Project Management

Types of project management

Waterfall

The waterfall approach breaks down the project into sequential phases. Every phase is completed before the next one begins, so the visualization looks like it is flowing. It is easy to find mistakes within this structure, and it locks down the project scope quickly and avoids scope creep and pauses that come along.

Lean

The lean project management method is adopted from the Japanese lean manufacturing process. This method mainly emphasizes efficiency. Lean project management consistently works on improving the daily functions of and liquidating disabled resources, including time and effort, while optimizing productivity. Several principles of lean project management are utilized together with agile methodologies. The lean management approach significantly reduces overhead, improves teamwork, employee experience, collaboration, and increases ROI.

Agile

Agile is one of the best project management approaches since it makes efficient use of resources and assists your team in remaining flexible to potential or existing challenges or changing clients’ needs. Development teams are at the forefront of beginning agile project management, but most business teams across the organization are also using it. Like a waterfall, the agile method also breaks the project development cycle into smaller tasks, but these tasks get completed in short iterations throughout the project life cycle. The agile project management approach is widely adopted and has created subcategories like Kanban and Scrum.

Kanban

Across various industries, the adoption of the Kanban methodology is noteworthy. It focuses on visualizing and optimizing the functions to increase productivity and efficiency. This methodology represents the work in cards or Kaban on a visual display with columns illustrating various workflow stages. By limiting the work in progress, it reduces the bottlenecks and improves the flow. It focuses on continuous improvement; therefore, teams regularly analyze and refine their process. This approach also promotes transparency, flexibility, and collaboration, making it the most favorable approach for project management.

Scrum

Scrum methodology stresses iterative and incremental development. It is centered around self-organization and cross-functional teams, known as sprints, that work in short iterations. At the beginning of every sprint, it creates a task prioritizing the back of user stories, and the team completes the subset of these tasks. With daily stand-up meetings, teams communicate and address any obstacles or dependencies. Scrum master ensures team adherence to scrap principles while stakeholders maintain the product backlog.

This method promotes collaboration, flexibility, and transparency with continuous reviews and retrospectives to enhance the product and team’s process.

Six Sigma

Six Sigma uses statistical models to reduce errors in repetitive processes and aims for continuous improvement. This approach was adopted from manufacturing. Most people confuse Six Sigma with Lean. Lean focuses on avoiding waste, whereas Six Sigma emphasizes reducing errors. These two approaches work together well, and many companies have chosen an integrated variant such as Lean Six Sigma.

Critical path

Critical path schedules project from a management strategy perspective. With this method, you can easily identify every task, determine the time that it will take to complete each task and outline the dependencies. At times, independent tasks might overlap, but the extended sequence of dependent tasks becomes the critical path and specifies much of the timeline. It is an ideal approach for planning project time since it helps to identify potential roadblocks, schedule effective use of resources, and create a realistic timeline.