Keep your plans agile and objectives personal

Your project plans need to be detailed for the near term so that everyone knows:

• What they are working on,
• What their accountability is for the deliverables and quality and
• How this fits into the greater objective.

The only thing that is certain about a long-term detailed plan is that it will be wrong. PMs can learn a lot from military strategy—a General doesn’t plan a battle in detail but depends on soldiers knowing their objectives, so they can react to events and seize opportunities.

“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.”—General George S. Patton

This was my contribution to Lessons Learned in Project Management: 140 Tips in 140 Words or Less
A compilation of project management advice put together by John Estrella  - which is available from Amazon - Kindle edition only in the UK