Project Management: Waterfall, Agile, & Hybrid Approaches
Summary
TLDRIn this video, Candice Porter explains the differences between Waterfall, Agile, and Hybrid project management methodologies. She highlights when to use each approach, noting Waterfall for well-known requirements and Agile for dynamic, customer-driven projects. Hybrid combines both, tailored to organizational needs.
Takeaways
- π Waterfall project management, also known as traditional or predictive project management, is about developing a detailed plan and following it throughout the project lifecycle.
- ποΈ Waterfall is best suited for projects with well-known requirements, such as building a house or a bridge, where changes can be costly.
- π The waterfall process involves sequential steps: gathering requirements, designing, building, testing, validating, and deploying, with a 'big bang' outcome at the end.
- π€ Agile project management emphasizes collaboration with the customer and is ideal for projects with less defined requirements, such as software development.
- π Agile uses 'sprints', which are time-boxed periods for completing specific work and delivering project increments, as opposed to the waterfall's single large outcome.
- π§ Hybrid project management is a flexible approach that combines elements of both waterfall and agile, tailored to the needs of the organization and the project.
- π οΈ In hybrid projects, phases may alternate between waterfall and agile methodologies, or run in parallel, depending on the nature of the work and the project requirements.
- π Waterfall management uses a traditional work breakdown structure to plan and organize tasks, considering dependencies and critical paths.
- π Agile management involves a backlog of prioritized requirements and a sprint backlog for the work to be done in a specific sprint, with durations typically ranging from one to four weeks.
- π Agile projects often use dedicated resources and feature a product or project increment showcase after each sprint, allowing for customer feedback and potential requirement adjustments.
- π Both waterfall and agile methodologies have their strengths and are chosen based on the nature of the project requirements and the project environment.
- π Scrum is an agile approach with specific roles and is one way to execute agile project management, often discussed in the context of dedicated resources and sprints.
Q & A
What is the main focus of Waterfall project management?
-The main focus of Waterfall project management is to develop a comprehensive plan at the beginning of the project and strictly adhere to that plan throughout the project lifecycle.
Can you give an example of when Waterfall project management would be most appropriate?
-Waterfall project management is most appropriate when the requirements are well known and the project involves significant costs for changes, such as in building a house or a bridge.
What is the typical flow of steps in the Waterfall methodology?
-The typical flow in the Waterfall methodology involves gathering requirements, creating a design, developing or building the solution, testing and validating, and finally deploying the project outcome.
How does Agile project management differ from Waterfall in terms of collaboration with the customer?
-Agile project management involves much closer collaboration with the customer throughout the project, allowing for the gathering of additional requirements and adjustments as the project progresses.
What is the term used to describe the time-boxed periods in Agile project management?
-In Agile project management, the term used to describe the time-boxed periods is 'sprints'.
What is a sprint in Agile project management and how does it differ from the Waterfall approach?
-A sprint in Agile project management is a set amount of time dedicated to accomplishing specific work and delivering a part of the project incrementally. This differs from the Waterfall approach, which typically results in one big outcome at the end of the project.
What is Hybrid project management and how does it combine elements of Waterfall and Agile?
-Hybrid project management is a combined approach that tailors elements of both Waterfall and Agile methodologies to meet the specific needs of an organization, its culture, and the project itself. It can switch between phases of Waterfall and Agile as needed.
Why might Hybrid project management be used in a project involving both hardware and software development?
-Hybrid project management might be used in a project involving both hardware and software development because hardware typically benefits from the Waterfall approach due to the high cost of changes, while software can be more flexible and benefit from Agile's iterative and incremental delivery.
What is the traditional work breakdown structure used in Waterfall project management?
-The traditional work breakdown structure in Waterfall project management involves breaking down the project into deliverables, defining tasks to achieve those deliverables, and establishing dependencies and order of work to create a schedule and identify the critical path.
How does Agile project management handle requirements and prioritization?
-Agile project management uses a backlog to gather and prioritize requirements. The highest priority items are pulled into a sprint backlog for the team to work on during a sprint, ensuring that the most valuable features are developed first.
What is the role of dedicated resources in Agile project management?
