Planning is the thinking time you get for free before all the expensive stuff starts
This is all planning. Purpose is planning and People is planning. We’re all familiar with planning. Why call it out separately? Because it’s the thinking time you get for free, before that thinking time becomes a lot more expensive.
The hard work being done in the Purpose and People domains is a fantastic foundation, but it can lure teams into mentally checking off the ‘Planning’ domain, treating it like a tick box you complete before the ‘real work’ begins.
That is a mistake. Once your vendor is engaged and the clock is running, the dynamic shifts. Their time costs money and the momentum of delivery is real. The space to step back and plan gets smaller with every passing week.
The cracks that start to appear are predictable, and the gap that develops is largely preventable and almost always due to a lack of preparation, not a lack of intent. Typical examples include:
Kick-offs treated as formalities rather than the precious moment where ways of working get established. Nothing is removed from the existing workload, despite people already being at capacity. Vendor delivery models agreed without considering internal capability. Testing and migration strategies assumed rather than designed. A programme spanning bar on a Gantt chart that just says, ‘Change Management’. No definition of done for tech implementation, and absolutely no plan at all for after ‘Go Live’.
These aren't unusual gaps or one-off examples. They're the ones we see most often.
Good project management will get you new technology, delivered well and on time. Agile done well will get you the same. But neither of these will transform your business. Without a genuine shift in how people work, not just what tools they use, the old ways of working will creep back in, and nothing will change.
I've worked with organisations on both sides of this moment. The ones who had planned effectively moved faster, made better decisions, and got more from their technology partner. The ones who hadn’t spent the first weeks, sometimes months, catching up on conversations and scrambling to make decisions that they should have taken charge of before anyone else was in the room.
We've put together a practical Readiness Guide that walks through Planning and five other focus areas that determine whether you're delivering a technology project or actually transforming your business. It's free and it might help you out if you’re stuck.