Plans just don’t work on the battlefield

Wait, wait, wait before you start reading this, I don’t refer to real battlefields I will talk about software development, leadership in teams, and Agile methodologies, if you are here looking for some war stuff please search for another post.

Have you ever felt that everything you planned was just a waste of time because as soon as you start executing, new knowledge appears, some changes are requested or even the priorities change? If you answer yes to this is because plans don’t work on the battlefield!

If you’re thinking that I’m a hater of plans, well nope, I like plannings but not huge ones, for example in Scrum plannings are for one month or less, this is enough time to reduce risks, also something used in Scrum that helps to avoid huge plannings is having a 15-minutes daily plan also known as daily scrum where the team plan for the day on how to get one step closer to achieve the goals.

And that’s the actual hearth of this article, the only thing that we need to understand regarding plannings are that we need to focus on three main things:

North Star: What are your team's priorities a shared vision and the things we need to be one step closer.

Risks: Which things we can identify that could stop us from achieving our goals.

Commitment: What things can we commit to achieve in the timeframe of our plan.

If we accomplish these three things then our plan will be good, for now, because when we get to the battlefield the plan will stop working, sooner or later, sorry I talked beautiful in this last part about plannings but let’s be real about this the important thing is never how we plan, the important thing is how we adapt to all the changes!

This was a small piece of content, but I want you to keep in mind this: “Always expect some changes and don’t be afraid of changing the plan”.