Effective Software Project Management

Types of Extreme SDPM Strategies

The literature doesn’t have much to offer here. I have been promoting a model that I call INSPIRE (INitiate, SPeculate, Innovate, REview) as one approach. Another approach, the Flexible model, is documented in a recent book by my colleague and friend Doug DeCarlo, eXtreme Project Management: Using Leadership, Principles, and Tools to Deliver Value in the Face of Volatility” (Jossey-Bass, 2004), and a brief description of it is also presented in this section.

These two strategies are discussed from the perspective of software development but their application is more far reaching than that. Both strategies can be applied in other areas. Pure research and development, process improvement, and new product development are three areas where they both have been applied with great success. That sets these two approaches apart from the other approaches discussed earlier. They are all defined with software development as their focus.

INSPIRE

By its very nature, as a form of Extreme Project Management (xPM), INSPIRE is unstructured. It is designed to handle projects with “fuzzy goals” or goals that cannot be defined because of the exploratory nature of the Extreme project. By way of example, consider the Routing sub-system in the case study. It is truly an exploratory venture. No one has yet to build a delivery system where the sources are moving entities. The sources are always stationary. Then how about the goal? Exactly what is it? Delivering the pizza ...