Effective Software Project Management

Traditional Versus Adaptive Project Managers

I have already discussed the fact that Traditional project managers manage against the budget, schedule, and scope, and I don’t need to repeat that discussion here. Simply recall that their approach is formal and based on status meetings, performance reviews, reports, and metric tracking.

Adaptive project managers manage against the deliverables and business value. Formality gives way to informality. With few exceptions, reports give way to the passing of tacit knowledge between the customer and all of the team members. Anything that does not contribute directly to the learning and discovery process is avoided as much as possible. There will, of course, be some reports that senior management requires. These cannot be avoided. That allows the focus to be solely on creating deliverables and the related business values. Anything else falls in the category of non–value-added work and is to be avoided. Only those artifacts that lead to that discovery are relevant. It is really at the discretion of the team as to which artifacts will be used. Bottom line—if it doesn’t add value to your ability to manage the project, don’t use it. Period.

What does all of this say about the project managers of Traditional versus Adaptive projects? The Traditional project manager is trained to follow process, and success is measured against their ability to meet budget, time, and scope constraints. Their consistency is a strong asset. They tend to be risk-averse. ...