This topic may not seem as exciting as leadership and EI, however, it is still important. The industrial-worker based plan-driven mindset and principles are ingrained in most organizations procedures and organizational structures. It is not going away anytime soon. Some start-ups are created with structures that deliberately avoid it, a very small number of existing organizations are successfully able to migrate away from it. However, the vast majority of companies in existence today employ plan-driven inspired policies and practices.
It is not necessary to like them or endorse plan-driven approaches, but it is necessary to fully understand them, be able to talk-the-talk using all the correct terms and also undertake them correctly. In fact, to be credible at suggesting alternative approaches we need to be experts at these traditional, plan-driven methods. Only when we clearly know more about a subject, its background and application, can we make compelling arguments to augment it with something else and eventually move away from it.
Plan-driven approaches are not broken or invalidated in today’s world of mostly knowledge-worker and learning-worker projects. They still work, it is just that they are likely not the most appropriate methods or controls to use when faced with high rates of change, complexity and the need to foster collaboration between diverse groups of subject matter experts.
However, few projects are purely knowledge-work or learner-work from start to finish in all activities. Often early project feasibility and funding request stages are largely procedural and analytical. Final roll-out and training work of a project to the, say, the 10th group of customers may be largely routine and readily duplicated with little scope for complexity or need for adaptation.
As such plan-driven approaches are still relevant in many situations. It is probably not wise to base project execution of a modern, complex project around them, but they are valid and valuable. This book will explain what you need to know, just not down to a step-by-step, how-to level. It will also show you how to integrate plan-driven tools and techniques with agile approaches in ways that do not invalidate the agile values or principles.