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

Chapter 16. Cycle Build

Try several solutions at once. Maybe none of them, alone, would solve the problem, but in combination they do the job.

—Ray Josephs, President, Ray Josephs Associates, Inc.

No matter how complicated a problem is, it usually can be reduced to a simple, comprehensible form, which is often the best solution.

—Dr. An Wang

The Cycle Plan Phase works best as a team event, but I realize that some project teams might not be fully staffed and able to participate in the Cycle Plan Phase. For that reason, I have left the remaining details of the cycle plan for this phase. The Cycle Build Phase is an event that requires the presence of the entire team from the very start of the phase. You left the Cycle Plan Phase with a first pass at the cycle build schedule. You start this phase by continuing to work with the schedule and complete the last details of scheduling in this phase. Figure 16-1 graphically displays the Cycle Build Phase.

Figure 16-1. Cycle Build Phase

Creating a Micro-Level Schedule and Finalizing Resource Assignments

The team begins the creation of the micro-level schedule by further decomposing the tasks that make up this cycle's functionality to the subtask level. This process is a top-down whole-team exercise, and it follows the same process that is discussed in Chapter 4. Once the micro-level WBS has been created, perform two basic tasks:

• Make Post-It notes for ...