Lot’s to think about in this article on, of all things, the emergence of agile development methods. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to apply some of these ideas – build process to embrace change, refactoring – to business planning. No great breakthroughs yet, but i do believe there’s a germ in here somewhere. The strategy and planning model we’re following now – essentially the waterfall method: plan for 8 months, execute for 12, start over again – is broken. The institutional reasons for planning like this – tv production cycles, product development cycles, budgeting, – have all gotten faster and more iterative, so why hasn’t our business planning cycles? Gotta keep thinking about this and looking for alternatives to the waterfall method. Anyone out there have better ideas?
Jim Cuene 
I think the biggest barriers are that people are afraid of change, don’t know how to change, or don’t understand why they should change. I have spent almost my entire career on software development using a waterfall methodology but I see the tide turning. At my last 2 companies, I have been apart of moving away from waterfall to Scrum. Once everyone understands the benefits and knows how to work a little differently, the teams have actually liked it better. It is much easier to feel and see results with Agile than Waterfall. The challenge is getting people to change.