Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme, Sixth Edition

Introducing Project Management Life Cycles

To plan your journey you need a project landscape that is simple and intuitive and will remain valid despite the volatility of the business environment. It will be your unchanging roadmap for further analysis and action. For several years now, project management professionals have proclaimed, “One size does not fit all.” If it did, the life of a project manager would be boring and this book would be less than 100 pages in length. Unfortunately (or fortunately for those with an adventuresome spirit) being an effective project manager is exhilarating and demanding of all your creative energies. A “one size fits all” mentality doesn't work and probably never worked. I am of course talking about how the characteristics of the project should inform the project manager as to the tools, templates, and processes that should be used on a given project. To help you build a decision making model for choosing a project management model, I will first define a very general project landscape and then a strategy for drilling down in that landscape to a specific project management life cycle (PMLC) model, and then I will discuss the tools, templates, and processes and their adaptation to the specific characteristics of the project. You need to understand at the outset that there are no silver bullets. Project management is not a matter of following a recipe. Rather it is the ability to create and use recipes. I want you to be a chef not just a cook. A ...