If you look into the history of Project Management as we know it today, a lot of it seems to be related to the US and to US space and military programs.<p>However at the same time the former USSR had quite a few achievements both in the aerospace and military fields yet I have no knowledge of a formal project management methodology coming from the USSR (China, Japan, India and from anywhere else but the US for that matter).<p>Does anyone have some better insight into this problem? Anyone from the former USSR that worked in projects?<p>I believe this is a relevant question given Andrei Tupolev's approach to building planes: he "invariably and energetically insisted on fast and adequate technical fixes at the expense of scholastic ideal solutions. A hallmark of his was to get an aeroplane into service very rapidly; then began an often interminable process of improving the shortcomings of the "quick and dirty" initial design."<p>This sounds pretty "agile" to me.
Check out Ivar Jacobson (e.g. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivar_Jacobson" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivar_Jacobson</a>), who developed OOSE and Objectory in Sweden. I used the former in the mid-90s with great success, and it can be done in an agile manner.<p>Wikipedia says he says his latest "Essential Unified Process" "is a 'super light and agile'" Rational Unified Process, combining "the unified process camp, the agile software development camp and the process improvement camp." It's probably worth checking out.
The Toyota Production system that led into Lean manufacturing and more recently Lean thinking in software provides a strong counter example.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System</a>