On the drive home I had a thought about how big or small a project could be and still be the target of agile project management. The biggest project on the planet these days is the Joint Strike Fighter. There are big construction projects of course, like the Chunnel and the "Big Dig" in Boston, Hong Kong Airport. But JSF is BIG from a complexity point of view.
How small of a project would be interesting to APM? We just had our hardwood floor refinished. It took 7 days with all the add ons. We did the PMBOK steps: initiated the project, did the planning, controlled the process, executed the work, and closed out the project so we could move back in. These two project many anchor the ends of the spectrum. Maybe something smaller on a the small end, but probably nothing is bigger than JSF.
So if I had a matrix of APM processes (someone was going to put one together), what would the "actionable behaviors" look like in each of these extremes? Or any where along the spectrum for that matter.
This might be a way to move the conversation forward.
Using APM what actions are taken during a typical evolution cycle (an aerospace term for phase) of a project?
With this in mind the "agility" aspects of APM could be mapped against a domain, not especially a software development domain but a project domain independent of software development methodologies.