Why overplanning makes projects fail? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why overplanning makes projects fail?

#31

Post by goalieca » Fri, Dec 06, 2024, 12:45 PM UTC

steveBK123 wrote: post #6

Serendipity is real and hugely important to innovation. That said, I've worked exactly 0 jobs that had too much planning in 20 YOE. However I worked lots of jobs with over-measuring. Constant check-ins, syncs, status meetings, team wide weeklies, etc. Measuring every step we take before we take the next one, but no vision as to wear this journey is supposed to actually lead. This presents its own danger, and Big Agil…

Over-planning often comes from a place of management wanting observability and predictability. They want to be in control and know all the risks.

This ends up inversing all of the agile Manifesto.

* Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

* Working software over comprehensive documentation

* Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

* Responding to change over following a plan

Re: Why overplanning makes projects fail?

#32

Post by slightwinder » Fri, Dec 06, 2024, 3:00 PM UTC

It's basically the difference between top-down and bottom-up. For good planning, you need to have a good knowledge about your domain, and lay out all the routes and solutions, and then just execute them. But new greatness usually comes from the unexpored, dark corners of your knowledge-map, so it's by definition kinda impossible to plan for greatness and success. Though, you can plan for raising the chances of finding success, but this is a different domain of planning, so it's not something anyone can do just because they can plan other types of projects. And let's not forget that humans are very depending on mindset and energy, to manage their limited mental abilities. Executing one type of plan will naturally prevent you from doing other things.

Re: Why overplanning makes projects fail?

#33

Post by steveBK123 » Fri, Dec 06, 2024, 5:42 PM UTC

goalieca wrote: post #31

steveBK123 wrote: post #6

Serendipity is real and hugely important to innovation. That said, I've worked exactly 0 jobs that had too much planning in 20 YOE. However I worked lots of jobs with over-measuring. Constant check-ins, syncs, status meetings, team wide weeklies, etc. Measuring every step we take before we take the next one, but no vision as to wear this journey is supposed to actually lead. This presents its own danger, and Big Agil…

Over-planning often comes from a place of management wanting observability and predictability. They want to be in control and know all the risks. This ends up inversing all of the agile Manifesto. * Individuals and interactions over processes and tools * Working software over comprehensive documentation * Customer collaboration over contract negotiation * Responding to change over following a plan

* Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

This is a bad assumption for the agile premise in many large non tech orgs. Many cases internal tech tools just do not have users with this mindset.

Here’s what I wanted, why isn’t it already this way, go fix it, stop showing me stuff that isn’t done yet.

Or the other flavor where every touch point changes their feature of the week such that you are always behind what they actually want.

It’s entirely possibly to iterate such that no one is happy with delivery.