Extreme project management

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Extreme project management (XPM) refers to a method of managing very complex and very uncertain projects.

Contents

Extreme project management differs from traditional project management mainly in its open, elastic and nondeterministic approach. The main focus of XPM is on the human side of project management (e.g. managing project stakeholders), rather than on intricate scheduling techniques and heavy formalism.

Extreme project management corresponds to extreme programming. Advanced approaches to extreme project management utilize the principles of human interaction management to deal with the complexities of human collaboration.

The term "Extreme project management" has not been picked up by any of the international organizations developing Project Management Standards. What might be understood as a similar concept is "Agile Project Management". The ISO Standard ISO 21502:2020 [1] refers to the term "agile" as a delivery approach (of products; related to project scope), and the PMBoK Standard published by the Project Management Institute refers to an "adaptive" type of development lifecycle also called "agile" or "change-driven" with regard to the product development lifecycle of a project (an element of the project lifecycle). [2]

About XPM

As it is known, the software industry is a fast growing domain and in constant development and change. Despite the fact that there are plenty of methodologies and techniques used when it comes to project management, some new, and others that have been used for decades, extreme project management is one of the modern approaches to project management in this industry.

Given that requirements are constantly changing and technology is evolving very rapidly, extreme projects move forward very fast and allow for teams to work in shorter timelines, being able to better understand and approve each other's ideas and work. [3] [4]

For extreme project management to produce rapid change, it is necessary for all team members to communicate and reach full understanding. This method is used during the project execution and change control process and it is not allowed to be used for overall strategy or project prioritization. [5]

To produce project plans, XPM uses a concept similar to rapid application development (RAD) called rapid application planning (RAP). Stakeholders are invited by the project manager to the RAP session where a sequence of steps (including planning the project) is run so that the best decisions are taken. [6]

Extreme project management contributes to success in three different ways:

1. With it, you manage the unknown and unpredictable.

2. It instills desire and confidence among stakeholders and it focuses on gaining and sustaining commitment to the project mission.

3. It is a holistic approach, based on reality, managed by specialists. [3]

Extreme vs traditional project management

Traditional project management is defined as an approach which assesses the project through five process groups: initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and completion. [7]

The main characteristics of a traditional project management are:

While traditional project management is used for linear work, without any significant changes, extreme project management is ideal for fast-speed projects with unpredictable results. [3] [7]

One challenge faced by the traditional approach is that most software development projects' requirements change during the project execution period.

Extreme projects are “a complex, self-correcting venture in search of a desired result” (Doug DeCarlo), [8] where requirements are constantly changing throughout the project as a response to environmental factors such as competition, technology, and economic conditions.

Extreme projects are characterized by:

Traditional project management utilizes the "waterfall method", whose purpose is to plan project activity in a straight line. In the traditional approach, each process runs linearly, resulting with what was planned from the beginning. [4] [9]

The extreme approach, conversely, does not run constantly, instead adapting the project activity during the process, which leads in the final stage to a desired result. [3] [3] An extreme project management life cycle model is one that proceeds from phase to phase based on very limited knowledge of goal and solution. Each phase learns from the proceeding ones and redirects the next phase in an attempt to converge on an acceptable goal and solution. [10]

Mindset

Fundamental to success on an extreme project is the application of both the appropriate complex method and the required mindset. Mindset is one of the most important and critical factors related to the extreme project management. In order to change the mindset of a team, there are some main rules for extreme approach for project management:

Mindset is defined as “a set of beliefs and assumptions about how the world works” (Douglas DeCarlo). Mindset is the project’s internal programming.

A quantum mindset is needed to manage extreme projects in order to provide the project team an opening to change and unpredictability. [3]

Extreme project manager

A project manager is a professional in the field of project management whose responsibility is to plan, execute and manage any project. An extreme project manager has to complete all duties and tasks at a high-speed level, following the proper extreme project methodology.

The first step of any management methodology is that extreme project managers have to meet the client or the project stakeholders. Also, a specific analysis must be made to accentuate the value being provided to the client, emphasizing the benefits the client will gain as soon as the project is over. [11]

The extreme project manager is charged with responsibilities to the organization they represent, to the team, and to the project itself. Necessary skills include administrative credibility, political sensitivity and leadership. [12]

The main tasks that an extreme project manager has to fulfill for the project to be successful are:

One of the rules that a manager needs to know is that extreme analysis is a way for the clients to know the benefits he will gain, emphasizing its value once the project is completed. [11]

Books

Literature

See also

Related Research Articles

Project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. This information is usually described in project documentation, created at the beginning of the development process. The primary constraints are scope, time, and budget. The secondary challenge is to optimize the allocation of necessary inputs and apply them to meet pre-defined objectives.

A project plan, according to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), is: "...a formal, approved document used to guide both project execution and project control. The primary uses of the project plan are to document planning assumptions and decisions, facilitate communication among project stakeholders, and document approved scope, cost, and schedule baselines. A project plan may be summarized or detailed."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Project Management Body of Knowledge</span> Body of knowledge for project management

The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) is a set of standard terminology and guidelines for project management. The body of knowledge evolves over time and is presented in A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, a book whose seventh edition was released in 2021. This document results from work overseen by the Project Management Institute (PMI), which offers the CAPM and PMP certifications.

