A Framework for Linking Projects and Project Management Methods

Abstract

Software development processes such as the Waterfall process and Extreme Programming are project management methods (PMMs) which are well known and widely used. However, conventional project management (PM) lacks the process concepts expressed in PMMs, and the connection between PMMs and PM is not much explored in the literature. We present data models for PM and PMM, in a framework that can articulate the PM--to--PMM relationship, illustrating with simple examples. A java/XML implementation of this framework can create and then revise a ``PMM--aware'' project, conforming to a specified PMM. In terms of the framework, we describe a simple project data visualization and associated method that can be used to synthesize a PMM for a project instance that was initially created without reference to any PMM.