The point of planning

In software development, we love to make plans. We plan everything from 2-week sprints to 5 or more year roadmaps. And yet I sometimes think that the point of planning is misunderstood. The point of having a plan, for me, is not to have a concrete set of steps. Well, it is that, but that's not the real value of it. The point is understanding the why of the plan, and the how of the steps. The why of the plan is this: Why does this plan make sense? Why does this plan bring us closer to fulfilling our goals? Without a purpose behind it, a plan is meaningless. I would even go so far as to say that sometimes having a fixed plan at all is counterproductive. Sometimes the product may be in an exploratory phase, and the only plan would be to try a lot of things and see what works. But the why behind this plan is clear: To evaluate a lot of options. Then we could go into the details and schedule the evaluations and timelines for the options we want to explore. The point is that the goal dictate