Effective Software Project Management

Types of Adaptive SDPM Strategies

The two models included in these strategies cover those situations where the solution is not known. It might be that very little of the solution in terms of functionality and accompanying features can be identified at the outset of the project. The project management methodology that is integrated with the software development life cycle must be capable of discovering the unknowns and transforming them into the known. In other words, the solution will emerge as part of the project work.

Adaptive Project Framework

The Adaptive Project Framework (APF), which I discuss at great length in my book Effective Project Management: Traditional, Adaptive, Extreme, Third Edition (Wiley, 2003), unlike most of the approaches in Quadrant 2, is not limited to software development. Although it is beyond the scope of this book to discuss, APF is equally at home with software development, process improvement, product development, and research and development projects.

APF is an approach that spans the gap between Traditional Project Management (TPM), which includes both the Linear and Incremental SDPM strategies, and Extreme Project Management (xPM), which includes the Extreme SDPM strategies. APF and xPM are also called agile project management—a term that is more inclusive of the contemporary approaches to software development. APF applies in those cases where what is needed is clearly defined but how to produce it isn’t as obvious. Clearly the traditional approach ...