PM METHODOLOGIES TOPICS

9 Project Management
Methodologies Made
Simple
By Ben Aston 02/03/2017 28 Comments

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The ever-evolving project management methodology list of agile, scrum, kanban, lean, xp,
waterfall PRINCE2 and PMBOK can be confusing. In this complete guide to project
management methodologies, we’re going to make it all super simple to understand.

There are stacks of different project management methodologies you could apply to
different projects, but knowing the differences between them, and how to know which is
the right methodology to use can be tricky.

Read this guide to give yourself an overview of the most commonly used project
management methodologies and consider how they can be best leveraged for delivering
projects in the world of digital agencies.

Project management methodology overview:

Agile – collaborating to iteratively deliver whatever works

Scrum – enabling a small, cross-functional, self-managing team to deliver fast
Kanban – improving speed and quality of delivery by increasing visibility of work in
progress, and limiting multi-tasking
Scrumban – limiting work in progress like Kanban with a daily stand up like Scrum
Lean – streamlining and eliminating waste to deliver more with less
XP – Extreme Programming methodology– doing development robustly to ensure
quality
Waterfall – planning projects fully, then executing through phases
PRINCE2 – controlled project management that leaves nothing to chance
PMI’s PMBOK – applying universal standards to waterfall project management

Or just jump to discover:

How to choose a project management methodology

The best project management methodology for agencies

Introducing Project Management

Methodologies
Let’s take a stab at understanding what a project management methodology is. The PMI’s
broad definition of project management methodology is helpful – ‘A methodology is a
system of practices, techniques, procedures and rules used by those who work in a
discipline’ – but a methodology has to be rooted in something more fundamental that
dictates why we choose to do things a certain way, so I’d suggest it should also include
themes.

As project managers, there are many different ways to deliver projects. Broadly speaking,
these ways are our methodologies – applying different principles, themes, frameworks,
processes and standards to help provide structure to the way we deliver projects.

Some project management methodologies simply define principles, like agile. Others
define a ‘full-stack’ methodology framework of themes, principles, and processes, such as
Prince2. Some are an extensive list of standards with some process, like PMI’s PMBOK, or
XP and some are very light, and simply define process, like Scrum.

Maybe controversially, rather than debating what’s a methodology and what’s not, I’m
using the broad (yes, mis)understanding of project management methodologies to mean
simply the best practice frameworks we mash together to get projects done. I don’t think a
methodology has to be a complete full-stack implementation ‘system’ to be considered a
methodology.

It’s a good and helpful definition because in reality, as project managers we use a
hodgepodge of principles, themes and processes tailored for our clients and projects.

And let’s get one thing straight before we start, while there are many methodologies,
there is no ‘right’ methodology. There is no one-size-fits-all one methodology that is the
methodology that should always be used for every project.

Ultimately, the best methodology is what makes sense and is most suitable for the project,
team and client. Let’s first take a look at some of the more popular project management
methodologies and understand some of the valuable takeaways for delivering projects in
the world of digital.

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How Do I Actually Use These Methodologies?

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led training. Our online digital project management course provides expert
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Common Project Management

Methodologies

Agile methodology – collaborating to iteratively deliver

whatever works

Let’s start with everyone’s favorite buzzword, agile. The truth is, agile isn’t actually a
methodology at all, but a set of principles for developing software. The principles are
outlined in the agile manifesto outlines four values – Individuals and interactions over
processes and tools; Working software over comprehensive documentation; Customer
collaboration over contract negotiation; Responding to change over following a plan – so
being agile is more of a philosophy and set of values and principles to follow, rather than a
process to apply to a project.

When people talk about an agile project management methodology, what they’re usually
describing is a flexible, iterative design and build process. Agile projects are characterized
by a series of tasks that are conceived, executed and adapted as the situation demands,
rather than a pre-planned process. Being agile helps teams respond to unpredictability
through incremental, iterative work processes.

In much the same way that a good cook tastes the food as they cook it, adding missing
ingredients as they go along, an agile project management process requires project teams
to cycle through a process of planning, executing, and evaluating as they go along. For
another way to look at it, PM Column offers an interesting description of agile in their
article on explaining agile to kids.

