How is planning an XP project different from planning a traditional software project?
Martin: Answering this will require me to make three points: • First is the simplicity of the plan—we don’t think a plan should require you to be a guru with some complex project-management software. • Second [is] the fact that the detailed planning is done by the people who are going to do the work. • Third, plans are not predictions of the future—just your current estimate of how things will turn out. Such plans are useful, but they need to be changed when circumstances change. Otherwise, you end up in situations where plans and reality are in disagreement, and then the plan is less than helpful. Kent: We leave the plans on obviously worthless bits of paper to remind everyone that the plans are not the point; the act of planning is what creates the value. Contrast that with a recent Microsoft Project ad where a guy sits alone in a darkened room in front of a bank of huge monitors displaying fancy charts. Their tag line is “Excellent.” I would change it to “Doomed.” Planning isn’t abo
