Your viewpoint is 100% understandable and agreeable. I also don’t consider the tasks you mentioned as trivial. However, for the sake of discussion and my own learning, do you view these tasks as directly critical to adding value as a programmer? Or do you see them as essential for establishing alignment, which, in turn, facilitates more efficient value creation? Personally, I believe the examples you mentioned are important but it’s hard for me to value the plan over the execution in such a rapidly adapting ecosystem. Not to tangent but I believe in the words of Mike Tyson everyone has a plan until you get punched in the mouth. We can plan, research and document but if the insight is found in the execution shouldn’t bottom line by trying to ship and iterate. My main point is objectives can often be succinctly summarized,and while the task you mentioned are important I think the weight we put to them discounts the value of just shipping. Our differing views might also stem from our backgrounds—I’m assuming (please correct me if I’m wrong) that you have more experience with larger development teams.