Agile is different from other project management methods which usually assume that
things affecting the project are predictable, and so it emphasizes adaptability to changing
situations, adequate and ongoing communication among the project team and between
them and the client. Agile methodologies are great to use in dynamic environments where
there’s potential for changing or evolving requirements such as software and game
development.

As a set of principles, agile is the Big Daddy, and tends to be used as an umbrella term
used for flavours of agile including Scrum, Extreme Programming (XP), Kanban, and
Scrumban. So in short, and to make things confusing, agile isn’t a methodology or process
you can use – if you’re on board with the principles, you still need to define the processes
for delivering projects.

More about agile | Agile Tools | Learning Agile: Understanding Scrum, XP, Lean, and
Kanban

Scrum methodology – enabling a small, cross-functional,

self-managing team to deliver fast

Scrum is a project management methodology which proposes principles and process to

improve delivery. Within software development, Scrum is one of the most popular and
simple frameworks to put the principles of agile in practice.

The goal of Scrum is to improve communication, teamwork and speed of development. If

you hear people talking about sprints, scrums, backlogs and burndowns, they’re probably
talking about Scrum, or some derivative of it.

Scrum isn’t really a project management methodology but a framework for the ongoing
development and maintenance of complex products. Scrum is a light approach and defines
a simple set of roles, meetings, and tools to efficiently, iteratively and incrementally deliver
valuable, shippable functionality.

Fundamentally, Scrum is about empowering a self-managing team to deliver and defines

roles and responsibilities to create a healthy tension between delivering the right thing,
the right way, as fast as possible.

Scrum advocates using a small, cross-functional team of up to 9 people who work on

items in a backlog – a collection of user stories (requirements) – that have been defined
and prioritized by a Product Owner.
Work is divided into ‘sprints’, a development cycle of usually 2-4 weeks, during which,
daily ‘scrums’ take place where the team report on progress and impediments. At the end
of each sprint, work is then reviewed in a sprint review meeting to determine together
with the Product Owner if it passes the Definition of Done (DoD).

Scrum is facilitated and served by a Scrum Master who enables and leads the scrums,
sprint demo’s and reviews, leading the development team to do their best work as well as
a leading a ‘sprint retrospective’ after each sprint, to ensure the team is continually
optimizing and improving.

Scrum was originally designed for software development so while there are agile artifacts
from scrum though that can be leveraged – scrum doesn’t fit neatly into the typically more
strategic and creative agency world. Even on agency web projects, fixed budgets,
timelines and scope provide a lack of flexibility for a scrum self-managing team, on a
project with a defined beginning and end.

That’s not to say it can’t work, on development projects – agency project managers can act
as scrum masters, and clients as product owners in one big happy hybrid team. But it’s
normally more complicated than that, with fixed budgets and scope providing heavy
constraints. That’s why many agencies take some of the concepts of scrum – small, self-
organizing, cross functional teams, daily stand-ups, progress demo’s and retrospectives
and use them in some kind of hybrid approach.

More about Scrum | Agile tools | Scrum: a Breathtakingly Brief and Agile Introduction

Kanban methodology – improving speed and quality of

delivery by increasing visibility of work in progress, and
limiting multi-tasking

Kanban is a project management methodology focused on lean principles and a strict

process to increase efficiency. It’s similar in many ways to Scrum – it’s all about releasing
early and often with a collaborative and self-managing team. But compared to Scrum,
Kanban is a more evolutionary change, a softer landing into the world of agile as it’s less
prescriptive.

Kanban is light on process, flexible, doesn’t have prescribed roles, and simply tries to
improve throughput by increasing the focus of the team on the things that really matter.
The core practices are visualizing the workflow, limiting work in progress, measuring the
lead time, making process policies explicit and continually evaluating improvement
opportunities.

Kanban’s focus is on work that is continually released, faster, and with better quality. It’s
great for operational or maintenance environments where priorities can change frequently.
Kanban focuses on measuring Lead Time – how long it takes, after being briefed, to
deliver.

With Kanban, project managers typically use sticky notes on a Kanban whiteboard or
online tool like Trello, to represent the team’s workflow, with categories as simple as ‘To-
do’, ‘Doing’ and ‘Done’.

This visualizes what you want to do and limits work in progress (WIP) so that the flow of
work is improved as you measure and optimize the average time to complete items.

