City council asks whether choosing an adaptive approach means the permitting-app team will do no planning. What is the accurate response?

Adaptive approaches still plan; they plan in shorter cycles with detail that evolves as learning arrives. Choosing adaptive for a permitting app does not mean the team does no planning. Saying adaptive means no planning, baselines, or prioritization at all fails by concept: adaptive teams still prioritize backlogs, plan iterations, and may use lightweight baselines appropriate to the approach. Saying adaptive forbids any near-term plan and only allows year-long predictive schedules fails because that describes a misunderstanding—adaptive emphasizes near-term detailed planning and less distant detail, not a ban on planning or a mandate for year-long predictive schedules. Saying adaptive replaces all planning with unmanaged daily improvisation fails because improvisation without backlog discipline and cycle goals is not an adaptive delivery approach. Exam caveat: CAPM predictive-versus-adaptive items often include the distractor that agile or adaptive equals no plan; the correct nuance is rolling planning and emergent detail. Operational check: show council a cadence of iteration plans, prioritized backlog, and near-term forecasts, clarifying which commitments are firm for the next cycle versus provisional for later horizons.