APPENDIX X3
AGILE, ITERATIVE, ADAPTIVE, AND HYBRID PROJECT ENVIRONMENTS
This appendix explores the nuances of how the Project Management Process Groups described in The Standard for Project Management are performed with respect to the project environment and life cycle.
Section 1.4.2.1 of the PMBOK® Guide states that the “project life cycle needs to be flexible enough to deal with the variety of factors included in the project.” It is the nature of projects to evolve as more detailed and specific information becomes available. This ability to evolve and adapt is more relevant in environments with a high degree of change and uncertainty or with a wide variation of stakeholder interpretation and expectations.
X3.1 THE CONTINUUM OF PROJECT LIFE CYCLES
To understand the application of the process in adaptive projects, the continuum of project life cycles should be defined. The PMBOK® Guide Glossary describes the project life cycle as “the series of phases that a project passes through from its start to its completion.” Within a project life cycle, there are generally one or more phases that are associated with the development of the product, service, or result. These are called a development life cycle. Development life cycles can be predictive (plan-driven), adaptive (agile), iterative, incremental, or a hybrid.
Figure X3-1 shows the various ways in which requirements and plans are handled, how risk and cost are managed, schedule considerations, and how the involvement of key stakeholders is handled depending on the type of life cycle being employed.
Predictive project life cycles are characterized by an emphasis on specification of requirements and detailed planning during the beginning phases of a project. Detailed plans based on known requirements and constraints may reduce risk and cost. Milestones for key stakeholder involvement are also planned. As execution of the detailed plan progresses, the monitoring and controlling processes focus on constraining changes that might impact the scope, schedule, or budget.
Highly adaptive or agile life cycles for projects are characterized by progressive elaboration of requirements based on short iterative planning and executing cycles. Risk and cost are reduced by progressive evolution of initial plans. Key stakeholders are continuously involved and provide frequent feedback which enables responding to changes more quickly and also leads to better quality.
The following considerations apply to the center of the life cycle continuum: (a) risk and cost are reduced by iterative evolution of initial plans; and (b) key stakeholders have more opportunities to be involved in incremental, iterative, and agile cycles than stakeholders at the project milestones of highly predictive life cycles.
Project life cycles in the center of the life cycle continuum tend to align more closely with the predictive side or the agile side of the continuum depending on the way requirements are specified, how risk and cost are handled, and the nature of key stakeholder involvement. Projects in this part of the continuum may utilize hybrid project methods.
It should be emphasized that development life cycles are complex and multidimensional. Often, the different phases in a given project employ different life cycles, just as distinct projects within a given program may each be executed differently.
X3.2 PROJECT PHASES
Section 1.2.4.2 of the PMBOK® Guide defines phases as “a collection of logically related project activities that culminates in the completion of one or more deliverables.” Processes in each of the Process Groups are repeated as necessary in each phase until the completion criteria for that phase have been satisfied.
Projects on the more adaptive side of the continuum make use of two recurring patterns of project phase relationships as described in Sections X3.2.1 and X3.2.2.
X3.2.1 SEQUENTIAL ITERATION-BASED PHASES
Adaptive projects are often decomposed into a sequence of phases called Iterations. Each iteration utilizes the relevant project management processes. These iterations create a cadence of predictable, timeboxed pre-agreed, consistent duration that aids with scheduling.
Performing the process groups repeatedly incurs overhead. The overhead is considered necessary to effectively manage projects with high degrees of complexity, uncertainty, and change. The effort level for iteration-based phases is illustrated in Figure X3-2.
X3.2.2 CONTINUOUS OVERLAPPING PHASES
Projects that are highly adaptive will often perform all of the project management process groups continuously throughout the project life cycle. Inspired by techniques from lean thinking, the approach is often referred to as “continuous and adaptive planning,” which acknowledges that once work starts, the plan will change, and the plan needs to reflect this new knowledge. The intent is to aggressively refine and improve all elements of the project management plan, beyond the prescheduled checkpoints associated with Iterations. The interaction of the Process Groups in this approach is illustrated in Figure X3-3.
These highly adaptive approaches continuously pull tasks from a prioritized list of work. This aims to minimize the overhead of managing Process Groups repeatedly, by removing the start and end of iteration activities. Continuous pull systems can be viewed as microiterations with an emphasis on maximizing the time available on execution rather than management. They do however need their own planning, tracking, and adjustment mechanisms to keep them on track and adapt to changes.
X3.3 PROCESS GROUPS IN ADAPTIVE ENVIRONMENTS
As shown in the previous section, each of the Project Management Process Groups occurs in projects across the project life cycle continuum. There are some variations in how the Process Groups interact within adaptive and highly adaptive life cycles.
