Adapt and Close Summary

Monitoring and adapting (traditionally referred to as monitoring and control) are part of any good project management approach. While APM teams utilize some common project management practices, their attitudes toward monitoring and adapting are unique. For example, rather than corrective action, agile teams prefer adaptive action. Although corrective actions are necessary from time to time, the predominant attitude of agile project teams is to adapt and move forward rather than to blame and write exception reports .

Frequent iterations that deliver working features allow agile project teams to make frequent adjustments based on verifiable results rather than documentation artifacts. This can create an uncomfortable situation for some managers and customers who don't want to deal constantly with either reality or the need to make tradeoff decisions.

Finally, the Adapt phase provides a short respite from the intensity of short-cycle iterative development. In a serial project, in which a working product may be months or even years in the future, it is very difficult to maintain high levels of work intensitythere is always tomorrow. Agile projects sometimes have the opposite problemthey can be overly intense . The brief review, adapt, and replan activities of the Adapt phase give team members time to catch their breath , and their mental faculties , before rushing off to the next delivery iteration.