-Dedicated resources are important in Agile project management because they allow the team to focus fully on the work during each sprint, ensuring that the work can be completed efficiently and effectively within the sprint's time frame.
What is Scrum and how does it relate to Agile project management?
-Scrum is an Agile approach for executing projects, characterized by specific roles and ceremonies. It is a framework within Agile project management that provides a structured way to implement the Agile methodology.
Outlines
π Introduction to Project Management Methodologies
Candice Porter introduces the video's focus on comparing three project management methodologies: Waterfall, Agile, and Hybrid. She outlines the purpose of the video, which is to provide a quick overview of each method, their differences, and the scenarios in which they are best applied. The video is structured to give viewers a clear understanding of when to use each approach, starting with Waterfall, which is also known as traditional or predictive project management.
π§ Waterfall Project Management Explained
This paragraph delves into the specifics of Waterfall project management, emphasizing its linear, sequential nature where planning is done upfront and followed throughout the project lifecycle. The process is likened to building a house or a bridge, where a comprehensive plan is critical to avoid costly changes. The steps of the Waterfall methodology are illustrated, starting from requirement gathering to design, development, testing, validation, and deployment. The 'big bang' outcome at the end of a Waterfall project is highlighted, where the completed project is delivered all at once to the customer.
π Agile Project Management: Collaboration and Iteration
The second paragraph contrasts Agile project management with Waterfall, highlighting its collaborative and iterative approach. Agile is best suited for projects with evolving requirements, such as software development. The paragraph explains the concept of 'sprints,' which are fixed-time intervals dedicated to completing specific work and delivering incremental project outcomes. Agile's flexibility is underscored, allowing for close customer collaboration and adjustments as the project progresses.
π€ Hybrid Project Management: A Blended Approach
The final paragraph introduces Hybrid project management as a blend of Waterfall and Agile methodologies, tailored to the specific needs of an organization, its culture, and project requirements. The paragraph discusses how Hybrid can combine the structured planning of Waterfall with the flexibility and customer collaboration of Agile, potentially switching between phases or running parallel tracks. Examples are given to illustrate when each approach might be used within a Hybrid framework, emphasizing the importance of planning in expensive, physical projects like aircraft manufacturing, and the adaptability of Agile for software development.
Mindmap
Keywords
π‘Waterfall Project Management
π‘Agile Project Management
π‘Hybrid Project Management
π‘Sprints
π‘Backlog
π‘Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
π‘Critical Path
π‘Requirements
π‘Incremental Delivery
π‘Scrum
π‘Project Schedule
Highlights
Introduction to the differences between waterfall, agile, and hybrid project management methodologies.
Waterfall project management is also known as traditional or predictive project management.
Focus of waterfall management is on developing a plan and following it throughout the project lifecycle.
Waterfall methodology involves steps like gathering requirements, creating design, developing, testing, and deploying.
Waterfall is best used when project requirements are well known, such as in building a house or a bridge.
Agile project management is more collaborative and involves working closely with customers throughout the project.
Agile is best used when requirements are not well known, originally developed for software development.
Agile project management involves sprints, which are time-boxed periods for accomplishing specific work.
Sprints in agile management lead to incremental project delivery, unlike waterfall's single big outcome.
Hybrid project management combines elements of both waterfall and agile, tailored to organizational needs.
Hybrid approach can switch between waterfall and agile phases based on the project's requirements.
Hardware development typically uses waterfall due to the high cost of changes, while software can be more agile.
Waterfall project management uses a traditional work breakdown structure for planning.
Agile project management utilizes a backlog to gather and prioritize requirements.
Sprints in agile are typically two weeks long, with a consistent duration throughout the project.
Agile sprints involve team members working intensively to complete work within the sprint duration.
Hybrid project management allows for a combination of planning and flexibility based on project needs.
Dedicated resources work best in agile project management, often involving roles like those in scrum.
