Effective Software Project Management

Traditional Versus Adaptive Project Planning

To the traditionalist, planning is something you do once at the very beginning of the project. For the Traditional project manager, resources are scheduled and committed against a project plan and then managed to conformance with that plan. Any variances from the plan are corrected as needed. Having a complete plan sounds great, but is it worth the effort? Every change request that is approved requires some modification to the plan. The modification almost always requires some rescheduling, negotiating with resource managers to adjust commitments, and finally documenting and communicating the changes to all affected parties. If you cost out the changes, you can see that time was spent on parts of the plan that will no longer be needed. That time spent was wasted time—non–value-added time to the Adaptive project manager.

To the Adaptive project manager, planning is something you do just-in-time and continuously through the project. There is no speculation of the future, and therefore the cycle plan deals only with the coming cycle. Part of the plan deals with integrating new or revised functions and features and part deals with identifying probative initiatives for the next cycle. All of these are known, and there is no speculation about what could be or might be. Time is spent on planning those things that are known to be part of the solution.