Think Slow, Act Fast
Thinking slow and acting fast is the single most important practice to succeed with big and complex projects. This is the conclusion of Bent Flybjerg and Dan Gardner in their book How Big Things Get Done. The authors have collected the data from big projects for decades, have analysed it and have advised big projects. Example projects include the Guggenheim Bilbao museum, the Sydney Opera, the Empire State Building, airports, nuclear power plants, tunnels, high-speed railways and IT projects.
“Think fast, act slow” […] is a hallmark of failed projects. Successful projects, by contrast, tend to follow the opposite pattern and advance quickly to the finish line.
Bent Flybjerg and Dan Gardner, How Big Things Get Done, p. XIII
Does that sound familiar? I bet it does. Companies rush project teams right into coding and make them skip thinking, because otherwise most of the team members would sit around twiddling their thumbs. Agile hardliners despise activities like planning, architecture and risk analysis, because any non-coding activities are a waste of time and eliminating waste is one of the foremost goals of Agile.