Agile development methods are well suited to plan and execute near term releases¹. Those methods help us plan and steer a release over several iterations to reach completion with a good level of accuracy and repeatability. The rapid successive iterations that lead us there are akin to fast twitch muscles. They give you speed and tire quickly.

However, there are instances when the time horizon needs to be further out than the current cycle. The need to create a budget, synchronize a roadmap with a partner or determine future hiring needs, make it necessary to have an effective mechanism for long term planning. We need slow twitch engineering muscles that are good for endurance and can work over long period of time.