Finding professionals to develop stuff for you is getting easier by the day. A whole range of services are evolving to meet short term needs, by matching the booming IT capabilities in emerging nations prepared to work for what in a developed economy is peanuts, to the needs of individual projects.
In addition, on line services like surveys can be done quickly, and simply to test hypotheses before significant expenditure is committed.
Agility does not equal poor planning, so long as it is in the context of an overall objective to be achieved, rather it reflects a humility necessary to recognise you do not have all the answers, and a willingness to adapt simply reflects the reality of complicated, fragmented, and rapidly changing circumstances combined with the edge of the envelope moving at increasing speed.