X3.3.1 INITIATING PROCESS GROUP
Initiating processes are those processes performed to define a new project or a new phase of an existing project by obtaining authorization to start the project or phase. Adaptive projects revisit and revalidate the project charter on a frequent basis. As the project progresses, competing priorities and changing dynamics may cause the project constraints and success criteria to become obsolete. For this reason, the Initiating processes are performed regularly on adaptive projects in order to ensure the project is moving within constraints and toward goals that reflect the latest information.
Adaptive projects rely heavily on a knowledgeable customer or designated customer representative who can state needs and desires, and provide feedback on the emerging deliverable on a continuous, ongoing basis. Identifying this stakeholder or other stakeholders at the start of the project permits frequent interactions when performing Execution and Monitoring and Controlling processes. The associated feedback ensures that the correct project outputs are delivered. As indicated previously, an Initiating process is typically conducted on each iterative cycle of an adaptive life cycle project.
X3.3.2 PLANNING PROCESS GROUP
Planning processes are those processes required to establish the scope of the project, refine the objectives, and define the course of action required to attain the objectives that the project was undertaken to achieve.
Highly predictive project life cycles are generally characterized by few changes to project scope and high stakeholder alignment. These projects benefit from detailed up-front planning. Adaptive life cycles, on the other hand, develop a set of high-level plans for the initial requirements and progressively elaborate requirements to an appropriate level of detail for the planning cycle. Therefore, predictive and adaptive life cycles differ as to how much planning is done and when it is done.
Additionally, projects navigating high degrees of complexity and uncertainty should involve as many team members and stakeholders as possible in the planning processes. The intent is to overcome uncertainty by incorporating a wide band of input into planning.
X3.3.3 EXECUTING PROCESS GROUP
Executing processes are those processes performed to complete the work defined in the project management plan to satisfy the project requirements.
Work in agile, iterative, and adaptive project life cycles is directed and managed through iterations. Each iteration is a short, fixed time period to undertake work followed by a demonstration of functionality or design. Based on the demonstration, relevant stakeholders and the team conduct a retrospective review. The demonstration and review helps check progress against the plan and determines if any changes to the project scope, schedule, or execution processes are necessary. These sessions also help manage stakeholder engagement by showing increments of work done and discussing future work. The retrospective allows issues with the execution approach to be identified and discussed in a timely fashion along with ideas for improvements. Retrospectives are a primary tool to manage project knowledge and develop the team through discussions of what is working well and team-based problem solving.
While work is undertaken via short iterations, it is also tracked and managed against longer-term project delivery timeframes. Trends of development speed, spend, defect rates, and team capacity that are tracked at an iteration level are summed and extrapolated at a project level to track completion performance. Highly adaptive approaches aim to utilize specialized team knowledge for task completion. Rather than a project manager selecting and sequencing work, higher-level objectives are explained and the team members are empowered to self-organize specific tasks as a group to best meet those objectives. This leads to the creation of practical plans with high levels of buy-in from the team members.
Junior teams working on highly adaptive projects typically need coaching and work assignments before reaching this empowered team state. However, with progressive trials within the confines of a short iteration, teams are reviewed as part of the retrospective to determine if they acquired the required skills to perform without coaching.
X3.3.4 MONITORING AND CONTROLLING PROCESS GROUP
Monitoring and Controlling processes are those processes required to track, review, and regulate the progress and performance of the project; identify any areas in which changes to the plan are required; and initiate the corresponding changes.
Iterative, agile, and adaptive approaches track, review, and regulate progress and performance by maintaining a backlog. The backlog is prioritized by a business representative with help from the project team who estimates and provides information about technical dependencies. Work is pulled from the top of the backlog for the next iteration based on business priority and team capacity. Requests for change and defect reports are evaluated by the business representative in consultation with the team for technical input and are prioritized accordingly in the backlog of work.
This single-list-of-work-and-changes approach originated in project environ-ments with very high rates of change that tended to overwhelm any attempts to separate change requests from originally planned work. Combining these work streams into a single backlog that can be easily resequenced provides a single place for stakeholders to manage and control project work, perform change control, and validate scope.
As prioritized tasks and changes are pulled from the backlog and completed via iterations, trends, and metrics on work performed, change effort and defect rates are calculated. By sampling progress frequently via short iterations, measures of team capacity and progress against the original scope are made by measuring the number of change impacts and defect remediation efforts. This allows estimates of cost, schedule, and scope to be made based on real progress rates and change impacts.
These metrics and projections are shared with project stakeholders via trend graphs (information radiators) to communicate progress, share issues, drive continuous improvement activities, and manage stakeholder expectations.
X3.3.5 CLOSING PROCESS GROUP
The Closing processes are the processes performed to formally complete or close a project, phase, or contract. Work on iterative, adaptive, and agile projects is prioritized to undertake the highest business value items first. So, if the Closing Process Group prematurely closes a project or phase, there is a high chance that some useful business value will already have been generated. This allows premature closure to be less of a failure due to sunk costs and more of an early benefits realization, quick win, or proof of concept for the business.