„No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength.” - in original. Today, “no plan survives contact with the enemy” is the popular reconfiguration of this concept.
> Churchill said, “Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential,” while Eisenhower said, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”
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>> the key challenge is that most project management practices only ask once. The solution is to ask repeatedly: What are the estimates? What are the priorities? It is the process of planning, repeated throughout the life of the project that ultimately leads to a successful outcome.
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This was my comment on a previous discussion of project planning:
A project plan is only a point in time prediction of a project end date. It should be continuously updated as new facts are known (scope changes, additional complexity, unknown risks happen).
Obviously as you progress through your project, you predicted end date should become more and more accurate.
A project plan, though, is a prediction of the future. I've not seen anyone that can predict the future perfectly. That's not to say that you shouldn't do it, but defective project management creates a project plan on Day 0 and then tries to bend reality to meet the plan.
*Obviously all the above is caveated with reasonableness - you do try and bend reality a certain amount to meet your plan, and you try and keep to your plan as much as possible.
Am I misunderstanding the article, or is it basically just describing sprint planning?
I was set to be annoyed by the article, since it seems to me that a lot of PM practices put way more emphasis on planning to do things, versus actually doing them, but after reading it it just seemed like a slightly modified version of what most teams I have worked on do for sprint planning.
Which makes me feel like I missed something in the article. Perhaps it is geared towards PMs who don't have any experience or appreciation for "agile" methods?
The article is explaining how old school waterfall worked in practice. As another commenter noted Moltke the Elder noted that no plan survives the initial battle. What he meant is that planning has to be constantly revised. Moltke the Elder won the Franco Prussian war for the Kaiser which led to the formation of modern Germany. Agile and all of its modern variants are nothing new.
A project is not simply work leading to some outcome. At its core, it’s a specific work-management method tied to the iron triangle (constrained cost, scope, and time), which requires a set plan from the start.
This iterative method breaks the iron triangle. If the iron triangle is broken, is it a “project”?
I feel that project-management industry is diluting the meaning of “project” to encompass other kinds of work management that aren’t “project”. End result is we’re really confusing things. Cynically, this may be the PM industry trying to assert its relevance in different disciplines, to the harm of all.
We can say the same thing about “bad agile”, where a set of ceremonies is confused with agile philosophy.
I'm not quite sure what you're saying, but it seems like you're suggesting that having a flexible, non-"set" goal or plan "breaks the iron triangle". But... the iron triangle says that quality is subject to scope, cost, and time constraints. Scope is, loosely, how ambitious the project's goals are, so the inclusion of scope already implies that the iron triangle not only allows, but anticipates, flexibility in the project's goals.
That’s redefining a project well outside of how it’s generally used. Most projects only have a very general idea of scope, time, and budget before people start. For example remodeling is generally dependent on the conditions of the sub flooring etc which you don’t know before starting.
You start work like that with assumptions baked in, and you use change orders to make a formal modification to the iron triangle, otherwise the whole initiative falls apart. That’s a project.
Agile can be effective in a business as usual environment similar to what the article is concerned with. It may not meet the technical definition of a Project but it uses and benefits from many of the same processes. Is that mission creep for PMI ? Cooking dinner can be managed as a project. If PMBOK starts to get merged with ITIL then we have a problem but sharing best practice is healthy everywhere.
As for the Iron Triangle, there is a reason it consistently results in cost overruns and blown schedules -- the plan stage suffers from low visibility of future conditions and the polotics of getting funded. At the other end of the spectrum is this Agile like approach of the article where your plan floats in a two week scheduling window without a baseline and you draw targets around wherever you land. There needs to be room in the middle.
The middle part isn’t a project, though. The concept of “project” and the iron triangle are inseparable. The middle necessarily means the iron triangle isn’t being used.
its not so clear cut. they both tackle the "plans are useless" but the "planning is indispensable" is implicit as anything you do in response to a challenging situation is a plan
Or that plans are only useful when they fail and are adjusted.
The first time I read this I could not understand it. It makes a lot of sense now seeing how plan execution is where project management really happens.
Shot in the dark here, but I've got a friend who is breaking into the project management industry. Has a CAPM certificate from PMI and around a year of experience in a Project Management (PjM) role. If anyone is/knows a successful PjM and can email me (kayce at basqu dot es) the help would be much appreciated. Or anyone that has an entry-level PjM role available. Many thanks.
