Looking for something a bit different for this week’s blog post, I decided to search for the most extreme projects I could find.
I was expecting to come across things like bridges requiring foundations miles into bedrock or houses that had been built on the side of a mountain with the only way to get the materials to them was by yak. Or some other extreme example, like a cloud PPM tool that has 650,000 lines of code written by one person – oh wait that’s Psoda!
Instead I discovered there’s a branch of project management called Extreme Project Management. I was so intrigued that I spent a day searching Google and reading about it.
Extreme project management is related to Extreme Programming and is used on projects where there is a high level of unpredictability, when there needs to be huge amounts of flexibility or when a lot of stakeholder engagement is required.
One of the main differences between this and other project management methodologies is that it demands huge commitment from the project sponsor, who needs to be actively involved at all steps of the project.
This methodology is even more slimmed down than Agile. Typical uses seem to be software (of course), R & D and, surprisingly, architecture.
There are five stages in the extreme methodology:
- Planning
- Scoping
- Launching
- Monitoring
- Closing
Each stage is used to learn more about the goals of the project and how best to move towards the solution. With this methodology the project teams have very little guidance and everything is very fluid, with minimal documentation.
It sounds like a project manager’s idea of heaven, the only downside, and it’s a big one, is that projects using this methodology have a higher than average chance of failing.
Too bad you can’t have everything!
I’d love to hear what you think about extreme project management, or if you have any extreme project management examples or stories to share.
PM Hut (@pmhut)
Hi Rhona,
Why is it you think that extreme project management have a higher chance of failure than the “regular” PM.
Also, can this type of PM be applied to projects that not that small?
Rhona
Hi PM Hut, I think that extreme projects have a higher failure rate for two reasons. One is that they don’t appear to be subjected to the same level of governance as “regular” projects. Perhaps it’s down to lack of control over cost and time. Not that governance always helps regular project success rates – but that’s another blog post I guess. Second, given the nature of the projects that use the extreme methodology there is already a higher chance of failure anyway as they are inherently more risky and complex.
Do I think this methodology could be applied to smaller projects? I don’t see why not. I didn’t come across any examples in my Google trawl, but just because I didn’t doesn’t mean they don’t exist. It would certainly be interesting to see how it worked on a smaller scale.
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