Is Planning required in Scrum?

Scrum infact advocates planning. However, the plan does not need to be a humungous up-front plan. Progressively Elaborate the planning in Scrum

• Plan at multiple levels (strategic, release, iteration daily etc) creating appropriate detail using rolling wave planning and progressive elaboration to support the necessary level of understanding.
• Engage the team and customer in planning activities to create practical plans that balance priorities and team capabilities in order to gain increased levels of commitment.
• Planning in Agile happens at different levels represented by Planning Onion.

The planning could be at different levels

• Daily (every day)
• Iteration (Weekly)
• Release (Month)
• Product (2 years)
• Portfolio (Long Term)
• Strategic (Long Term)

The Team is involved at Daily, Iteration and Release Level. The daily planning happens thru the daily standup meeting.

Iteration plans considers the tasks that are needed to transform a feature request into working, tested software. Iteration plan happens at the beginning of every iteration.

Release planning is driven by the need to convey a plan to the customer of the product about what they can expect over the next few months.

More long term panning is driven by the Product Owner to look beyond the immediate release. This is to come up with product roadmap typically extending upto 2 years.

Beyond the roadmap there is planning at portfolio or strategic levels wherein the organization determines where the product is placed within the portfolio or organization and what strategic needs it addresses within the portfolio.