It also gives the team a visual display of what is coming up next, which makes it easy to
reprioritize, uncover process problems and prevent tasks from stalling. It also helps them
to see how any new task may affect the ongoing work.

Kanban is well-suited to work that requires steady output, like production or support and
maintenance. Within the world of agencies, it can also be a helpful tool as it’s more
accommodating to changes, and clients like to change their minds constantly. If Scrum
seems too rigid an approach, but you want to ‘do agile’, Kanban is a simpler alternative.
More about Kanban | Kanban vs Scrum | Kanban tools | Kanban: Successful Evolutionary
Change for Your Technology Business

Scrumban methodology – limiting work in progress like

Kanban with a daily stand up like Scrum

Scrumban is a relatively new hybrid project management methodology that combines a

mixed scrum and Kanban approach to project management. It takes the flexibility of
Kanban and adds some of the structure of scrum to create a new way to manage projects.

Rather than working in potentially restrictive, timeboxed sprints, Scrumban uses a

planning on demand principle to fill the backlog and tasks are assigned by the team
pulling in tasks as they can accommodate them, as in Kanban. This means that work in
progress is limited and the development team stays focused on the task at hand rather
than worrying about the sprint review meeting and what the team committed to delivering
in the sprint.

It’s not all Kanban though – Scrumban retains the daily scrum with reviews and
retrospectives to improve the process only used when needed. Furthermore, without the
constriction of sprints, planning is done on an as-needed basis rather than around a sprint
– which potentially saves time.

Scrumban really just adds some flexibility to Scrum by removing sprints and allowing an
adaptive approach to planning. Or you could see it as adding some much-needed
structure to Kanban with meetings that can help with collaboration and optimizing the
process.

Scrumban can be good for product development where there is an unclear vision, where
there are evolving requirements or no clear roadmap and if the process needs to include
support and maintenance work in the process.
More about Scrumban | Scrumban Tools | The Scrumban [R]Evolution: Getting the Most
Out of Agile, Scrum, and Lean Kanban

Lean methodology – streamlining and eliminating waste

to deliver more with less

Lean is a project management methodology focused around the theme of efficiency.

Arguably the Godfather of Agile – Lean is all about doing more with less. It starts by
identifying value and then maximizes it through continuous improvement by optimizing
the flow of value and eliminating wastage.

It’s a theme with principles, rather than a methodology dictating process and things to do.
It suggests you can do more with less by addressing the three dysfunctions that create
waste; Muda, Mura and Muri, also known as the 3Ms.

Muda is about eradicating waste – removing process or anything that’s not ultimately
adding value to the customer. In the world of digital, this could be eliminating rounds
of revisions.
Mura is about eliminating variations – removing the overhead that variances to the
standard process create. For us this could mean standardizing briefs and approval
processes.
Muri is about removing overload – the optimal capacity is working at 60-70%; any
more than that and everything slows down. We could apply this to be minimizing the
number of projects we’re trying to run through the agency.

Lean is focused on changing the way we operate to be laser focused on delivering value.
It’s about shifting the focus from optimizing separate technologies, assets, and vertical
departments to optimizing the flow projects through entire value streams that flow
horizontally across technologies, assets, and departments to customers.
Lean can be a helpful mindset to adopt when reviewing your project delivery process –
think about how you can strip your project process back to the bare essentials that deliver
value and cut out the things that are just fluff, or the way you’ve always done it – and
you’ll be thinking Lean.

More about Lean | Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works

XP – Extreme Programming methodology– doing

development robustly to ensure quality

Extreme programming (XP) is a software development project management methodology

which defines values and processes to improve software quality and ensure
responsiveness to evolving customer requirements. The values, or principles are very
similar to scrum, around simplicity, communication, feedback, respect, and courage.

Where it really deviates from Scrum is in defining rules or prescriptive processes. Some of
these are similar to Scrum but there are rules around technical practices around designing
coding and testing that make it specific for development projects. These rules include
making mandatory; Including user stories, Test-driven development (TDD), Pair
programming, and Continuous integration among many others.

