Effective Project Management

Project Definitions and Defining the Project

Whenever you design a product, build a warehouse or lead a sequenced activity of connected events, you are engaged in a project. Project managers have developed various approaches to their work, including “Traditional Project Management” (TPM), the “Adaptive Project Framework” (APF) and “Extreme Project Management” (xPM). Each method approaches the core elements of project management in its own way. These elements include defining the project’s parameters, breaking it down into tasks, maintaining a schedule and budget, avoiding “scope creep,” allocating resources and personnel, monitoring progress in stages, and wrapping up the project by securing client approval and carrying out a final review.

TPM takes a project through these stages: Define the project; develop a project plan; launch the plan; manage the plan and monitor its progress; and complete and close the project. This approach works well for projects that unfold in such a linear way, but most do not. The APF and xPM methods are more suitable for projects that require ongoing learning and that have less defined timetables. These two approaches easily handle fresh...