

No, 37Signals, Planning Is Not What You Think - BerislavLopac
http://timberry.bplans.com/2009/06/no-37signals-planning-is-not-what-you-think.html

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dpcan
37Signals writes the way they do exactly for this reason. So other people will
retaliate and reference them. They make everyone else look like they are just
playing catch-up with 37Signals which makes them a constant leader by default.
You have to hand it to them for this bit of brilliance.

However, I don't doubt that they are "planning" on writing another post next
week that looks at a common business practice from the completely opposite
direction. Then a thousand bloggers will write about how wrong they are.

~~~
ludwig
Nicely deconstructed. They're definitely using SEO on a deeper level.

~~~
wmeredith
That's not SEO (Search Engine Optimization). That's SEM (Search Engine
Marketing) aka link-building/trolling/link-baiting/viral marketing... whatever
you want to call it, it's about putting compelling content on your site that
gets passed along on its own merits attracting links.

SEO is done on-site and is a process of organizing your information
architecture so it is search-engine-friendly, and then creating content that
is relevant to your target market. That way you can get indexed for the terms
you want, so that you appear on SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) exposing
you to your target market at their time of need.

Once that's done, SEM begins which is about attracting off site links that get
you ranked high on those SERPs so you get traffic. (There's another side of
SEM that's about PPC.)

SEO and SEM go hand-in-hand, but they are still two different things. (Not
being snarky, just pointing something out. I'm an online marketer and client
education is the biggest challenge of my field.)

~~~
webwright
That's a semantic quibble which I don't think adds a ton to the conversation.
Besides that, it might just be WRONG. Just about every SEO professional I know
would include copywriting, linkbait AND markup under the umbrella of SEO.

From Wikipedia ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_marketing> )

"Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks
to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result
pages (SERPs) through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and
paid inclusion.[1]. The industry peak body Search Engine Marketing
Professional Organization (SEMPO), also includes search engine optimization
(SEO) within its reporting, but SEO is a separate discipline with most
sources, including the New York Times defining SEM as 'the practice of buying
paid search listings'.[2][3]"

<http://is.gd/16x87> (GoogleFight! ;-) )

[http://www.seomoz.org/article/beginners-guide-to-search-
engi...](http://www.seomoz.org/article/beginners-guide-to-search-engine-
optimization) (intro to SEO article which talks about linkbait).

Note: Not being snarky. I've been an online marketer and spoken on SEO. I
think client education is important-- but we should focus on what's important
and not the subtleties of acronyms.

~~~
wmeredith
My clients are usually more apt to talk about subtleties of acronyms than I.
I'm glad you fought back a little though, you have a great point. I'd prefer
to take the term SEO out back and have it shot, personally. I'm a bigger fan
of findability, a la <http://www.alistapart.com/articles/findabilityorphan/>

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reidman
This article, and the last paragraph in particular, strike me as another
disingenuous snowball fight. Except with semantics instead of snowballs.

It seems pretty obvious that 37signals, when talking about 'plans', refers to
the massive business plans which are the hallmark of people who don't have a
chance of seeing them through.

But this is really just a debate between a guy who happens to sell business
plans and a bunch of guys who happen to sell un-business-plans, soooo...

~~~
koepked
_But this is really just a debate between a guy who happens to sell business
plans and a bunch of guys who happen to sell un-business-plans, soooo..._

It's better than that, this is a debate between a guy who happens to sell the
same business plan that 37Signals gives away:

[http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/1599181908/187-6998830-4936328?...](http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/1599181908/187-6998830-4936328?SubscriptionId=0525E2PQ81DD7ZTWTK82)

~~~
cubicle67
It looks like you're right, and that it's the classic case of two people
arguing about the same thing. Here's a quote from the book linked to above

" ... In The Plan-as-You-Go Business Plan, Tim Berry makes these points much
more eloquently than I ever could. Tim argues that the planning process (along
with regular reviews) is so important that business owners just need to get
started somewhere, anywhere, and continue to build your plan as your needs
change. This is 180 degrees different from the classical "big bang" approach
to business planning where we work for months at a time developing a huge
document before we ever get started working on the business."

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tpinto
I'm not even reading a post that starts with "37Signals, a great Web app for
project management". That just shows that the guy doesn't even know what is he
talking about.

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ccc3
The point that seems to completely elude 37signals is that not every industry
operates the same way as web design and development. They've taken their very
narrow range of experience and told us that it applies to all projects in
every industry (he cites Denver International Airport and the Big Dig in his
post). This is such an outlandish notion that it becomes difficult to take
them seriously at all.

As an example, I work as a design engineer in the R&D wing of an automotive
supplier. If we were to just start building products on a hunch, without any
market research or project planning, we could easily spend hundreds of
thousands of dollars or more before we knew if we were headed in the right
direction.

Ultimately planning is imperfect and comes at a cost (time and resources), but
that needs to be compared to the cost of no planning at all. In the web app
business the cost of trying a new idea may be next to nothing, so trial and
error becomes the most expedient method. In my industry, we're aware that our
plans are imperfect, but if they allow us to cut a few very expensive
iterations out of the development process then they're worth it.

~~~
rubinelli
Isn't the automotive industry the MBA textbook example of how less planning,
nimbler processes, continuous improvement, and faster innovation allowed
underdogs to completely reverse the market?

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Tamerlin
No, it's because they're constantly evaluating and updating their plan to
adapt to obstacles rather than attempting to ignore obstacles and proceed
obstinately along the same route that they had in mind at the beginning.

If anything they're doing MORE planning, because whenever something gets in
their way, they have to put some effort into coming up with a new plan or
changing their existing plan.

~~~
GHFigs
That's process, not planning.

~~~
Tamerlin
I assert that it is both.

------
jraines
_Plans are nothing; planning is everything._

Gen. Dwight Eisenhower

~~~
BerislavLopac
I prefer this version:

'Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential' \-- Winston
Churchill

~~~
kjhughes
"A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next
week." -- George Patton

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axod
>> "That messy planning stage that delays things and prevents you from getting
real is, in large part, a waste of time."

Does anyone else find "getting real" a horrible horrible term that sounds like
old people trying to be hip, and completely failing? Or is it just me?

~~~
webwright
Right up there with "lean startups" for me. Or the 5-whys. Or six-sigma.

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tallanvor
The 37Signals people do say some silly things. Who doesn't, though?

It's one thing to argue against trying to nail down all the details far in
advance, but whether you're running a business, or even, as Tim suggests,
heading out on a trip, you're going to need some sort of a plan.

~~~
uggedal
Some of the best trips I've had did not include a plan. Order a plain ticket,
jump on the plane, arrive at the destination, and take it from there.

~~~
michael_dorfman
Yeah, but the ticket had a destination, right? And you bought the ticket in
advance, right? And you knew when to show up at the airport, right? You had
your passport with, and had enough cash to cover your stay, and a return trip,
right?

You did a lot more planning than you seem to think.

~~~
jamesbritt
"You did a lot more planning than you seem to think."

Excellent observation.

People do more planning than they might think, so the question is, how
deliberate do you want those plans to be?

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datums
37signals mentioned 14 times in this post, it worked. Lots of noise. Filter
it.