Transcripts
hello everyone i am candice porter and
today i'm going to give you a boiled
down version of what's the difference
between waterfall
agile and hybrid project management
this will be a relatively
quick video just highlighting some of
the differences and when you may want to
use each of these methodologies
so let's get to it
[Music]
let's start by talking about waterfall
project management when we're talking
about waterfall project management you
may also hear it called traditional or
predictive project management they are
used interchangeably so if you hear one
of those three ways of referring to it
then we're all talking about this same
methodology
now waterfall project management really
focuses on developing a plan
and really following that plan
throughout the project life cycle
i'll give you an example of some of the
different steps of going through the
waterfall methodology
and this is really what you're using
when you're creating a robust project
schedule so a lot of times when you're
creating that traditional project
schedule in say ms project and you're
defining all of your dependencies and
building them in and looking at your
critical path you're generally using
waterfall project management
so we are starting at the very beginning
and developing that plan
executing the plan all the way through
now when would you use waterfall project
management this is generally used when
requirements are well known
so
building a house
building a bridge
you can imagine that you'd want to have
a full plan developed before you just
start building a house or you're going
to have a lot of expensive changes
throughout that project execution
so when requirements are well known this
tends to be the best approach
let's look a little bit about the way
that it flows so it's cold waterfall
because you flow from one step into the
other so again we're going to gather all
of those requirements for our project at
the beginning
we're then going to create the design
what's this going to look and feel like
as far as those successful deliverables
and outputs and then we're actually
going to develop or build the solution
whatever those deliverables are
we'll test and validate and then we'll
go ahead and deploy
now there's usually one big outcome
whenever we are using waterfall project
management so if you think about okay
we're building that house we're going to
go through all of these we're going to
make sure that it meets all of the
requirements that we determined in the
beginning and then we're going to deploy
we're going to hand the keys over to the
customer there's that big bang at the
end
let's look at agile project management
[Music]
so agile project management is a lot
more collaborative when we're talking
about the customer
and so we're working really closely with
them throughout the entire project as we
may need to gather some additional
requirements as we move along
this is best used when requirements are
not as well known so this was developed
originally for use with software
development
and didn't really know at the very
beginning of the project what it was
going to look and feel like as far as
that outcome and so waterfall project
management really wasn't the best
approach so agile was created it really
is that collaboration with the customer
that is driving the project forward
and again software developments where
this came about innovative type of
projects are really great to use agile
project management now this looks and
feels a little bit different as far as
how you're delivering as well
there's something called sprints when
you're talking about agile project
management and a sprint is really a time
box
so if you hear the word sprint i want
you to think about there's a set amount
of time where we need to accomplish
specific work and then we're going to
deliver part of the project
incrementally
so a sprint equals a time box we're
going to do part of the work deliver
something incrementally then we're going
to go back into a sprint and deliver
some additional work incrementally and
so forth until the project is completed
i'm going to show you another visual
momentarily but just keep that in mind a
little bit different from waterfall
project management where there's one big
outcome at the end this is used
oftentimes incrementally when you're
creating those deliverables
[Music]
hybrid project management you probably
hear about this quite a bit quite a
buzzword these days hey what are best
practices for hybrid project management
this is really a combined approach
and this is generally customized to
organizations based on how they're
structured the culture of the
organization
it can be
any combination of waterfall and agile
and just tailoring it to what meets the
needs of the organization the project
the team itself
so it could switch back and forth
between hey maybe this phase of work
will be using
you know waterfall or traditional or
predictive and then maybe we go into a
more agile type of phase maybe there's
two tracks running at one time
you see that oftentimes if there's
product development and maybe there's a
hardware requirement and a software
requirement
generally
hardware
is going to be used
with waterfall project management
because if you think about it when
changes are expensive when there's a lot
of kind of physical or tangible items
being used with a project
then waterfall's generally best so that
we can do all of that planning up front
and eliminate work and waste because
that gets really expensive when we're
talking about projects
when we're talking about software and
making little tweaks here and there
there's not as much as far as hey if we
need to change something it's not these
huge expensive items
think for example if you're building a
plane a huge aircraft that's going to
carry hundreds of passengers
if you're really trying to deliver in an
incremental way or with agile project
