The Most Common Project Management Methods
To succeed in today's forward-thinking world, leaders, managers, and even business owners can no longer stick to a single methodology. Instead, to get ahead, they need to become well-versed in various management methodologies and understand how to put them all together to make sure they can carry out their specific goals and projects to their full capability.
To better help you understand these different methodologies, we have created the following blog post to identify some of the most common project management methodologies and help you figure out which ones are the best choice for your business.
What are the Common Project Management Methodologies?
Project management methodologies are basically a set of guidelines, processes, and principles for managing a project. However, depending on the project management methodology you decide to use, it will end up defining how you communicate and work with your team.
To learn more about these different methodologies, the below list will walk you through some of the most common project management methodologies and how each one works.
Agile Project Management
In truth, Agile is not actually a methodology. Instead, it is a set of principles used for developing a project throughout its whole life cycle. Typically, these Agile life cycles are composed of several incremental steps that need to be completed to conclude a project. As a result, this methodology is often a client favorite since the steps involved can be adjusted as you go along, rather than trying to finish everything linearly.
Scrum Project Management
The scrum project management methodology involves proposed principles and processes that are needed to improve delivery. Scrum methodology is often the most popular framework to put the principles of the Agile methodology into practice. While also enabling cross-functional and self-managing teams to deliver results fast.
Lean Project Management
Lean project management's primary goal is to eliminate waste and streamline processes in order to deliver more results with less. This methodology's primary focus is centered around the theme of efficiency. Meaning that if you want to start accomplishing your goals, you will need to begin by identifying your project's value and then maximizing it through constant improvement, which helps to eliminate waste and increase the flow of value.
Waterfall Project Management
Often referred to as the Software Development Life Cycle, the Waterfall Project Management methodology is a theme that values solid planning and doing something only once. With this methodology, you can plan projects thoroughly and then execute them through different phases.
PRINCE2 Project Management
The PRINCE2 project management methodology focuses on controlled project management that leaves nothing up to chance. PRINCE2 stands for PRojects IN Controlled Environments and is a process-oriented methodology that focuses on dividing up a project into multiple states, with each one having its own processes.
CPM Project Management
The CPM project management methodology, also known as the Critical Path Method, is a resource-utilization algorithm that is used to schedule a set of activities for projects. When using CPM to model your projects, you will need to input all the necessary factors involved in your project and then output the optimal timeline for completing this project. The foundation behind the Critical Path Method is that you cannot start a new task until you finish the previous one.
Conclusion
Remember, at the end of the day, the best methodology is the one that can improve your business organically, help increase the value of your output, and be able to adapt to real-world conditions.