A software company is an organisation — owned either by state or private — established for profit whose primary products are various forms of software, software technology, distribution, and software product development. They make up the software industry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Project manager</span> Professional in the field of project management

A project manager is a professional in the field of project management. Project managers have the responsibility of the planning, procurement and execution of a project, in any undertaking that has a defined scope, defined start and a defined finish; regardless of industry. Project managers are first point of contact for any issues or discrepancies arising from within the heads of various departments in an organization before the problem escalates to higher authorities, as project representative.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PRINCE2</span> Project management method

PRINCE2 is a structured project management method and practitioner certification programme. PRINCE2 emphasises dividing projects into manageable and controllable stages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Systems development life cycle</span> Systems engineering terms

In systems engineering, information systems and software engineering, the systems development life cycle, also referred to as the application development life cycle, is a process for planning, creating, testing, and deploying an information system. The SDLC concept applies to a range of hardware and software configurations, as a system can be composed of hardware only, software only, or a combination of both. There are usually six stages in this cycle: requirement analysis, design, development and testing, implementation, documentation, and evaluation.

In software development, agile practices include requirements discovery and solutions improvement through the collaborative effort of self-organizing and cross-functional teams with their customer(s)/end user(s), adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, continual improvement, and flexible responses to changes in requirements, capacity, and understanding of the problems to be solved. Popularized in the 2001 Manifesto for Agile Software Development, these values and principles were derived from and underpin a broad range of software development frameworks, including Scrum and Kanban.

The Project Management Institute is a U.S.-based not-for-profit professional organization for project management.

Project stakeholders are persons or entities who have an interest in a given project. According to the Project Management Institute (PMI), the term project stakeholder refers to "an individual, group, or organization, who may affect, be affected by, or perceive itself to be affected by a decision, activity, or outcome of a project". ISO 21500 uses a similar definition.

Agile management is the application of the principles of Agile software development and Lean Management to various management processes, particularly product development and project management. Following the appearance of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development in 2001, Agile techniques started to spread into other areas of activity. The term Agile originates from Agile manufacturing - which in the early 90s had developed from Flexible manufacturing systems and Lean manufacturing/production.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scrum (software development)</span> Software development framework

Scrum is a framework for project management commonly used in software development, although it has been used in other fields including research, sales, marketing and advanced technologies. It is designed for teams of ten or fewer members who break their work into goals that can be completed within time-boxed iterations, called sprints. Each sprint is no longer than one month and most commonly lasts two weeks. The scrum team assesses progress in time-boxed daily meetings of 15 minutes or fewer, called daily scrums. At the end of the sprint, the team holds two further meetings: one sprint review intended to demonstrate the work done for stakeholders and solicit feedback, and one sprint retrospective intended to enable the team to reflect and improve.

Software quality management (SQM) is a management process that aims to develop and manage the quality of software in such a way so as to best ensure that the product meets the quality standards expected by the customer while also meeting any necessary regulatory and developer requirements, if any. Software quality managers require software to be tested before it is released to the market, and they do this using a cyclical process-based quality assessment in order to reveal and fix bugs before release. Their job is not only to ensure their software is in good shape for the consumer but also to encourage a culture of quality throughout the enterprise.

A glossary of terms relating to project management and consulting.

In software engineering, a software development process is a process of dividing software development work into smaller, parallel, or sequential steps or sub-processes to improve design and/or product management. It is also known as a software development life cycle (SDLC). The methodology may include the pre-definition of specific deliverables and artifacts that are created and completed by a project team to develop or maintain an application.

Lean project management is the application of lean concepts such as lean construction, lean manufacturing and lean thinking to project management.

Small-scale project management is the specific type of project management of small-scale projects. These projects are characterised by factors such as short duration; low person hours; small team; size of the budget and the balance between the time committed to delivering the project itself and the time committed to managing the project. They are otherwise unique, time delineated and require the delivery of a final output in the same way as large-scale projects.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to project management:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Extreme programming</span> Software development methodology

Extreme programming (XP) is a software development methodology intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements. As a type of agile software development, it advocates frequent releases in short development cycles, intended to improve productivity and introduce checkpoints at which new customer requirements can be adopted.

Disciplined agile delivery (DAD) is the software development portion of the Disciplined Agile Toolkit. DAD enables teams to make simplified process decisions around incremental and iterative solution delivery. DAD builds on the many practices espoused by advocates of agile software development, including scrum, agile modeling, lean software development, and others.

References

  1. ↑ "ISO 21502:2020". ISO. Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  2. ↑ "PMBOK® Guide". PMBOK® Guide. 2020. Retrieved 10 July 2022.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 eXtreme Project Management: Using Leadership, Principles, and Tools to Deliver Value in the Face of Volatility, by Doug DeCarlo, Foreword by James P. Lewis, Afterword by Robert K. Wysocki, First Edition, October 2004, Wiley
  4. 1 2 The Extreme Approach to Managing a Project
  5. ↑ Extreme Project Management, 2014 Association of Modern Technologies Professionals
  6. ↑ XPM – from idea to realization. Critical approach to the concept of XPM. Synopsis. 2001
  7. 1 2 What is Project Management?, Elaine J. Hom, BusinessNewsDaily Contributor, 25 February 2014
  8. 1 2 Effective Project Management: Traditional, Adaptive, Extreme, By Robert K. Wysocki, Rudd McGary. August 2003, Wiley Pub.
  9. ↑ Radical Project Management.By Rob Thomsett. Published by Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle Creek, New Jersey, 2004
  10. 1 2 Traditional Project Management vs. Extreme Project Management. An Apples and Cumquats Comparison, by Doug DeCarlo
  11. 1 2 Extreme Project Management, by Shaun Ajani. Publisher: iUniverse, 1 January 2002
  12. 1 2 Project Management: A Managerial Approach, by Jack R. Meredith, Samuel J. Mantel, 8th Edition, Chapter 3: The Project Manager. Publisher: John Wiley & Sons. Release Date: 23 August 2011
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