Project managers need to reacquaint themselves with a central ingredient of success: project plans.

In IT today, project planning often resembles a Seinfeld episode in which Jerry asks Kramer, "You drew up plans for this?" Kramer replies, "No, it's all in my head."

This exchange is similar to the current state of IT project planning. With ample bravado -- and myopia -- many project managers are tempted to jump from the germ of an idea to full execution of a project in the name of efficiency, creativity and, above all, customer service. As a result, true project planning -- which involves outlining the deliverables, team training and quality management, among other steps -- gets short shrift. IT project managers often operate on the principle that the execution can be accomplished on the fly.