PMO | Why Don't People Use Project Plans?

We frequently encounter individuals who need to be more excited about creating and using project plans. Here are some of the top reasons:

Can't Plan. There are cases when the nature of work doesn't allow us to make a plan. For example, when the dev team can't control the request inflow, there is no way for them to plan ahead. Usually, in this case, we observe that the project plan becomes a record book or notepad tracking the efforts instead of planning the work. 
Analysis: No project plan needs to be created. Instead, using an agile board to track deliverables should be sufficient, but we need a tool to discover problems. Resource management and workload assessment before task assignment are essential to ensure efficiency. 

People don't know how to create and use project plans. When developers manage their projects, creating and updating project plans are neither their priority nor their expertise. Therefore, there's a common impression that project plans are not helpful as they are often not created and updated correctly to demonstrate their value. If we don't see the plan bringing value, we tend to treat it as redundant and bypass it.
Analysis: Create a simple, agile board or auto-create high-level project plans to guide the operations. 

The plan is created too complex. This could be the other extreme. Still, the expertise of project management plays a role here. Some project managers showcase their work by creating overly complex project plans that later hinder updates due to excessive work.
Analysis: This needs to be more organized. The plans should be simple enough to play a role.

The broken window effect. Many project plans are abandoned after people fail to keep them up-to-date. Then, the plan gets abandoned, creating a messy ground that no one would like to update or clean up later.
Analysis: We would hold the PM responsible and monitor to keep the project plan clean and up-to-date and keep evaluating values from the updated plans.

In summary, the central reason why people don't use project plans is the lack of perceived value. What value does a project bring to the team? Is it worth the effort? How does it impact their OKRs or KPIs? These are vital questions that need to be answered.

Suggestions:
1. Don't enforce the creation of project plans for all projects.
2. Create simple, high-quality project plans with analytics driving decisions.
3. Perform regular checks and value analysis from the plan.

Let us know if this analysis and suggestion make sense to you.