Some managers try to overcome the problems caused by uncertainty by planning in increasingly greater detail. This is the impulse that leads to detailed requirements and specification documents, but, as we’ve come to understand, this tactic rarely works in software. It turns out that this problem—the way our plans are disrupted by uncertainty, and the fallacy of responding with ever-more-detailed plans—is something that military commanders have understood for hundreds (if not thousands) of years. They’ve developed a system of military leadership called mission command, an alternative to rigid
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