8 Project Management Methodologies Made Simple

ProofHub
ProofHub Blog
Published in
3 min readOct 24, 2018

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This is an exciting time in the project management world. Why? Because people are coming up with new approaches, trying new combinations, and even inculcating their leadership styles to manage projects in the best possible way.

Project management experts agree that organizations can be largely benefitted when you use a recognized project management methodology. But choosing the one project management methodology out of many methodologies could spin your head.

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Below down is a list of popular project management methodologies used by a large section of people. The list goes something like this:

  • Agile — Continuous collaboration
  • Scrum — Enabling small and cross-functional teams to deliver fast
  • Kanban — Increasing visibility of work in progress to improve speed and quality of work
  • Lean — Streamlining and eliminating waste to deliver more with less
  • Scrumban — Limiting ongoing work like Kanban along with a daily standup meeting
  • Waterfall — Extensive planning followed by sequential execution through phases
  • XP — Extreme programming — Robust development to ensure quality
  • PRINCE2 — Controlled project management made of principles and processes

Let’s take a brief look at these methodologies and see how beneficial they can be for your organization.

  1. Agile

Agile is one of the hottest buzzwords today. These days a number of firms are using the agile methodology to help them with software development. It consists of a set of principles that primarily focuses on the end-state in a process. The agile manifesto outlines four values: individuals and interactions, customer collaboration, working software, and responding to change. Agile is more than just a methodology, it is a complete approach and agile training helps you understand how to run your projects using agile principles irrespective of the tools you are using.

2. Scrum

Scrum is probably one of the most effective frameworks used within software development. It lets teams address complex problems alongside delivering output in the highest possible value. With scrum, the product is built in a series of fixed-length iterations called sprints. A sprint consists of four parts: sprint planning, daily stand-up, sprint demo, and sprint retrospective.

3. Kanban

The kanban methodology is pretty much like a visual system for work management where you get to see work as it moves through a process. Kanban approach follows the following six practices to improve speed and quality of work.

  • Visualize the workflow
  • Limit work in progress
  • Manage flow
  • Make process policies explicit
  • Feedback loops
  • Improve collaboration (using models and scientific methods)

4. Lean

The lean project management methodology is all about delivering more with less. It promotes a work process breakdown so that you can identify and eliminate “Muda” which symbolizes all form of waste, delays, and bottlenecks. It consists of 3 types of M’s — Muda, Mura, and Muri. As a project management methodology, it enables to do more with less manpower, less money, and less time.

5. Scrumban

Scrumban is an Agile development methodology that is a hybrid of Scrum and Kanban. It is a highly versatile and modern approach to manage work as it provides the provides the structure of Scrum with the visualization of Kanban methodology.

6. Waterfall

Waterfall methodology is a traditional project management methodology which is easiest to understand of them all. It focuses on making a solid plan and effective execution. Also called Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), it is sequential in nature as one task must be completed before the next starts.

7. XP

Extreme programming (XP) is a software development methodology which is intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements. The five values of XP are communication, simplicity, feedback, courage, and respect.

8. PRINCE2

PRINCE2 (PRojects IN Controlled Environments) is a process-based methodology used by the UK Government, widely recognized and practiced in the private sector in the UK and internationally. It is mainly used to run large and complex projects.

To know more about it, check out the following infographic.

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