problems get created to serve the plan.
I think the biggest problem with a plan that it assumes too many peripheral conditions, which are often out of our control. In a short term it is sometimes feasible to do so, but over a long term there are so many changes that the plan can be completely rooted off. It is necessary to keep the plan agile, by keeping the ends open on aspects that cannot be known in advance or that are prone to change. Sometimes backup plans work, but even they get susceptible to the changes. The best way is to keep an open mind about changing it as events happen.
A plan is useful, to convey to everyone involved what to expect from the team, and to express an idea. However, in my opinion, a fool-proof plan does not try to predict, rather it instills discipline in the team. It should not give decisions, it should guide the team on how to take decisions. And it should be built to be used by people instead of the plan using them as resources.
September 2nd, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Hi Abhijit,
thanks for picking up the thought and developing it so much further! I support your interpretation that “plans only” don’t work. Plans are okay, as long as they are guidelines, ideas of the goal and such. They have no reality of their own.
Greetings
Dushan
September 3rd, 2007 at 3:42 pm
I spent many many years making plans and then finding I was getting nowhere. Some of these were personal plans, some business, some long-range and some daily. I was setting myself up for failure each time. What I say is that on a personal level, whatever works for you should be used. I have a list of *everything* that I know needs to be done and each week I take elements of this and add it into what I need to do each week. I’ve become more selective. I’ve become more aware of how much I can do in a day - this is a big factor as plans previously really didn’t take into consideration that the reality was I was over estimating how much I could achieve in a day.
These days I use a combination of carrot and stick for myself and also for the team. If we achieve X by this date then we all do something, get something, etc etc. I also find having a “boss” helps - most freelancers don’t have bosses in the normal sense. We implemented a system with some non-executive directors who now watch over us and give us a kick if we start to fail in some area.