As a Project Manager, there is a big responsibility when a client and a project are assigned. There are a lot of challenges, unknown situations and risks that you must manage. Planning the project, keeping the stakeholders engaged and managing the team are some of the important things to consider. In most of the projects, time and cost are constantly modified; sometimes a compressed schedule is not enough to meet the expected date and more resources will not help (not always a task can be done faster by adding more resources), or the cost of the project is reduced keeping the same scope and agreed dates. Applying different techniques of one conventional method often does not work. Do you feel identified?
It is not enough to just apply one conventional methodology to manage a project, sometimes is required to use your expertise and innovation in order to have a mix/hybrid between methodologies to achieve what is required such as Scrum, Waterfall, Kanban.
What you need to understand to have a hybrid methodology?
In order to work with a hybrid methodology, you should validate:
- The scope of the project itself (simplicity or complexity, consider what delivers the most value).
- The client culture (does it add value to deliver by sprint? Everyone understands the concept of agile?).
- The internal culture (rigidity or flexibility of your work environment, organizational goals).
- The team values (the team feels comfortable with the methodology).
Every project is different, so adding a hybrid methodology is something that will be a tailored solution.
How to implement a hybrid methodology?
Some examples of how to do mixing methodologies:
- Dividing the scope into areas, and after a validation with your groupwork, dividing one area into a smaller set of tasks (Sprint) to deliver them faster (have quick validations with the client before releasing the final product). Other features will be delivered at the end of the project.
- Start executing the project without having all the plan approved.
- Executing the traditional methods (waterfall) in the project up to a certain part and then use an agile perspective.
- Use a traditional method for high level planning (structure) and then add iterative elements using agile methods for the details.
In our experience, selecting the best practices of different methodologies, incorporating the right techniques (considering the project) and having a good communication between team members can be a very effective approach to execute projects in a changing environment. Consequently, what really matters is to meet user needs and deliver great value to the clients through quality work.