Another option I like is shortening the planning horizon. That way, you actually get to plan a lot of what otherwise count as unplanned work. If you try to pla

Another option I like is shortening the planning horizon. That way, you actually get to plan a lot of what otherwise count as unplanned work. If you try to plan the next three months ahead of time, you'll either be doing a lot of unplanned work or doggedly sticking to a plan that's out of date and ineffective. If you try to plan for the next two weeks, you actually have a small chance of accounting for what's going to happen in this period. In some industries, you have to make that two days. I think Reinertsen uses the example of searching for a submarine. The area it can be in after one sighting grows with the square of time (it's a circle whose radius is determined by speed.) If you haven't found it within a few hours of sighting, you might as well give up because by that time the search area expands faster than you can conduct a search. Planning is similar.