Planning in agile development projects
Planning is so different in agile development compared to the classic development methods: Most people who never did agile development and just heard the buzz about XP think that there is no planning in agile development. They think agile development just is "sit down and hack like crazy".
On the contrary some developers I worked with on "agile projects" complain, why do we have to do all this f**in planning stuff all the time. I don't want to estimate my stories/tasks/... I want to code. Hey that's why I am a programmer and not a project manager. Just let the architects and the project managers do the planning.
How comes the views are so different? Well easy, planning is very different in agile development. In classic development processes you usually do most/all planning front up. To be able doing this, you of course need all requirmenets, all architectural desicions and a lot more front up. We agile advocates say, this is not very realistic to get done well: no one can make all important desicions that far front up. And the more complex the problem the less it is possible working this style. So we say, we decide the "last responsible moment". That does not mean we decide never or after some point of no return passed but as late as possible. Well thats actually not as easy as it sounds. So agile methods did a lot to make this work. One thing is a different approach to planning. In agile methods you have to plan much more often (compared to just front up). You plan every iteration, you plan weekly and even daily makes sense.
So going back to the introductionary critics: No, agile methods DO plan. Actually planning will be done all the time. The second objective is more complex: no I don't think there is more planning in agile development (but I don't have numbers, so that's just a gut feeling), but I it is done more often (so timewise spread about the whole project lifecycle). But think about how projects start doing them in the traditional way. There are usually weeks and often months of front up planning. That's a lot of time, even compared to weekly project meetings (you need eitherway)
And in agile projects planning is not just a job for project managers and architects. And I considers this a huge feature. I think it is a huge mistake and has very unfortunate consequences letting someone who doesn't actually do the job estimate the job (that might give another blog entry someday).
So yes, it might feel more "planning", especially for developers, but I don't think it is.
On the contrary some developers I worked with on "agile projects" complain, why do we have to do all this f**in planning stuff all the time. I don't want to estimate my stories/tasks/... I want to code. Hey that's why I am a programmer and not a project manager. Just let the architects and the project managers do the planning.
How comes the views are so different? Well easy, planning is very different in agile development. In classic development processes you usually do most/all planning front up. To be able doing this, you of course need all requirmenets, all architectural desicions and a lot more front up. We agile advocates say, this is not very realistic to get done well: no one can make all important desicions that far front up. And the more complex the problem the less it is possible working this style. So we say, we decide the "last responsible moment". That does not mean we decide never or after some point of no return passed but as late as possible. Well thats actually not as easy as it sounds. So agile methods did a lot to make this work. One thing is a different approach to planning. In agile methods you have to plan much more often (compared to just front up). You plan every iteration, you plan weekly and even daily makes sense.
So going back to the introductionary critics: No, agile methods DO plan. Actually planning will be done all the time. The second objective is more complex: no I don't think there is more planning in agile development (but I don't have numbers, so that's just a gut feeling), but I it is done more often (so timewise spread about the whole project lifecycle). But think about how projects start doing them in the traditional way. There are usually weeks and often months of front up planning. That's a lot of time, even compared to weekly project meetings (you need eitherway)
And in agile projects planning is not just a job for project managers and architects. And I considers this a huge feature. I think it is a huge mistake and has very unfortunate consequences letting someone who doesn't actually do the job estimate the job (that might give another blog entry someday).
So yes, it might feel more "planning", especially for developers, but I don't think it is.
posted by Alex at 3:48 PM
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