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I think this hits the most interesting point. Personally I agree with the article that the best way to develop efficiently is to continually take small steps in the right direction and reevaluate where you are after each one - you save a lot of time by not planning things you don't need that way and it's much easier to maintain focus. But against that, people need estimates for how long projects will take and how much they will cost, and that demands a plan.

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"you save a lot of time by not planning things you don't need that way" Yes, but on the other hand you will lose time if you do not plan those things ahead of time that you can plan ahead of time. It's much cheaper to catch ill defined requirements while planning on paper than once the constraints reach production and people start implementing features and tests based on them. Although you cannot plan _everything_ there is always _something_ you can plan - and should plan. Unless you have a spec or a plan at day 0, you do not have a documentation platform available when the shit invariably does hit the fan and you need to do the learning-organization-disco and facilitate a change to your product because some real world constraints were not known or acknowledged before hand.

I am not sure I agree with that first point, having been involved in a short project, that just became one monstrous exercise in feature creep. That was essentially taking small steps in the right direction, but it never finished.

I think it is beneficial to have a plan in certain situations.

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