Some organization develops and then executes some plans.

1. Anti-pattern: planning and execution in one process

Planning will last until all plan items will be executed - this is no good.

2. Static planning

Fixing the defect of the diagram above: planning spawns execution and exits.

So far so good but what if the plan may be amended while executed?

3. Dynamic planning

Initial planning and plan changes write to the database of plan items. Scheduler process scans the database periodically and spawns execution of the items whose time has come.

4. Agile planning

Also may be called decentralized planning. It’s dynamic planning, too but unlike in the variant above, execution is not initiated automatically. Here the performer that executed certain plan item chooses what to do next. The control process watches that no one plan item is forgotten.