As a little girl, my dad gave me total freedom. I was allowed to make all my decisions in life, choose my friends, and choose what I become when I grow up. Most of the friends I knew, their parents would decide their friends, the profession they chose and all major decisions for them. Both my friends and I grew up to be just fine. My dad and mom had different thoughts of parenting but I never knew about it until I became a parent and reached out for advice. They never discussed their different thoughts of parenting in front of me. In the front, they were unified towards their parenting approach for the kids – allowing kids to make their own choices in life. Now, I hear you think out loud about the relationship between project management and parenting?
Similar to parenting, project management can have many different flavors. A particular methodology is not right or wrong. It depends on a number of factors including the historical experience of the methodologies, what is working well for the team/company, how well is the Program Manager acquainted with the different methods, how long is the release cycle, etc.
The most important part of the methodologies is that all the members involved in making decisions be unified towards the approach, methodology and rules that that are applicable in it. If 2 or more members differ on the approach of project management, it is highly possible that the end part of the project (product, release) will be a disaster.
What is Project Management?
Project Management is the process of leading, planning, organizing, managing resources towards specific goals. The constraints of project goals include scope, time, quality and budget.
Project Management Methodologies
- Traditional approach: Sequence of steps that need to be completed towards a goal. The 5 developmental parts of a project include initiation, planning and design, execution, monitoring and controlling, completion. They include the waterfall model, rational unified process.
- PRiSM (Projects integrating Sustainable Methods): A structured project management method developed to align organizational sustainability initiatives with project delivery.
- Critical Chain Project Management: A method of planning and managing projects that put emphasis on the resources required to execute project tasks.
- Agile project management: Iterative method of finding requirements for engineering projects in a highly flexible and interactive manner. It is usually used for projects with smaller release cycles
- Lean project management: Delivering more value with less waste
- Extreme project management: Refers to the method of managing very complex and uncertain projects.
There are many more project management methodologies available and used in the industry worldwide. A list of all the popular project management methodologies is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management