Extreme Project Management
by Ed Yourdon
Description
Historically, all software projects have involved a certain degree of risk and pressure -- but many of the projects in today's chaotic business environment involve such intense pressure that they require non-standard, extreme management techniques.
This seminar is a survival guide for managers and project team members who are about to embark upon an "extreme" project -- i.e., a project whose schedule is so compressed, and/or whose budget, or team size is so constrained, that the only "obvious" way to succeed is to work 16 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no vacations until the project is finished.
Such projects may also be using some of the concepts of the popular "extreme programming" (XP) approach; this seminar is designed to be compatible with current views on XP, but it focuses entirely on the management issues, rather than the technical activities of design (e.g., refactoring), coding, and testing.
Extreme project management involves five key issues: politics, people, process, project-management, and tools -- all of which are covered in this intensive two-day seminar. The seminar is not about the things we would all like to do, and it is not a conventional sermon about the benefits of rapid prototyping and iterative development life-cycles.
Similarly, while there are good arguments in favor of rigorous software methodologies and the "Boy Scout" software engineering principles that lead to high levels of software quality and easily maintainable systems, they can be counter-productive and even fatal in high-pressure "do-or-die" projects.
Don't come to this seminar if you want to know what "nice" people do in "nice" projects; come instead if you're responsible for managing a nasty, ugly project where everyone has come to the conclusion that the "standard way of doing business" will lead to a guaranteed failure.
Main Topics
- Extreme Politics
- Extreme Negotiations
- Extreme Peopleware issues
- Extreme Processes
- Extreme Project Monitoring and Control.
- Extreme Tools
- Extreme Projects as a way of life.