Extreme Project Management

 

Since this article is about extreme project management, let's first identify the two "extremes" in project management.

The first extreme is the "just do it" approach to project management. There is no real planning, and everyone begins to work on different pieces of the project. There is no overall coordination of the tasks or plan for how the pieces will fit together to accomplish the project objectives. Speaking of the objectives, these were probably not clearly defined or perhaps not defined at all. The obvious problem with this approach is that it doesn't work and the project will run over-budget, over-schedule...and fail.

The second extreme is "cross every T and dot every I." The planning process is done at such a detailed level that the project never really gets started. Once the scope, plan and objectives are fully defined and agreed to, the team realizes they used 50 percent of the time and budget for the project to define the plan. Now the dates and costs on the plan are obsolete and they need to go back and revise the plan again. As you can see, this approach does not work because the planning phase never ends and work never begins.

If these are the extremes, shouldn't there be a "happy medium" approach? This approach would offer the necessary planning and control but also be flexible to accommodate changes. The term used to describe this approach is …

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