Progressive Elaboration and Rolling Wave

Introduction

Loads of confusion around these two terms, and why not, they are very similar concepts. Rather, one of them is an example of another. Am I confusing you even more? Hehe. I know, but don't worry, lets make your life easier.

Progressive Elaboration

You know how much I love to explain everything with examples and that is exactly what I will be doing here

Example 1 – You are painting a dragon on one of the walls in your room. Hehe. Not sure why I took a dragon as an example but please bear with me on this one. It will be totally worth it. You proceed with this work in stages by first drawing with a pencil. Then we will make some corrections if needed. After the corrections are made, I will slowly add colors, make corrections again if required, add shades to it and finally give the finishing touches.

With special thanks to Mehar Kohli

Doesn't it look good? By the way, this is special work by my daughter, Mehar. This is an example of Progressive Elaboration. You had something in mind; you did little work, then slowly added details to it. While adding details, you kept refining it and making adjustments based on feedback you got for the drawing. So you have progressively elaborated your work by increasing the level of detail to it.

Study: Agile Planning, Monitoring and Adapting

Rolling Wave Planning

Let us now see Rolling Wave Planning. Rolling Wave Planning is a form of progressive elaboration. Refinement of plans over the course of the project by adding details as more information is known is called Rolling Wave Planning. In rolling wave planning, we elaborate our plans progressively. Isn't it confusing? That is exactly what we did in progressive elaboration. Hehe. Don't worry, I will be using my example technique to explain the difference.

Example 2

Just imagine you are a surfer and love surfing on the sea. You enter with your surfboard. When the wave is about to hit, you plan on how to tackle that wave.

With thanks to Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

You do not plan for waves that are far away or what will come after 10 mins as you do not know about them much. You planned for the near term (wave in front) in detail while the far away things (unforeseen waves) with unknowns are planned at a higher level. This technique is called rolling wave planning.

Look at the below picture, the sea looks like this, can you plan for the next wave? No. Right?

With thanks to Ishan on Unsplash

Hope this is clear. Let's take a look at definitions of the two terms as per PMBOK 6th Edition.

Progressive Elaboration: The iterative process of increasing the level of detail in a project management plan as greater amounts of information and more accurate estimates become available.

Rolling Wave Planning: An iterative planning technique in which the work to be accomplished in the near term is planned in detail, while the work in the future is planned at a higher level.

Conclusion

In short, Rolling Wave Planning is an example of progressive elaboration of the plans

I hope I was able to do justice in explaining the difference between the two. If you need more content related to PMI-ACP^®, do check out our Mentor Program and/or video on planning, monitoring and adapting. Till next time, happy learning!

Cheers,

Nidhi.

nidhi.kohli@eduhubspot.com