Adaptive Project Framework

Developed by Tinna Dofradottir

Adaptive Project Framework (APF) is used in project management and is part of the group of agile methodologies. In so-called traditional project management managers often approach investment projects as if surroundings and conditions behave in a stable way. However in modern society the volatility and the uncertainty need also to be taken into consideration in its business sector. Therefore traditional project management often does not work in new and difficult economy conditions, especially in software development. At the beginning of 21-century agile project management became widespread in science and practice. However solving the dilemmas of developing project with both agile and traditional project management became more difficult and the adaptive project management approach was invented to take advantage of and eliminating the disadvantages of both approaches mentioned above. The goal of this article is to present an overview of the Adaptive Project Framework and count all its core values, including when to use this method. Then after the overview the application of this method is described with what advantages and disadvantages it comes with, finally a section with its limitation of this method.

Overview

Recognised strategic leader in the field of project management, Robert K. Wysocki published the book Adaptive Project Framework in 2010, where he describes the APF approach when managing complexity in uncertainty. The AFP method was created to help teams to adapt continuously to projects changing environment. It is a systematic and structured process that allows project managers to enhance their decisions and practices during the project life cycle, based on their learning from previous achieved results during the project. APF is designed to continually adapt to the changing situation of a project from its very beginning to its very end. Therefore, with this approach, nothing is fixed: neither the duration of the project, nor the budget, nor the risks, and everything can be continuously adjusted according to changes in the projects characteristics.

To implement the APF methodology successfully, project teams must be willing to accept and to adapt changes. It is a costumer driven process, where the client is involved in every stage of the process and they are even given the opportunity to control the direction of the project. This consequently requires the project team to be effectively involved, acting with an open mind and trusting partnership with the client.

The APF project team is combined of the client team and the development team. Depending of the size of the project the client team can be a single person or multiple persons. In the client team there needs to be a single member in charge of the decision making, serving as a co-manager along with the development team leader. The development team is composed of technical professionals who are responsible for developing the project and producing the deliverables.

A project scope is a variable from a traditional mindset and the general premise underlying the APF project is not to plan the future, the future is unknown. In APF planning is done in each completed cycle, this is to maximise the business value by adjusting the project scope of the solution and make the client a central figure. Giving the client the opportunity to be in charge of deciding what should be changed and what direction the project is heading. It means that APF projects are constantly corrected to ensure maximum business value. When it comes to that time or money or both have been used up, all the deliverables will have the greatest business value that could have been generated from the collective knowledge and learning from the client team and the development team.

Core Values

The core values of the APF method are six and are described here below:

1. Client-focused: The most important value is that the client needs must always come first, as long as they are within the bounds of ethical business practices.

2. Client-driven: Having the client to take on the project manager role and responsibilities, to give them the sense that they are controlling the direction of the project and are being meaningfully involved.

3. Incremental Results Early and Often: Deliverables are many and often in APF projects, this gives the client an early delivery and is very valuable when the question is what the client's real needs are. The functionality of the project's first cycles may be very limited, but in any case they are useful.

4. Continuous Questioning and Introspection: This core value expresses to openness and honesty between the client team and the development team that must exist. Both sides must be committed to make the best possible business choices. Only with honest and open dialog can that occur.

5. Change is progress to a better solution: The Project Scope phase begins with the stakeholders coming to an understanding of what is needed and what will be delivered through the process of the Conditions of Satisfaction (COS).

6. Don’t Speculate on the Future: APF strips out all the work that is not value-adding. Guessing on the future will only add work to the non-value-added section. Leave it out when in doubt. APF is designed to spend the time and money of the client on maximising the business value defined by the client.

When to use it

Now given a little overview of the APF method, it is time to understand when APF is applicable and the following two questions will be answered; When to use it? and when to not use it?

As mentioned above in the modern world we live in now days, uncertainty and project requirements are changing constantly. This is due to many things for example, growing market trends, accelerating technological development, customer needs and preferences are changing, unclear business objectives and competitors actions. All these factors need to be taken into consideration when managing a projects. Which means projects now days don't fit the traditional linear project management approach, where the first phase must be completed until the next one can begin. So the APF method is relevant to projects that don't necessarily have a certain business objective but the project goal is know, it's just uncertain how to get there. In other words, when the requirements are vague and the direction can easily be changed or adjusted.

