Lessons · Project management · predictive vs agile
Predictive or agile: plan it all first, or plan a little and show it often
A predictive approach plans the whole scope up front and measures against the plan; an agile approach delivers small usable pieces in short cycles and re-plans after each one.
Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.
What it is for
A bridge is predictive: you cannot pour half the deck and ask the town what they think. A customer app is often agile: nobody knows the right screens until people use the first ones. Picking wrong costs either a plan that is rewritten monthly or a product built to a guess.
How to think about it
Ask how well the requirements are known and how expensive change is. Well known and expensive to change: predictive. Uncertain and cheap to change: agile. Most real projects mix the two, and saying which part is which is the plan.
Worked example
Warehouse extension: requirements fixed by the building code, a change costs a demolitionPredictive. Full plan, baselines, change control.
Customer portal: nobody agrees on the screens, a wrong screen costs a weekAgile. Two-week cycles, a working piece each time, the backlog re-ordered after each review.
The portal's server room: fixed, expensive to changePredictive inside an agile project. Mixed, and written down as mixed.
Your turn
Write the question that picks the approach.
How well are the requirements known, and how expensive is ?
Solve one, graded on the server
The trap
Calling a project agile because the plan is missing. Agile has a plan; it is short, it is re-made every cycle, and it produces something usable each time. No plan is not agile, it is no plan.