More about Extreme Programming | Extreme Programming Tools | Extreme Programming

Pocket Guide

Waterfall methodology – planning projects fully, then

executing through phases

Waterfall, often referred to as SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) is a project

management methodology theme with a very simple approach that values solid planning,
doing it once and doing it right, rather than the agile approach of incremental and iterative
delivery. It’s simple to understand because you simply make a good plan, and execute on
it.

The project manager tends to be large and in charge, and work is planned extensively up
front and then executed, in strict sequence, adhering to requirements, to deliver the
project in a single, and usually very long cycle.

Requirements are defined in full at the beginning, at the top of the waterfall, before any
work starts. Work then cascades, like water down a waterfall through phases of the
project. In a waterfall model, each phase must be completed before the next phase can
begin and there is no overlapping in the phases. Typically, in a Waterfall approach, the
outcome of one phase acts as the input for the next phase sequentially.

After the plan is approved, there’s little scope to adapt the plan unless absolutely
necessary, and changes that are needed usually require change requests. The project then
flows through the process from requirements, through design, implementation, testing and
into maintenance.

Because of the single cycle approach, in a Waterfall project, there’s little scope to reflect,
revise and adapt once you’ve completed something. Once you’re in the testing stage, it is
very difficult to go back and change something that was not well designed in the concept
stage. There’s also nothing to show and tell the client as you go along. You complete the
project with a big fanfare and pray the client likes it. That’s potentially very risky.

Waterfall is generally regarded with some disdain within agencies as an inefficient and
passé traditional project management approach. But Waterfall can be a useful and
predictable approach if requirements are fixed, well documented and clear, the technology
is understood and mature, the project is short, and there’s no additional value gained from
‘going agile’. A waterfall approach can actually provide more predictable end result for
budget, timeline and scope.
More about Waterfall | Waterfall Project Management Tools | The IT Project Manager:
How to Manage Waterfall Projects

PRINCE2 methodology – controlled project management

that leaves nothing to chance

PRINCE2 is a ‘full stack’ waterfall project management methodology that includes

principles, themes and processes. It was created by the UK government in 1996 originally
for IT projects. ‘PRINCE’ stands for PRojects IN Controlled Environments. It is a very
process-oriented methodology, dividing projects into multiple stages, each with their own
plans and processes to follow. The methodology defines inputs and outputs for every
stage of a project so that nothing is left to chance.

The system emphasizes justification of the course taken by a business, and so the first
step is identifying a clear need for the project, who the target customer is, whether there
are realistic benefits, and a thorough cost assessment. A project board owns the project
and is responsible for its success. This board defines the structures for the team, while a
project manager oversees the lower level day-to-day activities. This methodology is based
on eight high-level processes and gives teams greater control of resources and the ability
to mitigate risk effectively.

As a methodology, it’s incredibly thorough – it’s a great framework for how to run large,
predictable, enterprise projects. It clarifies, what will be delivered, ensures a focus on the
viability of the project, clearly defines roles and responsibilities, endorses management by
exception (arguably an agile principle) and similarly to PMBOK, provides a common
vocabulary which we can apply to other methodologies. On the flipside, while the
principles and themes are great, the process can make it laborious and onerous for small
projects.

PRINCE2 is designed for large scale IT projects so would never work in an agency as a
project management methodology. However, the emphasis on developing a good
business case with KPI’s and value earned, clear roles and responsibilities, managing
change and risk are helpful when we consider managing projects for our clients.

More about PRINCE2 | PRINCE2 Tools | Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2

PMI’s PMBOK methodology – applying universal

standards to waterfall project management

The PMI’s (Project Management Institute) project management methodology is not really a
methodology but a set of standards which refers to the five process steps of project
management, which they outline their Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK).
These are initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing.

This is not so much a methodology a framework of standards, conventions, processes,

best practices, terminologies, and guidelines that are accepted as standards within the
project management industry. It contains many processes and techniques of project
management by which to evaluate or complete the way you run your projects or the
methodology you use.

It is, therefore, more theoretical, a reference guide, which you can be certified in which
although popular in IT, doesn’t really fly in the agency world. You can’t actually run a PMI
or PMBOK project, but you can leverage the standards to create a universal language and
best practice around a project. In comparing to PRINCE2, you could conceivably consider
PMI’s PMBOK and PRINCE2 as complementary to one another rather than two different or
separate waterfall approaches.

