An Overabundance of Planning

“The minimum you can get away with is always far less than you think you need.”

~ @FlowchainSensei

A Common Objection

“We’d be inundated if we attended to even a fraction of all the needs of all the Folks that Matter” is one common objection I regularly hear to the Antimatter Principle.

And yet, in most software development projects, the team is inundated with things to do, based on “the Plan” – regardless of whether that’s a big up-front plan, or an incremental plan (running backlog) assembled by degrees over time. A mountain of work (features, tasks, etc.) stretching out to the misty blue horizon, and back to the dawn of (project) time.

Research (see, for example, Capers Jones’ book “Assessment and Control of Software Risks”) highlights that much of what gets planned, and thus gets done, is pointless and proves unnecessary when (finally) made available to users. This reality is also reflected in the now highly controversial series of CHAOS reports from the Standish Group.

Specious

So, I regard the aforementioned objection as specious. Not intentionally so, most often. But specious never the less.

For me, “Attending to Folks Needs” means doing the least (responsibly) possible, and then seeing if the need (or a need) of the folks in question has been met. Most often those need(s) will not have been entirely met – and maybe not even partially – but the team then has the option to have another go – based on some solid information.

This approach has at least two benefits:

• The person (customer, user, etc.) in question will feel that they matter, that their opinion counts, and that the team is focussed on them as a human being.
• The team will have solid information upon which to validate or invalidate their earlier guesses (and yes, they will always be guesses until so validated).

At some point, it’s likely all the critical needs of all the Folks That Matter will have been met. And that point will like have arrived much earlier that with more traditional approaches. And with reduced costs and effort.

– Bob

Afterword

Some readers may argue that the above approach looks a lot like Agile. In practice (sic) I see enough differences to reject that comparison. For a deeper insight into why, may I invite you to consider #NoSoftware.