Planning Smarter: Creating Blueprint-Quality Software Specifications

2.4. Recognizing a Bad Plan

We have been discussing the reality that the cornerstone documents of project planning—the Vision Document and Functional Specification—often fail to produce the benefits that one might hope to gain, relative to the cost incurred.

By recognizing the typical planning problems that plague projects, you can better redirect those projects and more readily avoid those mistakes in your own planning. And there is no lack of bad plans out there to be found. It is easy to recognize bad plans by looking for some telltale indicators.

Underplanning

First, look for signs of underplanning. If the plan is sparse, it may mean that the plan suffers from a lack of good planning. But that is not necessarily so. The best plans should ...