The Importance Of Traditional Project Management

You’d think it would be simple to perform a simple project to accomplish a simple goal. Despite what you might have heard, you’re right. In a perfect world, every single project would finish up two weeks ahead of schedule, with absolutely no snags along the way. In a perfect world, every project would finish safely under-budget, allowing the team to go out to a fancy steak restaurant to celebrate. And in a perfect world, the customer would always happily skip off singing the praises of the team that made it happen.
This is not a perfect world.
In the world that we do live in, problems happen. Requirements change without warning. The deadline turns out to be closer than usual. The customer suddenly changes his mind and decides he wants something else entirely. Projects are thrown into turmoil thanks to employee turnover, a lack of quality of live, and a turbulent environment surrounding the project.
Traditional project management is not a good fit at all for projects of such a chaotic nature. Traditional project management is very formulaic by nature: Customer tells project manager what he wants, when he wants it, and how much he’s willing to pay for it. The processes involved are all well-established, with no new experimental technology. And the customer knows exactly what he wants- none of that changing-his-mind-halfway-through business. (DeCarlo)
Chaotic projects require a new, different approach. That approach is known as Extreme Project Management (EPM). TPM is all about certainties, EPM is all about the unknown. There’s nothing slow and orderly about an extreme project- speed and innovation are necessary for success, and things are messy and unpredictable. As cliché as it is, anything really can happen. (DeCarlo)
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... can’t control. Increase your team members’ sense of security by relaxing the project controls.
As described above, one of the hallmarks of extreme project methodology is self-management. The “project manager” is really more of a figurehead and a mentor, and it’s up to the team members to manage themselves. Since there is no central project management authority, the members are responsible for conducting their management responsibilities and indirectly contributing to the management of the project.
Moving from traditional project management to extreme project management is not easy. Then again, extreme project management is not easy. If you have the responsibility of heading up an extreme project, you should first test yourself, to see if you’re up for the challenge. It’s impossible to define extreme project methodology through conventional means, so don’t try to.