If Your Up-Front Planning is Measured in Weeks, Then a Lean Startup is Going to Eat Your Lunch

Title inspired by Michael James…see below.

One of the most powerful assumptions built in to Agile methods is that we learn by doing — that our learning, our planning, our problem-solving, and ability to mitigate risk is enhanced when planning is performed inline with active development and in the context of deliberate experimentation.  Scrum, for example, is based on empirical process control theory which means that we make decisions based on what is known.

One of the most common pitfalls we see among organizations trying to “adopt” Agile is excessive pre-planning — their assumption being that we can decide by planning, learn by planning, or mitigate risk by planning.  This sometimes manifests as an anti-pattern that people call “Sprint Zero” — a signal that an organization misunderstands Agile methods fundamentally.  More importantly, a signal that the organization may incorrectly perceive Software Engineering — or any team-based work — as predictable and repetitive rather than the complex, creative endeavor that it is.

If your organization injects a “Sprint Zero” or a planning phase (that is measured in weeks rather than days or hours) ahead of the creation/development of real product, then these two posts are of interest to you:

• This YouTube clip from Mishkin Berteig.
• And this comment made in this group at LinkedIn by Michael James:

By David Sabine

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