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In John Stenbeck’s book “PMI-ACP and Certified Scrum Professional Exam Prep and Desk Reference”, he creates an “agile project management process grid” which describes 87 processes used in agile project management.   These processes are divided into five process groups (Initiate, Plan, Iterate, Control, and Close), which are analogous to the five process groups in traditional project management, and seven knowledge areas which can be mapped, more or less, onto the ten knowledge areas in traditional project management.

I am now covering a block of five processes that relate to risk management which are done on a repeating basis during each iteration of the project.   The first of these processes is 5.6 Problem Solving.

Risk management in agile project management begins with the science of simplicity, which means maximizing the amount of work not done by:

• eliminating what doesn’t need to be done
• focusing on ONLY what is essential

The idea is that by doing the above in each iteration, the customer/proxy will be able to clarify what the key functions of the product are from the standpoint of the customer.   In this way, the cost and risk associated with developing possibly unneeded functions is postponed until the need for those functions is established.

In short, if a feature isn’t essential to the product, it doesn’t get built!

The next post covers process 5.7 Continuous Integration.

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