Effective Software Project Management

Chapter 33. The Extreme SDPM Planning Phase

Tis best to build no castles in the air.

—Fanny Burney English novelist

Chapter Learning Objectives

After reading this chapter, you will: Understand the planning phase of the Extreme SDPM strategy for the INSPIRE model Understand the planning phase of the Extreme SDPM strategy for the Flexible model

This is the last of the three SDPM strategies that apply to situations where some or all of the solution cannot be known at the outset of the project but must be discovered through the iterations of the project. In this chapter, you face projects where the goal isn’t even clearly definable. You think you have a statement for the goal except you do not know if it is attainable. The fallback position is what goal is attainable or to what degree can we solve this problem? Given that the problem is critical, how can we plan such endeavors? Such projects are not for the faint of heart. They are high-risk and high-reward projects, and you have no choice but to attack them. In this chapter, I discuss the planning of such projects.

The Planning Phase of an Extreme SDPM strategy is truly a just-in-time planning event.