There has been lots of buzz in the project management space lately about the benefits of planning. Planning is one of the Five Immutable Principles of project success. Planning tells us, in units of measure meaningful to the decision makers, what Done looks like.
No Plan? You can't know what Done looks like, until time and money runs out.
Plans are strategies for success. Strategies are hypotheses. Hypotheses needed tests to verify their correctness. Tests are working products, models, feedback - some tangible evidence that the work produces the desired outcomes.
And as always, planning and the resulting plans are estimates of the desired outcomes and the path to get there. With these estimates, the steps needed to reach the desired outcomes can be assessed to make corrective actions.
