Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme, 7th Edition

Part III

Complex Project Management

If TPM is the “Happy Path,” then APM and xPM are something altogether different. Happy is in the eyes of the beholder, and some might find complex project management happy because they relish the challenges it provides. They are the chefs among us. Others, the cooks among us, fear having to think their way out of a project challenge and would rather have the comfort of a recipe they could follow without having to think—too much anyways.

The project landscape defined in Chapter 1 spans from the projects where both goal and solution are known and clearly defined to those projects where either or both of the goal and solution are not clearly known or defined. As you traverse this landscape, several factors affect the project. These are discussed in Chapter 9.

In the complex project world at least one of the goal or solution is not clearly known at the outset of the project. That usually means that the TPM models won't work and some adjustments will have to be made. Be comforted in the fact that the phases along with the tools, templates, and processes that support TPM projects will still be applicable in this complex landscape, but not in the same way as you have been using them in the TPM world.

The first step into the complex project world is with projects whose goal is clearly defined but whose solution is missing some or most parts. These are the APM projects. Chapter 10 discusses these projects. The problem here is that whatever solution is ...