I am a firm believer in planning and I did a lot of this prior to any building process. To illustrate, the file names for the shop I built are D16_xxxxxx.  That means there were 15 earlier distinct designs previous to this one.  The goal of planning is to reduce the likelihood of having to live with a mistake forever that could have easily been avoided just by thinking about it a little bit before hand. Also, building a shop is a major expense and I couldn't afford to get this wrong in some major way.  Although I am not an experienced builder, I do understand that the original plan will not survive 100% and even during the process there will be a lot of "I wish I had done that differently" situations; that's just the way things are.

Once I had arrived at what I thought was a stable design, I looked at and got quotes for several different construction methods, traditional stick built, pole barn, SIP (Structural Insulated Panels), and CIF (foam concrete forms).  My preference was for CIF but the cost of a pole barn was more compelling so I selected this method instead.  For me, the pole building had the following advantages over CIF's.  It offered a higher pitch roof with a true walk-up attic and most importantly it also included the siding and roofing tasks for only a small cost difference compared to CIF construction.   Including the siding and roofing became the main deciding factor since otherwise I would have to spend a lot of time siding or roofing the building in cold weather due to the schedule- and I loath working out in the cold.