Project Planning is Boring and Other Excuses

So much has been written about planning,  so, to kick this blog off, we  thought we’d say something about not planning, or rather about why so many people don’t plan enough.  Here are a few of the top excuses we’ve heard or observed for “not planning”:

1. “Planning is boring“, and therefore people don’t do it, or don’t do it well;
2. People think they don’t have time to create a plan: “how do I have time to create a plan? I’m already behind with the actual work!”
3. “Why plan when things are going to change anyway?”
4. “The work is unstructured / unclear – we’ll figure it out as we go along.”
5. People lack experience with project planning  and they don’t know where to start (OK -  they won’t tell you this, but it’s a factor…)
6. Planning skills are generally learnt through osmosis and mentoring from more senior managers, who are time constrained and therefore the people who need to plan well are on their own and aren’t developing the skills fast enough…

Some of us know (generally as a result of painful experience) that some level of  planning is essential, but many people still fight against it and trot out the above excuses (and more).   Perhaps we need to remember that planning / project planning is not seen as the most, err, exciting activity in the world and that there are plenty of people who need to be persuaded of its value.  Perhaps they need to realise that project planning need not be done in mind-numbing detail, perhaps they need to fail first and then taste the benefits of good planning before they’ll come over from “the dark side”….   

One way or another, many people still need to be sold the benefits of planning …. and that is something we’ll return to in a later post.