The goal of any business is to seek self-sufficient growth and so are the IT businesses. With the increasing technical needs, the IT industry is focusing on improvement for all type of internal processes such as – project management, strategic planning and implementation of resources. The backbone of an IT business is ‘project’. From business objectives to resource planning, roadmaps to budget allocation – the whole team focus on everything related to their project. Project managers and business analysts try day and night to find the successful project methodologies. In this post, we have tried to put forward top 10 project management methodologies. Let’s get started –
1. Agile
It is a most widely used, highly flexible and value-centered methodology. The project manager sets milestones to divide the project and ask client feedback on every milestone delivery. The changes can be made as per the client’s requirement. The milestones are called sprints which means short delivery cycles. In-house development teams are fond of this methodology because of its transparency, flexibility and real-time communication.
2. Scrum
This methodology is based on the Agile framework, as uses sprints, the objective of scrum approach is to deliver the project in a shorter time because it deals with the proper planning and requirement analysis at the very beginning of the project, which reduces the chance of changes and delay. Agile needs a lot of communication and feedback with the client side. In fact, it’s a development by two sides (development team and client).
3. Waterfall
Waterfall methodology is more like a traditional approach as it consists of fixed stages – idea – design- implementation- testing- maintenance. The linear approach is somehow lengthy but good for many industries. The project stages of waterfall methodology are performed one by one sequentially after successful completion of the previous stage. Each step is reviewed and verified thoroughly to proceed to another step. It’s a self-explanatory approach.
4. Kanban
This methodology is based on stage and passing the task concept. The project manager defines the stages for the team members, according to their efficiency. When the team members complete their duties, they mark it done and forward to the next stage to another member. Visual cards are utilized to denote task completion. You can visualize the workflow efficiency and know the area of improvements.
5. PERT
PERT is a short name for Project Evaluation Review Technique. Many web development companies and manufacturing companies follow this approach. Time is a vital element in this method. Every task is identified with the required time limit and then needs to be completed within a set time frame. It helps the project manager to analyze the required budget after time and resource estimation.
6. PRINCE2
PRINCE is an acronym for Projects IN Controlled Environments. It was developed in 1980 and after getting updated in 1996, it is called as PRINCE2. Previously government sectors were using this methodology and later on private sectors also adopted it. It emphasizes clear step planning, business scope, and cost analysis and risk mitigation. The core business plan is broken into small plans to achieve speed and efficiency in the tasks.
7. Extreme Programming (XP)
This methodology shares some traits with the Agile methodology as it is also working on short cycle delivery of the projects. The cycles are organized and defined daily or weekly as per the requirements. It overall improves quality of process and project and reduces the time. The aim of utilizing this method is to bring the client satisfaction which helps the sustainable growth of any organization.
8. Adaptive
Well-understood by its name, the Adaptive methodology is a solution to the problems faced in traditional methodologies. It is hard to analyze all the requirements at the beginning of the project. As the project starts and comes into different phases, some of its requirement changes. Traditional approaches do not allow us to implement new changes in the midway of the project. The adaptive framework allows adopting as much as the changes continuously throughout the process.
9. Crystal
This approach is a family of all approach which strongly focuses on the communication between team members to create the most optimized project solution. According to crystal methodology, team communication is a necessary aspect and one should follow it to focus on skill sets rather than tools. Projects are unique and have unique requirements too, so why not we use unique minds in development.
10. Critical chain
Critical chain is a combination of PERT and critical path methodology. It uses rigidness of PERT and task order from critical path approach. Project managers use planning methods to assign goals and resources to execute the tasks which makes it faster 10% to 50% than other traditional approaches.
Conclusion
Every business must choose the right methodologies by analyzing their project requirements and resource availability. All these methodologies help us to simplify our tasks and provides a smooth workflow to achieve business goals.
