Plans, Planning and Speculation - There's Time for Everything

It has been funny to me from the very beginning that agile methods are often claimed to lack the planning activity while the opposite holds. The difference lies in the fact that planning for the unknown becomes speculation. Prolonged speculation period brings very little added value and is thus kept to minimum in agile projects until better knowledge is achieved by active learning. Simon Baker in AGILE IN ACTION reminded about the two great early agilists believing in planning instead of plans.