Your project plan was out of date before you finished writing it.
That used to scare me. Now it’s how I build.
You can spend three weeks writing the perfect plan. Or you can spend those three weeks shipping something real.
I pick shipping.
Planning isn’t worthless. The returns just fall off a cliff.
The first hour of thinking saves you weeks. The fortieth just makes the document longer and the deadline further away.
Somewhere in between, planning quietly turns into procrastination wearing a suit.
With AI moving this fast, a detailed plan is just a guess with a Gantt chart.
Lock a roadmap against a moving target and you don’t get certainty. You get a confident map of the wrong terrain.
So we don’t start with the plan. We start with the user story.
What does someone need to do? Build the smallest thing that does it. Put it in front of real people. Learn. Repeat.
Every loop pays you back in something a document never can. Evidence.
A plan tells you what you hoped would happen. An MVP tells you what actually does.
This isn’t a licence to be reckless. Direction still matters, especially the safety calls you can’t walk back.
But the route there is discovered, not decreed.
Stop planning the perfect thing.
Ship the small thing and let it tell you the truth.
Dr Ellen Ceklic · AI Leadership & Strategy Consultant