The method is not very applicable in construction projects and large projects, simply because of its flexibility and its iterative approach are not desired in those kind of projects, it could lead to delays and cost overruns.

Application

Taking a closer look at the project framework, it is divided into five-phase strategy designed to provide clients optimum business value from any cycle within the limits of time and cost constraints imposed by the client. Figure 1 shows a graphical portrait of the five phases, they consist of the project scope, the cycle plan, the cycle completion, the client checkpoint and finally post-version review. As mentioned before the APF is an iterative process, where in each cycle you iterate and also between cycles. In every cycle the development team and the client team come to learning and discover new potential opportunities to explore. An application of each phase is describes in the following sub-chapters.

Project Scope

As Shown in Figure 1, this is the defining phase and the planning phase that both contain approval points. The first phase of the process is identifying the project scope and that involves understanding the needs of the costumer. Therefore stakeholders first step is to determine the Conditions of Satisfaction (CoS). That is the project goals and the desired outcome, by finding out what are the client's needs and how to meet those needs. From this point the Project Overview Statement (POS) is written to outline the CoS and needs to be approved by all stakeholders, this is done to evaluate the effectiveness of the process and how it will be accomplished.

Figure 1: The live cycle of APF

Finally three documents are needed to finish the project scope. First, there is the Functional Requirements, that prioritises actions as well as possible risks, challenges and assumptions. As the project progresses, this may change. Second, there is the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) that enables teams to estimate costs, develop schedule and break down the processes into manageable parts that needs to be accomplished. Finally there is the triangle scope, which is how time, cost and quality will converge. In APF, planning is done within each cycle at micro level. It starts with an RBS-based mid-level component or function, and ends with a WBS-based micro-level activity and task. Think of this as scheduling just-in-time. If each cycle involves work that takes only a few weeks to complete.

Cycle plan

Second phase of the method is the cycle plan, once the POS has been written and a prioritised list of known functionalities that both the client and the project manager have agreed on, that is needed to solve the business problem. A high-level planning is done to priorities the functions into multiple cycles with timeframe to be developed. A typical cycle length is around two to six weeks long and before each cycle the length is documented and agreed along with expectations. The project is divided into multiple mini-projects or cycles, where each cycle delivers one or more deliverables. This is the iterative part of the method, it is repeated over and over again for the next three steps. The cycle plan involves defining each task that needs to be accomplished in each project cycle according to the WBS but is adapted between cycles. Order of the tasks is established, interdependencies are identified and assigned to employees with a given deadline.

Cycle completion

The cycle work begins and is monitored throughout the cycle, it can be changed as the development team work on the project. The cycle finishes when the pre-defined time elapses, and all the tasks that were not done during this cycle are reconsidered and reprioritised, if they were to move to the next cycle. Every team member has daily tasks and need to post updates at the completion of each day. This allows variances to be caught at an early stage and corrective action is taken into plan. Ensuring consistent contact, noting any demands for change and new ideas for improvement is critical. They should also be discussed in the next cycle when the team encounters some problematic situations.

Client checkpoint

The Client review is an important step of the process, the client team and the development team come together and review the accomplished deliverables during this cycle and evaluate the quality of the produced functionality features. Together with the project manager a plan will be conducted on any corrections or improvements to be made for the next cycle. Once the review is done then the sequence Cycle Plan → Cycle Build → Client Checkpoint are iterated until the project is complete or until the time and budget has been exhausted.

Post-version review

Completion of the project, the project manager, the client and the team will come to together and evaluate the success of the project and determine whether project goals have been accomplished and that the client is pleased. There are three important questions that need to be answered:

1. Was the expected business outcome realised?

2. What was learned that can be used to improve the solution?

3. What was learned that can be used to improve the effectiveness of APF?

Then document of the whole process is done to reflect the effectiveness of the method, lesson learned and possible improvements for future projects.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages

Finish Sooner: The APF project will finish sooner than the tradition project management project. As APF squeezes out all non-value-added work, the reason for this is that it generates less to do than those projects that follow more traditional approaches. Linear and Incremental models plan the entire project, and then the plan has to be redone from the point of change to the end of the project when change comes and is approved. Throughout the project, situation is repeated several times, making it much of the original planning into non-value-added work. The more approved modifications, the more non-value-added work there will be. APF does not have any of this excess baggage, so it is guaranteed to finish sooner than traditional approaches.

