What is Agile and Waterfall?
Most all IT PM practitioners have heard the terms ‘Agile’ and ‘Waterfall’ as it relates to software (SW) development. Those practitioners involved in SW development will have their own bias either for or against one or both of these SW development methodologies. Notice something here? I said SW development methodologies and not Project Management methodologies. That is because Agile and Waterfall are not Project Management methodologies they are Software Development methodologies.
What are Project Processes?
According to the Project Management Institute (PMI) PMBOK® 5th Edition “Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements. Project management is accomplished through the appropriate application and integration of the 47 logically grouped project management processes, which are categorized into five Process Groups. These five Process Groups are: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling and Closing.” PMBOK® also indicates that “One can use different methodologies and tools (e.g. agile, waterfall, PRINCE2) to implement the project management framework.” So did I just disagree with myself here? The short answer is no.
While methods such as Agile and Waterfall are established SW development methodologies they cannot be thought of as Project Management ‘Methodologies’. Why? Because a project is much more than conception, development and delivery of a product. Project management methodologies must address all of the 47 project management process groups. This includes such leading items as project portfolio management where organizations decide what projects to include in their portfolio to resource management items as project team member evaluation. Methodologies and the resulting templates and tools required to consistently achieve successful projects are developed (or adapted from other sources) by the organization’s Project Management Office (PMO) and incorporated into a Project Management System.
So What are Project Management Methodologies?
The Project Management System will include (among others) prescribed methods for project financial and schedule tracking, executive and stakeholder reporting, project scope management and resource selection and management. These methods will be common to the organization’s entire project – SW development, IT infrastructure or ERM implementation. And the organization will most likely integrate Agile or Waterfall type SW development methodology into their project management methods. The organization cannot however utilize these methods as the overall methodology for managing SW development projects simply because they do not address all aspects required of the PMBOK® five process groups.
Timothy Knutsen MBA, PMP
©Knutsen Associates, LLC 2015
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