To bring a project to its successful completion, it is important to execute it following a solid work scheme. Hence the advantage of understanding the different types of project methodology. Let's discover them.
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What is the methodology of a project?
Before we start with our main topic on types of project methodology, it is always good to go first to the definitions. A project methodology is simply the set of skills, topics, tools, techniques and knowledge applied to achieve precise objectives in a general plan.
These methodologies have been acquiring different forms over the years according to schemes developed with digital support. This process has reached the point where talking about project management methodology often automatically designates the tool, format or software used in a given context, with this function. The tool has then appropriated the abstract nominality of work.
Among these frameworks used to structure projects there is an important variety of formats. Considering the correctness or incorrectness of each according to our expectations would be futile: each context, with its purpose, group of workers and receiving client, determines the kind of methodology that needs to be put into operation.
Types of project methodology
Here we name a few types of project methodologies as examples; To help clarify ideas further:
Agile
The agility to which its name refers is no accident. Agile is a methodology based on the idea of the best possible performance brought about by the most flexible format possible. Of revolutionary appearance at the end of the last century and the beginning of the present, Agile was immediately applied with success in the technological sector and diversified into a large group of tools for specific functions.
In the manifesto with which it broke into the world, Agile made the bases of its light dogma clear, consisting above all of its adaptability to unforeseen scenarios over and above a pre-established iron plan, endowment of individual and relational closeness to interactions within the team, self-management of the different work modules, expectation of finding a collaborative face more than demanding in the client, software in movement over the meticulous compilation of documentation and division of effort into different periodic phases called sprints.
Each sprint consists of a temporary space of one week or one month and is based on work focused on generating a product with immediate functionality, distributed in daily sessions of collective work. A small sprint can seriously modify from the primacy of some objectives over others to the nature of the objectives themselves. This division causes a dynamic and flexible advance.
Flexibility is precisely the greatest attraction of an Agile format. Driving a car through an unknown desert, the team adjusts to the unevenness of the terrain, changing direction, tires and driving style as the moment requires. The methodology cancels the traditional idea of total predictability of situations to propose a sinuous movement through the shifting reality.
Given this obstinately mutable character, it can be said that, among all the types of project methodology, Agile is a system built more on work philosophies than on fixed structured processes. If each minimal process has a transformative potential over the entire operation, it makes no sense to focus on large static schemes that contain the project.
What could be the areas in which this agile methodology has full development? You guessed it. Game and software development in general is often an ideal space for the Agile format, due to its ever-evolving nature, youthful workers, and spontaneous and flexible work interactions that almost border on casual. A perfect habitat for pure agility.
scrum
Scrum is a project methodology whose existential purpose is to popularize and give a practical channel to the Agile philosophy. More oriented to preserve the productive continuity of an already established complex structure, Scrum focuses on the proper training of self-management groups similar to those found in its agile brother, but this time organized around work periods called iterations, usually lasting half a month or a whole month.
The Scrum methodology is one of those that places more emphasis on the self-managed dynamism of small groups working in short periods of time.
On a daily basis, the self-managed team of a maximum of nine people reports on the progress, setbacks and stagnation of the shared project in meetings called scrums led by a Scrum Master, which lead first to a demonstration of the completed work to decide its approval and second, to a retrospective, recounting everything that has happened, what should be continued and what should be interrupted.
Scrum is a flexible format intended a priori for software development that can hardly be adapted to the world of grid strategy, financial fixity and closed cycles, of any agency. That is why the Scrum methodology has been readapted and remixed in many companies to streamline traditional structures without completely altering them, in a wise balance between efficiency, team relational aspect and promptness.
Waterfall
Waterfall is a methodology that responds to the traditional parameters that we have learned in the past regarding the achievement of projects. Everything is organized around a waterfall of stages that starts from the initial requirements of what is proposed. As we descend in the waterfall we observe a hermetic sequence of phases that inaugurate each other without variation. Each phase must be finished so that it is possible to move on to the next, without overlapping.
This rigid Waterfall does not admit unforeseen modifications, except with express requests towards the top of the responsibility and that can be denied. The entire system is centralized in a single predetermined, long-term plan and in large execution groups, which privileges predictability over adaptation.
As we can see, this is the complete opposite of Agile and Scrum. For this reason, Waterfall is often seen as the grandfather of project methodologies, made of old-fashioned, unproductive and slow perspectives. And it is true that in the work process it becomes more complicated to go back to correct a flaw or any detail that could compromise the rest of the plan. After all, it is a cascade that only supports one direction.
You can also warn about the risk implicit in this type of scheme with respect to the delivery of the final product. While other more malleable systems establish the need for continuous collaboration between the team and the client, Waterfall maintains the conservative thesis that places the client only at the end of the waterfall, ready to accept or reject. No installment delivery. No progressive review.
Of course, we can point out from the positive point of view that Waterfall is available for situations in which the light format would be inappropriate or even counterproductive. Situations in which the objectives are clear, routine security is needed, the development area is already well established and changing something continuously would imply losing the sense of what is taking place. Sometimes it takes an experienced grandfather to carry your goals far. For this there is Waterfall.
XP
XP, short for Extreme Programming, is a project methodology focused on quality software development through a work format that favors adaptation to changing customer needs. In this sense, it is not very different from the horizontal and communicative agility systems of Agile and Scrum.
