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Agile Exception Processes
Mike Griffiths is an experienced project manager, author and consultant who works for PMI as a subject matter expert. Before joining PMI, Mike consulted and managed innovation and technology projects throughout Europe, North and South America for 30+ years. He was co-lead for the PMBOK Guide—Seventh Edition, lead for the Agile Practice Guide, and contributor to the PMI-ACP and PMP exam content outlines. Outside of PMI, Mike maintains the websites www.LeadingAnswers.com about leading teams and www.PMillustrated.com, which teaches project management for visual learners.
When caught by a fire or other urgent situation, it is useful to have emergency equipment on hand and know how to use it. The same goes for project exception processes: If something untoward happens, then that is not the best time to be creating new processes to deal with the event and explaining how to use them. Emotions are high, people respond to bad news differently, and it is better to practice an agreed-to procedure than figure out new rules.
Project tolerances and exception plans provide an agreed-to emergency plan for when bad stuff happens to good projects. They act as guardrails to help prevent us going off track and provide a mutually understood and agreed-to resolution process. So, just as during an emergency is not the best time to collaborate on improvising a rope ladder, nor is it the best time to define a resolution process between project stakeholders during a major project scope change.
We will look at the two components (tolerances and exception plans) individually and then examine how they work together. Project tolerances are the guardrails, the upper and lower boundaries the project stakeholders are willing to tolerate for a given project metric. Another way to think of it is how much slack rope we have as a project team to do our own thing (or hang ourselves with). Tolerances can be set on a variety of metrics and the degree of variation…
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