Traditional Project Management Approach

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

INTRODUCTION

In today’s world project managers play a great role for the success of a business or an organization. As leaders in the IT industry, project managers have plenty responsibilities and goals to achieve. Every leader or manager has their own goals and targets to meet. The main aim of a project manager is to enhance and create different sorts of strategies in order to attain or achieve a company’s objective.

Project management can be defined as the application of skills, techniques, knowledge, tools in order to meet the requirements of the project.(PMI, 2008:p.6) Project management has a lot of scope in today’s world, and being a project manager is amongst the top occupation or jobs in the world. What greater feeling or satisfaction would one have than supervising or running and delivering a project that creates value and maximizes profit in a business.

Project management is classified into two main approaches, namely – The Traditional Approach and The Agile Approach. In the 20th century project management was a very difficult task to perform for the people; completing one task was not only tricky, but also a confusing job. The solution to these problems slowly came in hand when the project methodologies were introduced. Methodologies are steps and processes that are continuously taken in order to achieve the completion of a project. The steps that are taken to complete these projects under the project management methodologies are; planning, executing, observing or monitoring and controlling. Every project manager has their own idea and ways of looking at things; some might use the traditional approach while the others use the agile project management approach. The manager sees what approach is best fit to achieve maximum level of positive results or targets.

OVERVIEW

When talking about Project Management, an overview will be given of two approaches that project managers use/used to complete projects. These approaches include

Traditional Project Management Approach (TPM)

According to (Wysocki, 2009)the easiest approach to managing a project is by using the Traditional Project Management if the goals and solutions are known upfront. TPM was first introduced in the 1950s and it is still beingused by project managers to manage certain projects to-date. In order for this approach to be successful, there are a number of steps that need to be followed, and these include; Initiation, Planning & Design, Execution, Monitoring and controlling systems, and Completion. These steps are referred to as project life cycle.

An upside of using TPM is that the whole requirement is known and documented upfront which enables the project manager to estimate the full budget for completing the project during project planning.A downside of this approach, on the other hand, is that clients are not really involved in the process. Hence, they are not able to see the product untilafter the project is completed and cannot make any changes to the product if necessary during the development.

People do not adapt to change so easily and since they have been using traditional approaches to complete a project, they might as well continuewith it.However, considering in today’s world, this could not be the best wayhence agile project management approach is being used more recently.

Agile Project Management Approach (APM)

According to (Layton, 2012),traces of APM could be found back in the 1930s, but it was not officially recognized until August 2001 when a group of experts in the software development field convened. The outcome of their meeting produced theAgile Manifesto documentwhich highlights the purpose and principles proposed by the alliance in aiding more successful project management in software development. The alliance emphasizes that, they are "uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it". In doing this, higher value is given to "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools", "Working software over comprehensive documentation", "Customer collaboration over contract negotiation", "Responding to change over following a plan". (Fowler & Highsmith, 2001).

Agile PM approach can be used under conditions wherethe project objectives are well known; there exists active participation of the customer; the project team and the customer are co-located; "incremental feature-driven development is possible; and visual documentation

(Cards on the wall vs. formal documentation) is acceptable. (Hass, 2007).

Some of the most popular agile methodologies are Scrum, Xtreme Programming (XP) and Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM).

Ability to respond and accommodate changing customer/project requirements is one of APM strength, but it also is not free from limitations. One of its limitations, is that it becomes difficult to apply to project management if the customer or a representative is not available as part of the project team.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENCES BETWEEN TPM AND APM APPROACHES

Scope Management

Agile and traditional project management use different methods to address scope management and these are,

Discovering new project requirements that are defined by the project team which can be identified at any given time. Such requirements are added by the product owner (customer) in the product backlog (user requirements). Whereas in traditional project management, the project manager is in charge of defining the requirements, once the project requirements has been defined any changes made to it during the project is considered to be negative which is referred to as scope creep. (dummies book)

Time Management

Scheduling tasks, creating the schedule and assigning work in relation to the schedule and monitoring progress against the schedule is concerned with the traditional project management. The schedule is usually created during the initial planning phase and entered into a project scheduling system when the project is predictive. While for agile the requirements are always fluctuating, it can be difficult to create and maintain a meaningful project schedule. The initial planning effort will usually include the beginning set of requirements and divide the project to iteration with a preliminary assignment of requirements to iterations.(system analysis and desing)

Cost Management

Due to the unexpected requirement changes throughout the project, it is difficult for Agile project managers to estimate the time and cost of a project therefore estimating the cost isn’t as important as controlling the cost during the life of the project.

For traditionioal????

Risk Management

Since all the tests are conducted at the end of a project in traditional project management approach, meaning that if problems are found it can affect the entire project. Where as in Agile project management, tests are conducted at every stage, if a technical approach, a requirement, or even an entire product is not possible, the development team discovers this in a short period of time and hence enough time to make corrections and if a correction is not possible, stakeholders don’t spend a lot on a failed project.

Nothing found yet

Quality Management

Have it!!!

TOOLS, TECHNIQUES, MODELS AND PROJECT LIFE CYCLE MODELS

Brainstorming is another crucial technique used in project planning. It can be used to give opinions and ideas during processes such as "Project plan development, Issue management, Risk response planning, Scope Definition, Cause-and-effect analysis, Decision making, Creative Problem-Solving".It is considered to be a "group technique" that requires the presence and combined effortsof the project team and other stakeholders along with "teamwork and interactions" in achievingdesired outcomes. (Kendrick, 2010, p. 13).

The project charter serves as an input to the project management plan. (Project Management Institute, 2008, p. 48). It is a document used to obtain approval for the commencement of the project while assigning the project manager with the official capacityto manages the project and put resources to use. The document can either be generated by the project manager or the project sponsor, but it includes the sponsor’s name and signature. Some of its content are; the project overview, scope statement, stakeholders, resource requirements (if known), among others. (Kerzner, 2009, pp. 468-469).

Critical Path Method

Critical path method (CPM) is a tool used to estimate total duration of a project. "A critical path for a project is a series of activities that determine the earliest time by which a project can be completed" (Thornley, 1968, p. 228).

When projects do not meet its deadline (schedule date) that’s when CPM arises. It was first introduced in 1958; it produces either the cheapest way of executing the project or alternatively the cheapest way of doing the job as quickly as possible (Thornley, 1968).

"It is the longest path through the network diagram and had the least amount of slack and float. Slack and float is the amount of time an activity may be delayed without delaying a succeeding activity or the project finish date" (Schwalbe, Information technology project management, 2010).

Work Breakdown Structure

Like a family tree the work break down structure is a name for an end-item-oriented like subdivision of the project, products deliverables, or items to be built, work tasks and services required to complete the project. It specifies the project, the work to be done and can display them on a chart.

CONCLUSION

In a nutshell, not only do project managers these days use agile project management approach, but also some of the project managers use the traditional project management approach. After critically analyzing the approaches here above, it really is one’s choice as to which approach they want to select/choose to accomplish a project. As u know every project manager have their own strategies to attain and achieve their objectives.