Less Expensive: Work that is non-value-adding they extra cost money. Due to frequent scope changes, there is at least a labor cost for the time spent planning activities and tasks that are never done. In the end, that alone will wastes money.

Better Business Termination Policy: In APF, deliverables are often and many. If anything goes wrong, it will be discovered earlier than in traditional project management project. Providing the project commanders with information on which to decide to terminate the project before any additional time or money is spent. Time and money will be saved by this early termination and instead will be invested in some new direction when using APF approach.

Produces Higher-quality Deliverables: The high level of customer participation in APF project means that early in the project the customer will have a look at intermediate deliverables and get the opportunity to adjust them. Therefore, the quality of the final product will exceed.

Delivers Maximum Business Value for the Time and Cost Invested: The continuous modification and redirection of an APF project means that everything that is delivered is needed and is of the customer's expected quality. The customer, in collaboration with the project manager, decides at every iteration what goes into the solution. The APF project life cycle will not outlive poorer-than-expected deliverables.

Disadvantages

Too much flexibility: It can generate constant changes in the requirements of the customer when there is too much flexibility. The client is in charge of the direction of the project and he can change one feature substantially, and then change it back to how it was originally.

Higher expectations: Supporters of this framework claim immaculate project outcomes, which increase the expectations of the client and the stakeholders.

Little project control: The management of the project is all about controlling the project and the requests for change. The project manager has really negligible control over the project when using APF.

Limitations

Focus on small teams

Because of the features of face-to-face informal communication and cooperation, agile methodologies concentrate on small teams. Face-to-face communication becomes especially difficult when a teams are larger, and more documentation is needed, which is a deviation from the agile spirit. Meanwhile, agile methodologies characterise teams according to the changing environment to be self-organising, which is mainly feasible for small teams and it does not work for larger teams, where more time is required to self-organise.

Adapting the framework

Project managers will try their best to adapt project framework to the project, and not the other way around. For every project, all project management activities are unique, which is not always a good thing, an unknown territories are often difficult to manage.

Flexibility

As it is a flexible and iterative approach it can cause delays in time and budget overruns, the Adaptive Project Framework is not suitable for both construction projects and large-scale projects.

Documentation

During the maintenance and reuse of projects, lack of documentation is a main issue. Developers have little knowledge, which causes confusion and problems, about the entire projects. The burn-out of the project team can result in a sudden loss of valuable knowledge, which is difficult to complete without compromising cost, time and quality. Due to the lack of documentation, training the new team members is another problem.

Conclusion

Adaptive Project Framework is used to maximise the value of each project and to avoid non-value adding approaches of the traditional project management. It brings out a higher level ideas of the agile methodologies. The project scoping and planning phase helps to outline and direct the project, just like traditional project management. An adaptive framework, however, allows the development team and stakeholders to effectively collaborate. In this way they can adapt the project to the changing environment and respond quickly to unknown challenges. APF is an approach that is flexible. It can help businesses to minimise expenses and maximise the value proposition when it is used correctly. Nevertheless the method of APF can not be called universal, since all project are unique and should be handled in its own way.

Annotated Bibliography

Adaptive Project Framework. Managing Complexity in the Face of Uncertainty (4)

• This is a book by Robert K. Wysocki, who is the inventor of Adaptive Project Framework approach. In his book he covers how project managers can apply this method and describes step by step all the phases of application.

Adaptive Framework to Manage Multiple Teams Using Agile Methodologies (1)

• This article goes into the increased demand of agile methodologies, that results in challenging and unique problems for software development companies, specially for those with multiple teams.

Adaptive Project Framework | Principles and Process of APF (6)

• Article describing why teams should dedicate their project management to adaptive one, goes into application of the method and what limitations it follows.