SCM Planning

Identification is a critical step of management. It is also of critical concern that the achievements of this step may be relied upon. A common strategy is thus to freeze these results.

This is however paradoxical, and often ill-advised.

Paradoxical, because the goal of SCM is to increase our control over what we do, not to interfere with it. We don't need any SCM to control immutable and universal truths.

Ill-advised because it typically results into loss of control, through breaking the requirement for openness of sharing. Freezing typically leads to radical rejection due to inflexible constraints, or to underground work.

How to identify the danger? Be wary about concepts of freezing, planning, role, definition...

What to do then? Of course planning is a good idea. We must only

• Refrain from giving excessive confidence to the plans and especially believing they will not change. Let's be optimistic: we typically grow wiser with time. We must thus identify the various goals and assumptions as normal configuration items, track their dependencies, and prepare to deal with their evolution.
• Avoid making planning a bureaucratic pre-requisite, and especially avoid spending excessive effort into planning.

The main focus in planning should be to check our past experience, in order to avoid known mistakes.