---
title: "The Surprising Effects of Poor Planning in Project Management"
url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-surprising-effects-of-poor-planning-in-project-management-gymcykcdp
source_url: https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-surprising-cost-of-bad-estimates
type: article
source: "The Mountain Goat Software"
published: 2024-09-10T15:25:08.545Z
updated: 2024-12-09T12:39:39.994Z
tags: ["leadership", "agile", "project-management"]
reading_time: 7
upvotes: 17
comments: 2
language: en
---

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# The Surprising Effects of Poor Planning in Project Management

**[The Mountain Goat Software](https://daily.dev/sources/mountaingoatsoftware)** · 7 min read · 17 upvotes · 2 comments

## Summary

Poor project planning can severely impact team credibility, leading to consistent delays and unmet expectations. Credibility issues can result in stakeholders not trusting the team's estimates, which can further worsen planning and execution. Instead of padding plans, teams should focus on understanding why their plans are consistently inaccurate and adopt techniques like unpacking to improve estimates. Addressing unknown backlog and emergent requirements is also crucial for better planning and predictability.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/blog/the-surprising-cost-of-bad-estimates>

## Community discussion

Top comments from developers on daily.dev.

**@camerongould** · 0 upvotes

> > Padding doesn’t help
>
> Well what seems to be recommended later is basically “educated” padding, even then it’s more or less a guess of how much of the work is accounted for. I’ve seen many projects blow past their deadline and it was mostly because of a point made in the hyperlinked article on the 4 reasons why agile projects are delayed: the problem is more complex than originally thought. That, or emergent requirements.
>
> I think this is still a great method though, as it’s a highly reasonable solution to the difficult process of estimating a large project.

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---

Tags: [#leadership](https://daily.dev/tags/leadership), [#agile](https://daily.dev/tags/agile), [#project-management](https://daily.dev/tags/project-management)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-surprising-effects-of-poor-planning-in-project-management-gymcykcdp)