“One graph to rule´em all”: the Project Mgmt continuum
“Change occurs on a continuum and does not move in a straight line.”
― Sharon Weil
Perhaps you, as I do, perhaps both of us like to see patterns, trends, relationships. It is sometimes quite a mania, but it has also plenty of pros. For starters, it drives you into a scout mindset, open to curiosity and intellectual adventure. It also teases you into “why” mode, looking for rationale and causality. And it even helps with memorization – our mind is a “sense-making machine”. Thus, when we see relationships between concepts or events the ideas stick to our skin like crazy glue sticks to… well, to skin. But, alas! enough with the preliminaries, let´s dive into today´s topic (as per below´s pic, pun intended).
On the flipside, “siloed” concepts are hideous. Their isolation is just an appearance, a cloak, a false display of purity that derails from reality and objectivity. That´s why the apparent segregation between the Agile and Waterfall categories of Project Management methodologies has always annoyed me. I mean, is there really no bridge across them? Is this truly an opposition, an antithesis of insular approaches? I recently came to an angle that disproves the apparent discrete (discrete in the sense of disconnected, discontinuous) and conflicting nature of these two Project Management methodologies. Even better, it can be scaled to provide a common reference across ALL Project Management approaches. The novelty is to map the methodologies, standards and frameworks against their intended time-control target: this in turn creates a continuum across a single axis. A picture is worth a thousand words, hence please take a look:
The above is “One graphic to rule´em all” (sorry if you were expecting it to have the shape of a ring). In any case, it pretends to be a one-stop, quick depiction for ALL Project Management approaches. Of course there are other methodologies not listed in the diagram (eg, ISO 21500, GAPPS, LEAN, GREEN PM, and even regional approaches as in Russia, Japan and other large countries) but I´m keeping it short for the sake of clarity – we don´t want to create a TLDR situation within the image.
Moreover, as of hybrid approaches, I believe those should be placed precisely in the limit of the aforementioned categories/boxes. This in turn applies to the SAFe, LeSS, Scrum@Scale, Nexus, DAD, Watergiles and similar of this world. I would even dare to extend the idea to DevOps and related practices.
BTW, I don´t know if you already noticed, but the graphic has the additional advantage of providing common ground across different categories of entities: methodologies, frameworks and standards. We will talk about the differences – and relationships – in a later post.
But for now, let´s keep it short n sweet: may this simple thought exercise help us, PMs of this world, to put a little order in the ever expanding universe of Project Management. Hope you enjoyed reading this short article as much as I did researching for it. Now, let me hear you: what do you think – would you concur? Or perhaps not? Ideas to improve or amend? I am all ears...
Cheers,
Fernando
Photo by Blake Richard Verdoorn on Unsplash
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