Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable (2005)

sounds like Clausewitz.

This was my comment on a previous discussion of project planning:

A project plan is only a point in time prediction of a project end date. It should be continuously updated as new facts are known (scope changes, additional complexity, unknown risks happen). Obviously as you progress through your project, you predicted end date should become more and more accurate.

A project plan, though, is a prediction of the future. I've not seen anyone that can predict the future perfectly. That's not to say that you shouldn't do it, but defective project management creates a project plan on Day 0 and then tries to bend reality to meet the plan.

*Obviously all the above is caveated with reasonableness - you do try and bend reality a certain amount to meet your plan, and you try and keep to your plan as much as possible.

The article is explaining how old school waterfall worked in practice. As another commenter noted Moltke the Elder noted that no plan survives the initial battle. What he meant is that planning has to be constantly revised. Moltke the Elder won the Franco Prussian war for the Kaiser which led to the formation of modern Germany. Agile and all of its modern variants are nothing new.

I'm not quite sure what you're saying, but it seems like you're suggesting that having a flexible, non-"set" goal or plan "breaks the iron triangle". But... the iron triangle says that quality is subject to scope, cost, and time constraints. Scope is, loosely, how ambitious the project's goals are, so the inclusion of scope already implies that the iron triangle not only allows, but anticipates, flexibility in the project's goals.

That’s redefining a project well outside of how it’s generally used. Most projects only have a very general idea of scope, time, and budget before people start. For example remodeling is generally dependent on the conditions of the sub flooring etc which you don’t know before starting.

Agile can be effective in a business as usual environment similar to what the article is concerned with. It may not meet the technical definition of a Project but it uses and benefits from many of the same processes. Is that mission creep for PMI ? Cooking dinner can be managed as a project. If PMBOK starts to get merged with ITIL then we have a problem but sharing best practice is healthy everywhere.

As for the Iron Triangle, there is a reason it consistently results in cost overruns and blown schedules -- the plan stage suffers from low visibility of future conditions and the polotics of getting funded. At the other end of the spectrum is this Agile like approach of the article where your plan floats in a two week scheduling window without a baseline and you draw targets around wherever you land. There needs to be room in the middle.

I like how Mike Tyson put it: "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth".

Or that plans are only useful when they fail and are adjusted.

The first time I read this I could not understand it. It makes a lot of sense now seeing how plan execution is where project management really happens.