However, XP includes normative requirements consisting of simple goal descriptions (user stories), ongoing product testing (TDD), pair programming with one party writing the code and another supervising, and compiling all components to make recurring tests of the entire system (continuous integration).
As can be seen, it is an agile methodology but much more regulated to solve errors step by step instead of discovering them at the last minute when it is too late, to improve the quality of the code and to reduce repetitive tasks based on an activity of extreme efficiency.
Lean
Lean is one of the types of project methodology where the English maxim of less is more, less is more. Lean recommends scraping everything that can be considered non-essential from the management structure in order to put the team on the best optimization path. By concentrating on this main commandment and principle, it does not really result in a methodology with clear proposed structures. What interests Lean is that the structure is minimal and effective, whatever its form.
The Lean methodology strips your system of everything accessory to increase the effectiveness of your project management.
Lean divides this optimization process into three aspects, baptized with the curious names of mute, mura y Muri.
Muda focuses on attacking the concept of waste: all those activities that do not produce anything of value for customer satisfaction and yet involve time, effort and resource consumption for the team.
Mura has to do with going against the notion of variability: the variation that is regularly introduced into the process wears out and unbalances team capabilities that would be saved by betting more on process standardization.
Muri confronts the possibility of overloading the system: working at a rate that is prohibitive for our abilities erodes the enthusiasm of the team due to simple exhaustion and slows down their productivity. A maximum of 70% is the appropriate limit to concentrate the effort.
Lean is, then, the methodology of the essential. Very useful to reorient a project to the path that corresponds to it after getting lost in useless and costly drifts. With Lean, what does not contribute to the generation of value for the client, must simply be left out.
Kanban
The Kanban experience can be summed up as a project methodology aimed at focusing the work on a single task and guaranteeing visualization of the work that is being carried out, representing its flow. The Kanban board is a classic of collective projects, on whose surface pending orders, work in progress and completed tasks are arranged in successive columns. In a sense, it is a valid simplification of the Scrum system, much more normative in its structure.
The constant vision of the relationship between what is requested and what is finished, going through the amount of what is in development, ensures that the attention is placed where it should be, calculates with more certainty the speed with which a product is entered with respect to The initial request makes what is requested explicit and avoids stagnation.
In environments dedicated to maintenance, Kanban can be very helpful, due to its ease in structuring constant performance and its willingness to redirect priorities depending on the needs raised.
We invite you to watch this interesting video where the Spanish Marta Falcón explains succinctly how a project is managed using the Kanban methodology. With its traditional blackboard included.
scrumban
If we talked in the previous section about the similarities of Scrum with Kanban, in this we must talk about the obvious fusion between both methodologies, with the title of Scrumban. This one tries to adopt a middle path between two types of format, extracting from one and the other what it considers the best of its proposals.
For example, the system retains the flexible notion of structured work around specific Kanban orders, but also maintains the concept of a daily scrum meeting, to streamline the ongoing process.
It could be summed up in that Scrumban eliminates the work cycles in iterations of half a month or a whole month of the classic Scrum to adopt a delivery posture that is much more flexible and adapted to the current project, and also partially leaves aside the open format of Kanban to grant to the project the effective continuity of the scrum conference. A logical negotiation between two great management systems.
PMBOK
The Project Management Body of Knowledge, defined by its acronym as PMOBK, consists of a guide of essential steps to complete a project. It is the most theoretical system of all, since it only indicates the general framework under which a plan must be oriented, without paying much attention to the precise structure of the organization that works on it. The PMBOK points out five basic and essential stages to make a work system possible: start, planning, execution, control and closure.
Although it is a methodology that cannot be executed in itself, it is still useful at a very pragmatic level, to locate the systematized order of your project within a global work standard.
PRINCE2
We close with PRINCE2 for a simple reason: it is the giant of project methodologies. PRINCE2 covers each of the aspects that have been pointed out with respect to an effective organization of work. The methodology requires starting from scratch, based on a sensible justification about how peremptory the existence of the final product is, who exactly would benefit, and the feasibility of the cost for the team that is preparing to carry it out. Each step of PRINCE2 is a firm reality check for the viewer.
A British state product in the mid-90s, PRINCE2 is a vast method that is not particularly applicable to small targets of tiny companies. The system is intended to bring great technological developments to an international level. The project under this system is strictly managed by a board that is the unambiguous owner of the planning and daily reviews the activities below its hierarchy through a designated manager.
PRINCE2 is a closed methodology in the vacuum with respect to all types of risk. The roles for each project representative are well distributed and defined, the objectives are clear, the viability of the entire process is thoroughly studied from the very beginning and the management in general is divided into many phases, which in turn have also a defined role and own processes. PRINCE2 is the methodology for projects of immense scope.
Conclusion
The choice of a good methodology, among all the types of project methodologyIt can be complicated, but not impossible. It largely depends on your specific needs when setting up your project. Calculate how predictable is the environment in which you have to operate, how vast are the interactions that you must carry out and the pace of work that you are willing to maintain according to your professional philosophy and you will be able to choose from the list with an approximate certainty.
The list is not a complete summary of all the possible methodologies that exist in the market. However, it is quite representative of its most select names. A good decision based on your work methodology can guarantee the success of your venture.
If you have been interested in this article on types of project methodology, you are probably very focused on the concept of planning applied to various scenarios, especially in productive work. In the following link you will find another article dedicated to goals of a good business plan. Follow the link!
