Summary
I keep hearing that project management (PM) is equated with the waterfall approach. That's kind of outdated.
By Peter Roth, January 23, 2023
As early as 1996, an independent PM process with 'Initiate - Plan - Execute and Control - Close' was established in the first edition of PMI PMBOK. This meant that a process model specific to the problem could be selected for the project execution process, regardless of the PM process, be it sequential (waterfall), incremental, iterative or evolutionary.
With the 7th edition of PMI PMBOK in 2021, this PM methodology has completely said goodbye to classic PM processes, now describes itself as a "System for Value Delivery" and focuses on principles, so-called Project Performance Domains and underlying, generally applicable models , methods and artifacts. Tailoring, i.e. adaptation to the specific project, is an important part of the method.
Other methods such as Prince2, IPMA also treat project management separately and thus allow different approaches to project execution. Basically, the PM processes are defined in the ISO standard 21500 and is considered the lowest common denominator of the known world standards.
I only know of one project methodology, the Hermes method, which still mixes project management with project execution. After all, since the 2022 version, the implementation phase can be approached iteratively and incrementally. Here, too, a first, albeit modest, step towards agility.
At the University of Zurich, project management was then added as an additional level to the project in the Human-IT-Organization focus. In it, the project is viewed as a social system and leadership as the required core competency. This is an excellent way to live the agile mindset.
In order for leadership and management to match the project execution, there is now talk of adaptive project leadership and adaptive project management [Jenny 2023]. Adaptation is imperative for me. Every project is unique by definition. Depending on the project type, a suitable methodology with the right approach is used. I tackle a reorganization differently than software development, a business engineering project differently than a hardware rollout, a construction project differently than a service management project. For almost 20 years I have been using both sequential and agile elements in projects and meanwhile very successfully combine classic and agile approaches for project execution, depending on the problem and challenge. Project management and agility are not contradictory!