Introducing WAgile—your new balance between confidence and uncertainty

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Forget the obsession with planning methodologies—there are only two things you need to consider to get the job done.

What you already know, and what you need to learn.

A plan is a tool that helps a team address a goal. A good plan makes work easier by:

  1. Clarifying what matters (and what doesn’t) to achieve the goal.

  2. Answering some (eventually most) questions.

  3. Identifying knowledge yet to be acquired.

  4. Anticipating the unforeseen.

If you've done a job before—if anyone's done the job before—you have a roadmap to follow. A proven approach—familiar to your team—can be followed again provided you take the time to consider what's different about this project and adjust your baseline. Waterfall works well here.

But if there are parts of the work that you're uncertain about, you'll need to establish what you will need to know before you can plan with confidence. Don't fret—the world is full of uncertainties. How will the market respond to your new product feature? Will that hot new system support your business strategy for the next five years?

Don't pretend to know what you don't. Simply list your big questions and plan to find the answers. Agile is great for this.

You'll end up with a WAgile plan—a waterfall framework that captures the work you understand, and some Agile bits to help you fill in the blanks.

If you don't know when you'll complete the project, focus on predicting when you'll have enough information to make that call with 90% confidence.

Then get on with it.

A litmus test for your plans

Review the plan for a complex endeavour that your business has completed:

  1. What outcomes did you define at the start of the endeavour?

  2. Did the plan include anything that was not material to achieve these outcomes?

  3. What areas of the plan were changed in the course of the work? Why did they change, and was this expected?

Now apply these lessons to a plan that you're building. Can you justify every piece of work against the objectives? What parts of the plan do you have 90% confidence in, and what parts need more information? Is that learning embedded in the plan?

You know the drill—call me Friday between 1-3pm Eastern on (647) 400 2514 and we can talk about WAgile planning. First come, first served but if I don't pick up, leave a message and I’ll call you back promptly.