This article won't make as much sense unless you've read my previous one.  I wanted to write something that would tie the notions put forth there back to my view on agile development.

First, people will say that agile development devalues planning, and thus is incompatible with my statements around the theme of "work smarter, not harder".  This is completely wrong.  The actual truth is that in agile development we plan more, not less than a traditional project approach.  The difference is that we plan at the appropriate time (not all at the begining) and within the appropriate context (details deferred as long as possible).

You see it turns out that like juggling for the first time, there are things that are not knowable at the begining of a development project.  Sometimes you can research (rely on what someone else has done and learnt) and other times you just have to do something yourself, and learn from the results.  Doing all of your planning up front (in the "planning" phase) is just ridiculous and wasteful in the majority of projects.  Instead we should focus on learning by doing, but mitigating the risks by setting up fast failures and mitigiation of failure likelihood and impact.

The other reason for the deferred detail planning is, of course, the halmark of agile development.  We know that things will change as the project progresses and we learn more.  In fact, we embrace this change as an opportunity to provide competitive advantage by making the decisions with the best, most up to date information.

I have some more ideas to share in the next few days, but I'd really like to hear what you all think about this topic first.  I know there are some strong opinions out there.