More about PMI | A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge

This is by no means an exhaustive list of project management methodologies. There are

methodologies like the Crystal Method, in which project processes are given a low priority,
while team communication, team member skills, people, and interaction are emphasized;
or the Adaptive Framework methodology in which the project scope is variable, but the
time and the cost are constant, making it possible to adjust the project scope during
execution in order to get the maximum business value from the project. Still others like
PRiSM, Critical Path, PERT, and many, many more exist, but aren’t so relevant to the world
of project management in agencies.

How To Choose The Right Project

Management Methodology
Choosing the right project management methodology is important because it defines how
we work. Project management methodologies provide the structures that can guide us
toward project success or failure.

So when deciding what project management methodology to use in a project, we need to

consider the simplicity or complexity of the project, the client, our available resources and
the project constraints (including the appetite for change and risk), timeline, tools, and
people.

When it comes to project management methodologies, there is no one-size-fits-all that

works for all business types, sizes or industries. Whether you’re working in a dynamic
environment where there’s appetite for evolution and change, and so adopt an agile
methodology. Or if you’re working within very fixed, rigid, requirements, timeline and
budget and so adopt a waterfall approach, each project management methodology carries
its own strengths and weaknesses.

Ultimately, the methodology chosen should be analyzed on the basis of its ability to deliver
the most value to the client, with the least impact on those delivering it, how well it meets
organizational goals and values, the constraints the project team has to deal with, the
needs of stakeholders, the risks involved, the project size, cost, and of course, the
complexity of the project.

What’s The Best Methodology For

Digital Agencies?
The short answer is that it depends. There’s no right or wrong – it depends on your client,
your team and the project.

That said, almost universally, at an agency, putting your head above the parapet and
suggesting that Waterfall might be a good approach for a project is tantamount to
painting a large target on yourself. Waterfall is something no client or team wants to hear
– we all want to be seen as cutting edge, and Waterfall is definitely not cool.

Not only is it not cool, but waterfall is challenging because it requires heavy upfront
planning before any value-generating work is done. Planning is sometimes necessary
because clients need to approve a cost, timeline and scope. But clients are usually
reluctant to pay for planning and even if they do, what happens if your planning isn’t up to
scratch?

In truth, in the digital world, we regularly struggle with accurate estimates. We’re usually
working with new technologies, on vague projects. So unless you’re doing the same types
of projects over and over again, as soon as you start your project, your plan is probably out
of date. So while clients like the predictability of the deliverables, budget and timeline, a
waterfall approach is inherently inflexible.

So what about some flavor of agile?

Between agencies and clients, there tends to be a pretty fluid understanding of agile. Agile
is largely lauded for ‘not being Waterfall’ and widely misunderstood to mean, doing more,
with less, faster and cheaper than ever before. Why wouldn’t you want that?

Clients tend to love the idea of agile because of its apparent flexibility to pivot a project
and provide them with more opportunities to provide feedback or change their mind
continually throughout the project.

They often think that it means that they’ll get more work done for less or that they don’t
actually ever have to make a final decision on anything because they can change their
mind on what they want, even up to the last minute.

That’s sort of true, but not really the whole story.

The catch and the rest of the story is that that level of flexibility is expensive – yes you can
pivot and change your mind but it eats up time, and time costs money.

Another challenge is that in order to be successful, and truly agile, clients have to make
themselves available and be empowered to make decisions (which is rare in hierarchical,
and board orientated organizations), and provide ongoing feedback and prioritization on
the fly to keep the project moving. That is often very tricky.

In many ways, it comes down to trust. Do clients really trust the agency to deliver value
and are they willing to pay for failure on the path to success? Fundamentally, agencies
want to get paid for the work they do, and clients want agencies to do their best work,
right, first time. There needs to be some happy medium.

Doing more for less and eliminating waste is a great Lean principle, but the challenge with
the approach is often with the client-agency relationship; a lot of waste is caused by
clients and without a truly embedded client, with real decision making power, and lots of
mutual trust, no amount of agile project methodology can fix that.

But where there is mutual trust, and willingness to experiment, it can create the right
conditions for magic to happen. Truth is, agile might be better, but agile doesn’t come
cheap or easy.

