Topic Teasers Vol. 186: Agile or Waterfall? How Do I Choose?

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  Agile  

Since PMI and the Agile Alliance are now working together, which approach should I use to manage my projects? I am in a manufacturing environment, but things never go smoothly in either approach. It seems like one team is always held back by the other, and the shift of actual product back and forth between teams adds a lot of excessive delays to getting the product ready for delivery or prepared for sale and use by the customer. What am I missing?

A. The additional of agile to the PMI toolkit means that there is now a changed approach to your projects. You can no longer just use the Waterfall/traditional approach, but you must find the merged approaches in the latest version of the A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide). To maintain your certification as a PMP, your organization must use a cookie-cutter version of this approach.

B. The purpose of using any of the possible approaches to completing a project are meant to only be suggestions. You can add steps or change processes so that whatever your end product is can reach the “ready for use” stage as quickly as possible. Sometimes this requires great creativity and the addition of unusual practices that other organizations and their project …

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