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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.

The previous posts have covered the “Initiate”, “Plan”, and “Iterate” process group of an agile project.   Tomorrow I start on the “Control” process group, but I first want to define what I mean by that term of “process group”.   Why do I use this instead of the word “phase”?    Phase implies a sequence that goes more or less from one set of processes to another.   In reality, after the initiate and plan process groups, an agile project actually shuttles back and forth between the “iterate” and “control” process groups.   In an iterate process group, you’re working the plan.   At some point you want to take a step back, monitor the work you’ve been doing, and see if you are conforming to the plan.   If not, you have two choices

1. Re-adjust the work to the plan, i.e., get back on track
2. Realize that it is the plan, not the work, that needs to be changed.   Here you are changing the track itself.

In any case, this series of “course adjustments” goes on continuously in an agile project.

The first process in this control process group is one which covers the knowledge area of “External Stakeholder Engagement”; it is the process 1.9 Product Demonstration, and is the subject of the next post.

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