Manage It!

Steer the Project with Rhythm

Every project has a natural rhythm. Some projects churn, making progress slowly. Others seem to have rocket boosters—every time you turn around, the team is accomplishing more work. All projects have a rhythm, which changes over time. Your job is to see your project’s rhythm, and see whether any practices could help your project build and maintain a reasonable rhythm so your project can succeed.

The more serial your life cycle is, the more your project’s rhythm will vary by phase (Got Good Rhythm [Rot04a]). In the earlier stages, the project might seem to undergo lots of churn, and you’ll wonder whether you can ever define the requirements or whether the design will ever stop changing. For projects that “mysteriously” ...