Meryl's Notes Blog

STQe-Letter has an excellent take on a software project management using Lewis and Clark as an example. Yes, this is the Meriwether Lewis and William Clark who led the Corps of Discovery to explore the uncharted West.

Lately I’ve been reading Stephen Ambrose’s book about the Lewis and Clark expedition. The project began with an enormous amount of training and planning. The sponsor (Thomas Jefferson) and the project manager (Lewis) worked together preparing the requirements. They knew they would have to rely on a lot of exploratory testing. Lewis pieced together the right people to make up the team. They were experts in extreme programming. After each iteration, the manager and comanager (Clark) constantly revised the development plans. Many of the initial requirements proved naive and unworkable.

They struggled through the lifecycle like a keel boat pushing upstream through uncharted territory. Ultimately, good project management proved flexible enough to adapt to every development, while keeping the interests of the sponsor as the central priority. The final product didn’t have precisely the same set of features initially envisioned, the deadline was pushed back about a year, but all concerned were well pleased with the outcome. The retrospective conducted by the sponsor (they didn’t have facilitators in this role yet) revealed that, given all the unexpected developments (scope creep), it would be hard to improve on any aspect of the project.