So agile could mean applying a whole range of different approaches, from Scrum to XP –
the best approach is to pick and choose what works best for you and your team, to deliver
the most value.

It requires a maturity from our clients to understand that we can’t define exactly what
they’ll get, or when, but with some healthy trust, we’ll work together to deliver the best we
can.

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In Conclusion
Selecting the most suitable project management methodology can be tricky. It depends on
so many variables, many of which are outside of our control.

But here’s what really matters – looking beyond the methodology ‘turf war’ in the industry.
The project management methodologies are just tools to help us deliver projects. It’s really
not worth arguing over the final details of a methodology – instead we should be focusing
on the bigger picture. Whether it is Kanban, Waterfall, or some other method, it doesn’t
really matter.

What matters is to a commitment to doing quality work, that meets user needs, and
delivers great value to our clients.

The best methodology is one that’s continually and organically improving, adapting and
through strong collaboration increases the value of the output so the sum is much greater
than the parts.

It’s a methodology that surprises and delights the client by delivering value frequently, and
getting it right. And to do this you need to be pragmatic, rather than dogmatic about the
methodology you use.

What Do You Think?

How do you choose your project management methodology? Is there a methodology you
prefer over others? If so, why? Please share in the comments below.

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Ben Aston
I’m Ben Aston, a digital project manager. I've been in the industry for more

than 10 years working in the UK at London’s top digital agencies including

Dare, Wunderman, Lowe and DDB. I’ve delivered everything from video virals

to CMS’, flash games to banner ads and eCRM to eCommerce sites. I’ve been

fortunate enough to work across a wide range of great clients; automotive

brands including Land Rover, Volkswagen and Honda; Utility brands

including BT, British Gas and Exxon, FMCG brands such as Unilever, and

consumer electronics brands including Sony.

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28 Comments

tushar
07/03/2017 at 11:29 pm

Hi, thank you for this post I agree with you that Kanban is light on process,
flexible, doesn’t have prescribed roles, and simply tries to improve throughput
by increasing the focus of the team on the things that really matter. very
useful information

Reply
!
How to Take Notes That Don't Suck - Note Taking Strategies - The
Digital Project Manager
19/03/2017 at 11:33 pm

[…] an agenda – This is project management 101, but even the most
experienced meeting leaders occasionally walk in underprepared. If you take
the […]

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Agile In The Agency: A Guide to Managing Agile Projects In An Agency

Setting
17/04/2017 at 6:02 pm

[…] or website to understand. That will probably never change, so we started

to extract some of the key methodologies from Agile and injecting it into our
process. In doing so, we’ve adopted a Scrum-like process […]

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Agency Agile: 10 Agile Methods For Agencies - The Digital Project

Manager
16/05/2017 at 2:46 pm

[…] are many agile methods and practices available. I realised this back in
2010 after struggling to get the expected benefits […]

Reply
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Got The Perfect Agile Model? Here's What You Should Know About
Agnostic Agile - The Digital Project Manager
01/06/2017 at 10:00 pm

[…] for a very long time now. In this time, we have experienced and continue
to experience all kinds of agile methods and frameworks. Each of these
arguably addresses a problem or set of problems, so each has its place and
[…]

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Agile vs Waterfall. What Methodology Should You Use For Your Project?
05/07/2017 at 6:46 am

[…] this article I’m going to look at what the core methodologies used in
Digital Project Management are, which you should choose and whether there
is a different […]

Reply
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Desislava
14/07/2017 at 2:50 am

Hello, thank you for the clear and easy digestable explanation. I am looking
for a course in one of the methodologies but since there is so much variety it
was difficult for me to make a choice. Now I think I will definitely focus on
Agile or Lean. Lately I see a lot of Lean Six Sigma trainings, it’s a shame you
don’t mention Six Sigma, as I would really like to have your review on this
combination. Would it be possible?

Reply
!

Ben Aston
 19/07/2017 at 11:43 pm

Thanks for the feedback. We didn’t include Six Sigma as it’s more
focused on quality control rather than a delivery process and
traditionally relevant to manufacturing. We’ll make sure to add that
into our update to the post though!

Reply
!

