Extreme Project Management (XPM) is a method of managing complex and insecure projects. The XPM project management focus is on people, not on the methods and techniques of designing an action plan and managing the implementation of the action plan.
There are no clearly defined project phases in this approach, and there are no clear guidelines of how to realize a particular project activity. With XPM, we adapt to the project activity and we do it in the best possible way. There are no long deadlines, as they are very short, often shorter than two weeks. Team members have a great deal of freedom when it comes to deciding how to realize a particular activity, but they also bear the responsibility for deadlines and the quality of that activity. This has a remarkable impact on the human factor in this type of project management. The project's team members at XPM have completely different roles and responsibilities than they do when using traditional approaches, so the XPM project manager's main challenge is to change how the team members are thinking.
In this sense, a PM promotes the following values in changing the thinking system of the team members:
- It is normal that the demands of the project and its activities are chaotic
- Uncertainty is the only safe feature of XPM
- Such types of projects cannot be completely controlled
- Change should be accepted, not opposed
- A sense of security increases by giving team members more control