I was digging into my current reading material “Testing Computer Software” by Cem Kaner and I ran through this phrase:

“A test plan is a valuable tool to the extent that it helps you manage your testing project and find bugs. Beyond that, it is a diversion of resources.”

I’d like to extend this to every plan; of course planning is important to the success of projects, but too much planning and you never get things done, this is where intelligent project managers become useful, sometimes we/they have to put books, standards and methodologies aside and only take whichever is best for our project.

Book also says that sometimes our plan is part of our product, for example, if you develop a medical product, you will (likely) have to adhere to the FDA specification and to that objective you’ll end up creating a plan to meet that specification, thus, the plan becomes part of your product. But other times such detailed documents become that “diversion of resources” cited above.

So where or when to follow standards? Kaner says, when your plan is not part of your product the criterion should be the phrase above.