DPM Podcast: Welcome To The DPM Podcasts - The Digital Project

Manager
24/07/2017 at 1:40 pm

[…] studio world where the ordinary rules of project management don’t seem
to work very well. The classic methodologies just don’t seem to fit. so we
have to work around it. The site that I created, The Digital […]

Reply
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DPM Podcast: Welcome To The DPM Podcast - The Digital Project

Manager
25/07/2017 at 12:29 am

[…] studio world where the ordinary rules of project management don’t seem
to work very well. The classic methodologies just don’t seem to fit. so we
have to work around it. The site that I created, The Digital […]

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!

10 Project Management Best Practices: Here's What You Should Do

Every Month - The Digital Project Manager
31/07/2017 at 11:50 pm

[…] matter what industry you work in or what project management

methodology you subscribe to, there are some project management best
practices that all PMs can do every few […]

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Agile vs Waterfall. What Should You Use For Your Project? – Suzanna
Haworth
04/08/2017 at 6:52 am

[…] are loads of project management methodologies to choose from. There

are the more traditional, linear ones, like the well-known Waterfall. Then […]

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The Value of Transparency in Project Management - The Digital Project

Manager
23/08/2017 at 11:20 am

[…] teams interested in methods of team communication, I would highly

suggest taking a look at agile or scrum methodologies. At the core of agile are
meetings, such as the stand up, planning meeting, and retrospective which
[…]

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Faheem Ahmed
12/09/2017 at 7:28 pm
great post Ben. as a certified PMP, I ve been dabbling with scrum for our
agency.
thoroughly enjoyed it. especially this part “What’s the best methodology for
digital agencies?”

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!

DPM Podcast: Lessons Learned & Tales Of A Remote Project Manager

(with Natalie Semczuk) - The Digital Project Manager
30/10/2017 at 10:02 am

[…] that, but there’s always going to be some sort of expectation

management, especially on more agile and collaborative teams. It’s harder,
because you don’t always have that one true […]

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6 mistakes you should avoid when starting a new digital project

13/12/2017 at 2:36 am

[…] can be many reasons, such as bad communication practices within the
team or an inappropriate project management methodology for the nature of
that particular product or team. The possibilities are endless because every
[…]

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!

Highlights Of 2017 (And What's In Store For The Year Ahead) - The
Digital Project Manager
19/12/2017 at 10:01 pm
[…] Project Management Methodologies […]

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!

Hugo Martinez
17/05/2018 at 1:10 am

Terrific!!!

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!

Alex
12/06/2018 at 9:21 am

very good post

thank you

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!

phanuel chiwanza
20/07/2018 at 6:11 am

thanks , made my life easy

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!

Mthokozisi Msipa
22/07/2018 at 11:08 pm

Thats a great article, i am more inclined to agile project management

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!
Harrie at You & Co
31/07/2018 at 8:02 pm

Good stuff, a really clear and conversational way to explain the variations to
project management. Really helped me to understand my options when
planning workload in my small digital agency. Thanks!

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!

Amanda Chua
03/08/2018 at 9:09 pm

Great information. Since last week, I am gathering details about project

management experience. There are some amazing details on your blog which
I didn’t know. Thanks.

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!

Nick P.
10/08/2018 at 8:07 am

Great article. I was hoping you would have included the foundation for many
of these – IBM’s Rational Unified Process.

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!

Sergio
16/09/2018 at 6:37 am

Love it! Specially the visual. This is the article to read if you are looking for
clarity. I do see however both PMI and Prince2 as ‘standards’. As a previous
comment mentioned, I would also like to see Lean 6 Sigma overlayed into this
analysis. Well done!

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!

4 reasons to use Agile in Analytics

28/10/2018 at 8:20 am

[…] are tons of different project management methodologies (see a nice

article here), and different ways to apply Agile (doing or being
Agile). However, in this article […]

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BONUS: Ben Aston on Project Management lessons that Scrum Masters

can use – Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast
13/01/2019 at 1:38 am

[…] project managers), we must also be aware of other aspects of product

development. Ben has written a long article detailing 9 different project
management methods and comparing that to Agile, Lean an…. Check it out to
know […]

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!

Anonymous
31/01/2019 at 11:46 pm

[…] 10 Aston, B. (Mar, 2017). ‘9 project management methodologies made

simple’. Retrieved from The Digital Project Manager. […]

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