The Agile Approach to Planning

In the traditional approach, the plan is used as a support tool to adequately monitor the project’s progress. In the field of agile projects, such as Scrum, the plan is developed according to the business objectives, thus prioritizing tasks that provide greater value. Since the environment is highly dynamic, planning must adapt to the day-to-day running of the project.

The Scrum team (Product Owner, Scrum Master and Development team) is self-managing, carries out the planning, assigns responsibilities, and estimates efforts. In contrast to the traditional approach –where the customer is only considered during the initial and final stage of the project–, the customer is included in each sprint to prioritize tasks and focus on the project’s needs. This framework reduces significantly the need to make changes that affect the final product.

The agile approach considers the empirical control of product building a basis, and it assumes that each small advanced step will provide sufficient knowledge to take the next step. Whereas, the traditional approach assumes that it is possible to predict and detail in the long term what will happen in the future and have control over all possible variables.