management
things may change a lot along the way
along the course of that project being
executed
changes are going to get expensive very
very quickly if halfway through the
project you're changing the design of
where the seats go
or you're changing something to do with
hey let's just add plugs we don't want
to add plugs to all the seats and it can
be expensive to make changes
we want to think of waterfall project
management agile maybe the requirements
aren't as well known we're working
really closely with the customer we are
working with sprints delivering
increments
and then
showing it to the customer what do you
think does this meet the requirements
and then maybe a few tweaks are being
made i'll touch on that more momentarily
again hybrid we're talking about a
combination what works best for this
project let's design an approach and
maybe use a little bit of waterfall a
little bit of agile
with waterfall project management
you generally use a traditional work
breakdown structure so when you're in
that planning phase we are going to
think about what are all of the
deliverables associated with this
project so if you look at 1.0 here
what is this deliverable
what
is the work that we're going to need to
do in order to
get this deliverable completed that's
going to be our task
generally tasks start with a verb
and we want to keep breaking it down to
the lowest level so that it can be
accurately estimated as far as time
cost resources that need to be assigned
what we then do with the work breakdown
structure
is think about dependencies
okay in what order
does this work need to be accomplished
does task 2.1 need to be completed
before 3.2 and we start putting them in
order
and linking those dependencies
that starts to give us that picture
moving over time of when the work's
going to get completed and that's also
how we come up with our critical path
when we're using agile project
management
we generally have something called a
backlog
sometimes you'll hear it called a
project backlog or a product backlog
this is where we're gathering as many
requirements as possible
and we are
prioritizing what are kind of the
must-haves here that's going to go to
the top of our list what are maybe the
should haves they're going to go next on
the list what are maybe the could haves
and then what are the won't haves so
oftentimes you're going to be
prioritizing all of the requirements
putting them in order in something
called a backlog
what we then do
is align the work usually pulling from
the top of the list the highest priority
items we're going to pull those out and
put them into a sprint backlog
sprints are generally two weeks in
duration
although they can range from one to four
weeks
within the project they should stay the
same duration from sprint to sprint to
sprint so you want to agree on what's
the duration of our sprints at the
beginning of the project again let's say
we're using two-week sprints
we're going to say how much work
based on our project team if we've got
five people working on the project and
their dedicated resources
how much of this work can we get
completed in a two-week period
and we're going to estimate align that
to the sprint itself and then all five
team members we're going to be heads
down doing the work
for that two-week period
trying to get it a hundred percent
complete
then
we are going to have our project or
product increment what is it that we
accomplished
during that last sprint
we're generally going to showcase it to
our customer have some discussions
and if everyone's thumbs up
we're going to go back
pull again from the top of the list
since it's in priority order align that
to the next sprint as far as the work
goes and continue on
sometimes when we showcase our increment
to the customer they may say
that's not exactly what i expected or
oh maybe we didn't think about this
let's add some additional requirements
so if you add some additional
requirements to your backlog then you
need to re-prioritize and that way
you're always pulling
the highest priority items or the ones
that are going to add the most value
so in a nutshell
waterfall traditional
predictive project management best for
well-known requirements we're going to
develop our entire plan at the beginning
of the project before we ever start
doing any work and we're going to have
our start date end date of our project
we're going to measure against that
baseline this is our original plan our
baseline as we move throughout which is
going to tell us hey are we ahead of
schedule behind schedule
are we within budget are we over budget
that's going to be our traditional or
waterfall
project management for agile
requirements generally aren't as well
known and we're working really closely
with the customer throughout execution
via sprints
just one note here when we're talking
about agile project management
dedicated resources
tends to work best
you will often hear people talk about
scrum
if you hear that know that scrum
is an agile approach for executing
projects there's really specific names
when we start talking about the
different roles that they use within
scrum i have another video called what
is agile project management where we dig
in a bit deeper so if you are interested
in learning more about agile project
management please watch that video okay
this is really just meant to be a
high-level overview i've had quite a few
questions on hey what's the difference
when would you use them
i hope that this answers those questions
and please leave me a comment below or
ask me some questions below love to hear
from you
again i am candace porter would love it
if you subscribe to this channel by
clicking the little bell i'll continue
to deliver project management focused
videos that's what this channel is all
about thanks for being here with me
today
[Music]
you
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