>>When the day came a preliminary design was presented. It was pretty good, actually. When asked for the PLAN the C++ guy said, and I quote: "modern projects aren't run like that. We don't waste time making a plan, we just do it". The PM and a few others of us told him he was crazy (in more polite words). But the owner was hearing what he wanted to hear. He fired the PM and the project leader andput Mr. C++ in their place.
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>I have written a lot of stuff without a plan, but the most stable and full-featured ones had one. I actually like the documenting/planning part of a project to some degree so I'm more inclined to add that automatically to a project I take on.
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The older I get the more important a plan is. In my inexperienced youth I often started out on a journey without a plan, because I didn't really care where I ended up. :) But, clients (usually) know where the destination is, where the starting place is but don't know how to get from the starting place to the ending place. That is what a plan is for. It is more than a page and less than a book. it allows for a better distribution of labor and predicting budgets, which then can be compared with actual results. I wonder how a consultant can submit a valid proposal and project final costs if they don't create a plan of some sort?