Blind Planning

So we finally pushed to try doing our development work in blocks of work that would be 6 weeks or less. We're also trying to push for the next block (yeah, I'd say iteration, but seems like a dirty word in my office place) to planned at the end of the first block. Unfortunately the project sponsors are looking for a project plan to be done and we have been unable to convince our project manager to put everything else in the next block as a place holder. This lead to our meeting this morning to attempt to plan out the remaining blocks of development. I suggested that if we were really going to do this that it might be better to actually have access to the requirement files so that we could double check details in the requirements instead of just a summary document (especially since the document we were attempting to plan from was not necessarily accurate with what it was showing since it is maintained separately). I got a flustered look and a restatement of the request.

Nice! My only hope is that the rest of the developers are also looking for coup and we just plan the next block after we get done the first one and let the project manager sort it out. Not the friendliest of approaches, but I feel unable to get our project manager to listen to any of our ideas.