Do You Even Plan, Bro?

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Aint No Plannin'

I see a lot of "agile" teams and their "planning" meetings, but if you forgive me for saying so, I've not seen a planning meeting for a long time. 

Typically:

  • No plan is presented
  • No questions about the plan are surfaced
  • No revisions to a plan are made
What actually happens then? Usually, someone loads up a list of tasks, and the entire meeting is spent assigning people to the tasks.

Does that in ANY way resemble planning? What was planned, other than individual workloads? How was the plan assessed, improved, revised, or confirmed? What was, even, the plan? 

So, what I have in mind is simple.

Don't Assign

In your next planning meeting do not assign any work to any individuals. 

They can pull work as part of the sprint. They are cross-functional and self-managing, right? They are professionals you trust and respect, and have autonomy, so they can pull work.

 If you are the PO/PM, then you have an ordered backlog for them.

Show Your Plan

Put your plan up on the screen. No, really. Whatever it is you are trying to really do instead of a tasklist.

Ask Questions

What are you trying to accomplish? 
Are there risks to the timeline and the goal?
Is this goal still valuable to the company?
Are we likely to reach it with the scope we have now?
Are there better ways to accomplish our goals now that we have done some of the work?
Are the planned milestones still valid and well-placed? 
Do we have feedback from sponsors or users? 
Does it tie to any organisational goals or disruptions we should talk about?
How should we change the plan?

Fix It

Change the plan. 
Now, that task list -- is it still valid? 
Does it go too far or stop too short?
Can we sacrifice something to make progress on something else?

That's all?

Is that all we really need to do in planning? Sure. Pretty much. You might have a bit more or a bit less depending on your context and situation, but why not?

I wonder what it would do for you and your team to use your planning meeting for actual planning, instead of just having a boring task assignment meeting. Maybe it will unlock the engagement and creativity of your staff, and they'll start caring about the bigger picture if they're not blinkered to seeing only a task list.

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