One of my favorite quotes is from Dwight Eisenhower; he said "plans are useless but planning is indispensable". Being the good project manager, I used to produce detailed Gantt charts using MS Project until I realized that the project never turned out the way I planned it. Now I know that they almost never will.
Creating the initial project plan is an important process to capture all the tasks required, the ideal order in which they should be done, and most importantly, to identify dependencies. However, what's captured in the initial project plan and how things happen in reality are often quite different. As President Dwight Eisenhower stated, "Plans are useless but planning is indispensable".
The purpose of the plan is to know what you are deviating from when you have to make a change. Change is inevitable, there's no point in fighting it. The best thing to do is simply accept it and work out how best to manage it. That doesn't mean you let the...