Order from us for quality, customized work in due time of your choice.
There are multiple managerial approaches to organizing a companys workflow. In pursuit of the most efficient method, organizations have adapted for projects that have low and high rates of delivery and varying degrees of change. One of such approaches is called Agile, which is also known as Scrum, which was developed in the early nineties and remained one of the most popular managerial practices globally (Pearson et al., 2018). It is based on the idea that projects perform better when teams and their leaders can adapt to the changes in their operating environment on the fly.
In turn, the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK) framework is a concept that evolves similarly to Agile yet has different applications. In 2017, The PMBoK guide took several managerial strategies, including Predictive and Agile, and combined them into a hybrid version that is sometimes called TAgile (Pearson et al., 2018). The ever-shifting landscape of managerial strategies requires up-to-date knowledge of possible options to ensure that a team utilizes the resources and time. In this paper, PMBoK will be compared with the Agile approach to organizing contemporary projects.
Similarities and Differences
The PMBoK method focuses on ensuring that the most relevant knowledge and practices are used in developing a strategy for a project. This approach mixes traditional managerial techniques with innovative views on organizing projects, including ideas from Agile, which makes them similar (Project Management Institute, 2017). However, it gives a higher priority to the planning phase. As with Agile, PMBoK requires an individually tailored project management approach within its framework to comprehensively cover all planned activities (Project Management Institute, 2017). It can be called a hybrid method due to its tendency to take the most suitable parts from other strategies.
The Agile approach gives the project the flexibility it might need to fix its performance. Despite its inherent instability, it gives companies an edge in projects where tasks are done by different teams or team members simultaneously and must be synchronized. One of the distinct features of Agile that PMBoK may lack is a visualization of the planned tasks and activities (Pearson et al., 2018). Similar to the idea from PMBoK regarding the necessity to create particular specialist teams for different tasks, Agile ensures that activities are assigned only to professionals. These similarities and differences serve as deciding factors for the project from the case study due to their direct impact on the workflow of the interconnected teams.
Risk
Projects inevitably possess inherent risks that must be swiftly dealt with through a laid-ahead strategy. For example, Agile projects consider the possible changes in their structure that might be required due to situations outside of their scope of control (Pearson et al., 2018). Flexibility plays a vital role in risk and uncertainty management, and Agile excels at that feature. Priorities are given to the requirements for each step in a project completion timeline based on both business value and possible risks for critical failures (Kerzner, 2018). A project from the case study possesses a high number of risk factors due to its size and must be able to adapt to unexpected issues. This notion puts Agile as one of the best options for a managerial strategy.
PMBoK can be considered a more complex approach due to its necessity to mix components of other strategies in proper proportions. It might have to deal with unclear solutions and unclear goals depending on the situation, which puts both flexibility and preparedness at the highest possible priority (Wysocki, 2019). In case of an improper combination of preparation versus adaptability tactics, PMBoK may become a hindrance to resolving critical risks. Traditional methods may get stuck in work-in-progress situations, where different teams in the same project slow each other down and do not evolve through experiments due to improperly predicted paths (Apaolaza et al., 2020). PMBoKs approach to risks, when applied to the project from the case study, may require a meticulous preparation due to the complexity of responses that might be required, yet vulnerabilities will become more predictable.
Project Context
PMBoK has a forward-leaning structure, making it more fitting for long-term tasks. It excels at providing easy-to-use manipulations for projects with a low degree of changes during their execution and with infrequent commits of new changes or additions (Pearson et al., 2018). It can be used with greater success in cases where the traditional method could be applicable, yet there are expected instabilities. Complex projects that have a clear solution, yet possible changes in goals, can benefit from PMBoK. In turn, Agile is suitable for projects that are susceptible to midway changes and whose developers or workers can deliver meaningful results in a short span (Pearson et al., 2018). It is best applied to projects where customers responses can lead to sudden sharp turns in planned tasks, and user input lies at the core of the final product. For example, functions that are strictly controlled by stakeholders are better performed via the Agile method.
Lifecycle Implications
Agile and PMBoK view project completion in a different light due to variations in multiple progress steps. PMBoK gives a clear path with identified goals for all team positions and assigns the process groups to each stage based on their knowledge (Project Management Institute, 2017). It shares this aspect with a traditional managerial approach, creating a narrow scope for a better understanding of the work needed to be done.
There are challenges in defining a projects lifecycle in Agile. Australian Institute of Project Management (2021) argues that Agile frameworks and methods generally do not manage the project lifecycle, rather provide a flexible and iterative solution (para. 19). Due to this implication, teams must be ready for sharp turns. Partial or improper applications of Agile can cause breakdowns in a projects lifecycle, especially if future steps must be rewritten due to changes made on the fly (Pace, 2019). However, Agile also gives tools to cope with such an approach to decision-making. Agile methodologies can narrow teams views on the project through visualization technologies and ensure that each step is performed within its time borders (Davidson, 2019). It remains challenging to define an Agile projects lifecycle.
Application
In conclusion, both PMBoK and Agile have the potential to speed up the projects completion significantly, yet their different aspects of planning and executing tasks make them unfit to use in some cases. From the description of the project from the case study, it is apparent that there are serious risks involved in the process, and there are multiple teams working on the same site on different tasks. While the need to simplify the process implies the necessity to focus on the deployability of a project management approach, there are also multiple complex operations that must be performed and require an extensive knowledge base. These notions make it clear that this project requires a specifically tailored combination of flexibility, risk mitigation, and careful skill selection.
For such a job, I would suggest using Agile over PMBoK due to the apparent need for different teams to measure up each others progress in their tasks. Interoperability is too challenging to be performed without good feedback loops and timely responses. A product risk for this case is high and already requires several simplifications to make it more manageable. Although the initial preparations may play a vital role in further creating a suitable framework, I think that teams preparedness for possible challenges ahead is more important than the initial comprehension of goals.
References
Apaolaza, U., Lizarralde, A., & Oyarbide-Zubillaga, A. (2020). Modern project management approaches in uncertainty environments: A comparative study based on action research. Sustainability, 12(24). Web.
Australian Institute of Project Management. (2021). Project management methodologies and approaches. Web.
Davidson, J. (2019). Everyday project management. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Kerzner, H. (2018). Project management Best practices: Achieving global excellence (4th ed.). John Wiley & Sons.
Pace, M. (2019). A correlational study on project management methodology and project success. Journal of Engineering, Project, and Production Management, 9(2). Web.
Pearson, N., Larson, E. W., & Gray, C. F. (2018). Project management in practice: For certificate IV and diploma (2nd ed.). McGraw-Hill Education Australia.
Project Management Institute. (2017). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK® guide) (6th ed.).
Wysocki, R. K. (2019). Effective project management: Traditional, Agile, extreme, hybrid (8th ed.). John Wiley & Sons.
Order from us for quality, customized work in due time of your choice.