A while ago I was talking about the importance of preplanning your project:
“The idea about preplanning is to equip yourself in such a way that you can adapt to circumstances. That you create an start situation that is as good as you possibly can. If you go to the arctic, you take warm cloths, if you go to the tropics you pack T-shirts. If you don’t know, you pack several shirts you can wear over each other, depending on the temperature.”
Although I like this description, I need a stronger image. I need to bring across the fact that you have “preplanning” and “preplanning”.
You have The A-Team Way of preplanning. Every episode Hannibal was creating his cunning plan. It always involved welding metal plates onto a car of truck. They could handle every situation. A family in distress? The A-Team looked around in their hideout, and made use of whatever welding gear and car they happened to find.
But then again, you also have The MacGyver Way of preplanning. MacGyver just had his Swiss army knife. His solutions were not sophisticated as those of the A-Team. But they worked.
Wouldn’t that be great: A-Team against MacGyver? Try to imagine who would adapt to more diverse situations.
I wonder if people still know A-Team and MacGyver.
Do you?
Are you kidding? Of course we know about the A-Team and MacGyver!
I think they’d end up working together, so perhaps the moral of the story is that good planning and teams coupled with ingenuity win the day.
Josh Nankivel
http://www.PMStudent.com
hi Josh, yeah I guess you are right
(just loved to create a post in which i could use them pictures 
)
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I LOVE this post – very cool to use the A-Team versus Mac as an example of planning versus improvisation. Both were resourceful, but clearly the A-Team’s “I love it when a plan comes together” approach is 180 degrees away from Mac’s “figure it out when I get there” method.
Given the economic, technological and social environment we find ourselves in these days, I’m going to say the MacGyver approach is probably best suited for project leaders these days…
I agree, Dan. And the more I think about it, our Swiss Knife of Project Leadership is our own personality, reputation, communication skillset and emotional intelligence. No more, no less.
Bas,
Cool analogy, and it’s a tough call. I think you have to go with the A Team though, they managed to create outcomes that are far greater than they could have achieved as individuals, I mean they were all pretty flawed characters in their own way, but they got it done.
Or is it that the A Team most resemble waterfall planning and MacGyver better reflects agile? So both have their place.
Simon
Hey Simon, every one can take from the analogy just what he wants
For me it was an illustration that it easy to come up with a plan and solution if you have all you need conveniently located in your environment, but true resilience is when you can use whatever is in the environment and use it to your advantage. But that was just my take away 
Very nice post. I was a great fan of both series, so you brought me a deep nostalgic mood in a monday morning…
In my opinion we can’t just go to a unique aproach in our projects. I mean, you always have to preplan the best you can, but you don’t have to follow this plan blindly. Even in Agile projects you have a plan! You just don’t have your product requirements defined, but at least you have a plan on how to define them.
But just having a plan isn’t enough. A project manager that don’t have a good swiss knife and don’t know how to use it at the proper moment is fated to fail.
Hey Renato, what I like is that both series are globally known and provide a sentiment around the 80s. Brazil and Netherlands, looking at the same series