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

Iterative Project Management Life Cycle

On the certainty/uncertainty line, the models are aligned from Linear to Incremental to Iterative to Adaptive to Extreme. Both the Iterative and Adaptive models have been proposed to address the difficulty many project managers face when they try to clearly decompose requirements and are unable to do so. In some cases that difficulty arises from the client not having a clear picture of their needs and in other cases from the solution not being known. In either case, some type of APM approach is called for.

Definition of the Iterative PMLC Model

An Iterative PMLC model consists of a number of process groups that are repeated sequentially within an iteration with a feedback loop after each iteration is completed. At the discretion of the client, the last process group in an iteration may release a partial solution.

Iterative approaches are used when you have an initial version of the solution, but it is known to fall short in terms of features and perhaps functions. The iterative cycles are designed to select and integrate the missing pieces of the solution. Think of the Iterative PMLC model as a variant of production prototyping. The intermediate solutions are production ready, but they might not be released by the client to the end user until the final version is ready. The intermediate versions give the client something to work with as they attempt to learn and discover additional needed features. The client would choose to release a partial ...