Real-World Project Management: Beyond Conventional Wisdom, Best Practices, and Project Methodologies

Chapter 4. The Dog Ate My Project Plan And Other Management Fables

"Our business world has accepted errors as a way of life. We live with them, we plan for them, and we make excuses for them. They have become part of the personality of our business. Our employees quickly recognize our standards and create errors so that they will not disappoint us."

—H. James Harrington

Many project teams and project managers attempt to execute all of their projects based on the waterfall approach to project management, which approximately follows the steps as shown in Figure 4.1. Notice an attempt has been made in the figure to show how the process areas shown in the 2004 PMBOK map against or are included in the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) steps.

I've heard the diagram in Figure 4.1 frequently referenced as an intelligent waterfall design. It is intelligent because it recognizes that the budget numbers are pretty much a SWAG (Scientific Wild-Ass Guess) at the beginning of the SDLC and then tighten up as the true progressive elaboration kicks in and the team estimates become better as they learn more. I've also added a specific slant not included in the 2004 PMBOK in that the Quality (defect prevention) idea wraps the entire process.

Figure 4.1. Figure 4.1

While this generic diagram appears to illuminate some kind of development standard, the fundamental issue with utilizing the waterfall approach ...