Writing down what you intend to do and verifying with your team it is sensible is not "the waterfall model". This "I just want to code" attitude is a major disease of young programmers and a leading cause of shitty software. Think ahead. Write it down. You are not a lonesome dove.
Thats a fair point, but I did not say that there should be no communication about the work you do. We all work differently and I think it is sensible to let each employee have some form of independence of how they want to structure their own work. If the feature is a few days of work let me work on it like I prefer and then I can submit with a nice description and thought process.
Let us also not forget about all the time wasted on getting your plan validated. Or how your validated plan is completely screwed only realized after you start implementing it. Pros and cons to each solution.
Again, there is no justification for just jumping in and writing code. Would you cut wood without measuring it first? Would you start soldering without laying out a circuit? Would you write an essay without an outline? You could do all of these things, but the results are guaranteed to be crap.
