Software development organizations struggle mightily with planning their development efforts and sticking to the plan. Some Development departments fail to plan at all, other than following constantly changing, seat-of-the-pants estimates, much to the chagrin of the rest of the company that depends upon their output. Others have solid plans that they can follow and use to track their progress, and this shows in the steady stream of new capabilities and releases that result.

Still others live in the messy situation where some of the team, usually management, wants a clear plan, while some or all of the Development team resists being pinned down and made to commit.

The reason Development’s planning efforts are so important is that the rest of the company depends upon the success of such planning in order to plan their own work. Functions such as QA and Documentation (if they are separate from Development), Training, Marketing, Sales, Hosting and Production, and Customer Support all need solid assumptions upon which to build their plans. And this is where the Product Manager gets involved.

Without Development’s ability to pin down dates and expected results, Product Management can’t build reliable plans for product releases, and the entire momentum of your product is affected. So whether a Product Manager wants to or not, he or she must be involved in the planning of Development work.

Read on for ideas on how you as the Product Manager can help get your Development organization to the point where it has clear, useful, and reliable plans.