Effective Project Management: Traditional, Adaptive, Extreme, Fourth Edition

Chapter 19. Extreme Project Management and Other Variations to APF

Clearly no group can as an entity create ideas. Only individuals can do this. A group of individuals may, however, stimulate one another in the creation of ideas.

—Estill I. Green, former VP, Bell Telephone Laboratories

An eXtreme project is a complex, self-correcting venture in search of a desired result.

—Doug DeCarlo

As its name implies, the APF is adaptive. You have seen that in several ways:

• Specifying the number of cycles

• Determining cycle length

• Changing functionality priorities at each client checkpoint

• Building in changes in functionality (adding new, modify existing, or deleting) at each client checkpoint

You have also seen how the APF not only anticipates these adaptations but also expects them. However, the APF is far more adaptable than even the situations in the preceding list indicate. There are three other adaptations you should be aware of, and these are the topic of this short chapter. The first two are brief topics and demonstrate how the APF can be used as a proof-of-concept tool and to revise the version plan. These are discussed first. Then I draw a comparison between the APF and Extreme Project Management (xPM). The two are closely related approaches to managing projects when the solution is not known (APF), and when neither the solution nor the goal is known (xPM).

Note

You will probably find other reasons to adapt the APF. Feel free to do that. The APF is not a rigid structure to be followed without ...