Why planning is not *always* a bad thing
Each context calls for its specific solution
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I have recently moved to another project. This time I am not a Scrum Master anymore. Instead I take part in a team of Agile coaches. Our main mission is to help the whole product to get planning right:
- All teams giving visibility on their individual backlogs and their rate of progress, and in a way which can be aggregated across all teams
- Building a product-wide planning that is both realistic and useful, enabling proper decision taking
- Building trust between teams and management
- Management giving clear directions and trusting the teams to do the right things
- Maximizing stuff in the hands of the users over maximizing ressource utilization
- And so on…
So… I know it looked like I was bashing Scrum because it revolved mainly around planning. And now I’m saying that planning is a good thing?
Hey, I never said that planning is a bad thing. I said that you’re better off without it… when your organization is mature enough.
Right now, the biggest concern we will help to solve is the lack of trust between management and teams. Proper planning will be crucial there as it will allow management to prioritize subjects without disrupting the teams.
Putting an emphasis on planning is a necessary evil when the organization is not yet ready to switch to a pull-based mindset.
So, to anyone who will ask me how the teams should organize on this specific project in this specific context, I will answer without hesitation:
Use Scrum and follow it by the book. Get back to me when Scrum is properly implemented in the teams.
I still love Scrum!
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