APF is an approach to a class of projects for which neither the traditional nor the extreme methods are appropriate. APF is entirely compatible with the PMI PMBOK Standards. This series is derived from selected content from the 3rd edition of my book Effective Project Management: Traditional, Adaptive, Extreme.
An Overview of the Cycle Plan Phase
Planning is a task that is either looked forward to with eager anticipation by the anal retentives among us or is done once over lightly so the team can get going on the real work of the project. I'm often reminded of a cartoon from many years ago whose source has since been lost. It shows the project manager walking past the programmers' cubicles as she says: "You people start coding, I'm going down the hall to find out what the spec is." Somewhere between these extremes is the planning process that we will follow on an APF project.
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APF planning is not like any other planning approach you might be familiar with. APF planning is just-in-time planning. Sounds like an oxymoron, but it isn't. The point is that we are not going to plan what we are not reasonably confident is part of the solution. Remember in the Version Scope Phase, we were only able to create a mid-level WBS for part of the project. That's because to generate a complete WBS would have required a lot of guessing and that was just a waste of time. APF projects are projects that do not waste time on non-value added work.
As shown in Figure 1, the Cycle Plan Phase is the planning phase that begins each cycle, hence the name Cycle Plan.
Figure 1: The Adaptive Project Framework
Cycle Plan Deliverables
Just as I did with the Version Scope Phase, the best way to introduce you to the Cycle Plan Phase is from the perspective of its deliverables. The Cycle Plan Phase has four deliverables:
Let's briefly discuss each one. For a more detailed discussion of each deliverable refer to Effective Project Management, 3rd Edition.
Low-level WBS for this cycle's functionality
We begin with a prioritized list of the functionality that we and the client are able to identify at this point in time. Apart from any dependencies between different pieces of functionality we will jointly decide with the client how far down the list we can go for this cycle. Technical professionals tend to be optimistic, and that has no place here. If this is the first cycle, don't be too ambitious, especially if your team members have not had the opportunity to work together on projects before. We are constrained to a fixed time box for this cycle and the resources of our team. What can we realistically build within this time box and with the team resources we have? When we have identified what will be built in this cycle, we can complete that part of the WBS down to the lowest level at which activities are defined. In the Traditional Project Management Approach these would be the managed activities that appear in the project schedule or in your software package's gantt chart view, if you are more comfortable with that terminology.
Assignment of activities to sub-teams
This is the first pass at building a staffed schedule. Based on the dependencies between activities we partition the activities into sets of activities in such a way that within a set there are dependencies and between sets there are few dependencies. To the extent that this is possible, it will reduce the number of scheduling dependencies between your sub-teams. Once the partitioning is acceptable to the team, you can begin to assign team members to the sub-teams that will plan and implement the activities in their partition.
Dependencies & schedule
The sub-teams will first generate the task lists for each activity. Think of this as a micro-WBS for their partitions. So far we haven't had to use any project management software tools and now is not the time to begin. You won't need your favorite project management software to complete this deliverable. Recording dependency relations and generating the initial schedule is done with sticky notes, marking pens and plenty of whiteboard space. If you really have to have the comfort and assurance of the software, go ahead and use it. Just remember that you have to maintain the project file over the life cycle of the project. Having planned and managed many APF cycles using nothing but sticky notes, marking pens and whiteboards, I know that using a software package is non-value added work. In other words, it is a waste of time and APF projects don't waste time!
Sub-team micro-plans
The above schedule was done without the constraint of staff resources. The remaining step is to integrate sub-team resources and availabilities with the above schedule. The deliverable is the final schedule for this sub-team. The schedule can be built on the whiteboard as a time-scaled matrix. One row of the matrix is devoted to each sub-team member and the columns are all of the calendar days of the cycle. Each sticky note is a task and all you have to do is lay them out in the matrix (remembering the dependencies) and you have it.
Later, when the cycle is underway, there will be a need to revise the schedule. Any changes that must be made due to slippages or other surprises are easily incorporated. Just move the appropriate sticky notes without violating any dependencies or over-allocating any sub-team member. Here is where sticky notes, marking pens and whiteboards really show their value. If you put the sub-team's work into perspective, you will see the reason for my recommended approach. The cycle is short--just a few weeks duration. The sub-team is working on a small set of activities--all of which must be completed within the duration of the cycle. If this was the entire project, it probably wouldn't even meet the basic requirements to be called a project. We don't need a high-tech solution to a low-tech problem.
In Summary
Space limitations have forced us to take only a cursory look at the Cycle Plan Phase. It engages the client; it is low-tech, it is easily managed and changed. There are seldom any surprises in an APF cycle as there are in more traditional approaches. What more could a project manager ask for?
APF is a work in process. It was built as part of recent client engagements and is not fully baked as of this writing. You may read more about it in the 3rd edition of my recently released book Effective Project Management: Traditional, Adaptive, Extreme. I would certainly welcome any comments on this article or the book. You may reach me directly at [email protected].
The 3rd edition of Effective Project Management: Traditional, Adaptive, Extreme by Robert K. Wysocki, Ph.D. of Enterprise Information Insights, Inc. is due out at the end of July, 2003 (John Wiley & Sons Publishers).
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