I've once followed a great debate about agile or adaptative and predictive or waterfall approaches applied to the construction industry; i've witnessed the value of an agile approach: resource prioritization and optimization in the design phase for instance while still failling to grasp how an hybrid approach could be implemented during construction phase. Any insight on the topic will be much appreciated. Saving Changes...
There are quite a few online resources for this topic. An agile mindset can be applied to any type of project, but an adaptive lifecycle will have real world constraints for many construction projects.
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten AssociatesNew Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
I agree with Kiron. You can apply the Agile mindset but being fully adaptive might not work well in Construction. Taking an Adaptive-Waterfall hybrid approach would probably work best especially on large construction jobs.
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1 reply by CEDRIC KAMDEM KAMGAING
Nov 18, 2019 8:11 PM
CEDRIC KAMDEM KAMGAING
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i agree with you a hybrid approach will work best since most projects cannot really all follow a single approach from start to end, there is always the need to adapt the approach to the situation. it is question to identify when ones can be agile and when he can be predictive, the combinaison of both with sure produce good yields
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Luis BrancoCEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, LdªCarcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal
Dear Cedric Interesting question Thanks for sharing
What do you tell me about the idea of a hybrid development approach?
Agile, Predictive and Iterative
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1 reply by CEDRIC KAMDEM KAMGAING
Nov 18, 2019 8:13 PM
CEDRIC KAMDEM KAMGAING
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hybrid developememnt approach for me can work in the construction industry especially with projects in highly regulated environments where mock ups of the final products need to be produced and validated before moving forward
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Eric SimmsSenior Program ManagerBaltimore, Maryland, United States
I'll need to look into this further. Agile works great with products you can easily change, such as software code. My team can create a product, get customer feedback regarding it, edit and recompile the code, then present it to the customer again.
I don't know of any construction products where this can be done. You can't realistically build a bridge, then change it if customers decide they want placed a few meters to the right. Most construction products I've seen described as Agile have just seemed like a Waterfall project broken into smaller subprojects, but not really capable of allowing customers to make changes to the product.
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1 reply by Kiron Bondale
Nov 12, 2019 12:28 PM
Kiron Bondale
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Eric -
Component/modular construction and use of 3D printing are two ways in which incremental delivery could be achieved.
Just as with a software product, there is the need to sufficiently explore architecture & design options early on to ensure we are not building ourselves into a future "blow it up and start over" scenario.
Kiron
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Tiago NunesSenior PM Consultant| FreelancerLisboa, Portugal, Portugal
Hi Cedric, In my experience, the agile methodology is very successful in the construction industry because it easily allows to review priorities according with the context, periodically evaluated as it should be. However, I find it very useful to have a waterfall plan for the entire construction, integrated with the agile detail. It helps to focus on the overall goal, specially if working with subcontractors; you can easily delegate the details of their work, keeping it supervised. In large and complex construction sites can be useful the program approach above all the rest. Saving Changes...
I'll need to look into this further. Agile works great with products you can easily change, such as software code. My team can create a product, get customer feedback regarding it, edit and recompile the code, then present it to the customer again.
I don't know of any construction products where this can be done. You can't realistically build a bridge, then change it if customers decide they want placed a few meters to the right. Most construction products I've seen described as Agile have just seemed like a Waterfall project broken into smaller subprojects, but not really capable of allowing customers to make changes to the product.
Eric -
Component/modular construction and use of 3D printing are two ways in which incremental delivery could be achieved.
Just as with a software product, there is the need to sufficiently explore architecture & design options early on to ensure we are not building ourselves into a future "blow it up and start over" scenario.
Kiron
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1 reply by Eric Simms
Nov 12, 2019 12:49 PM
Eric Simms
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Agile is noted for its ability to produce a working product every two weeks (approximately) to which additional functionality can be added. Can you give me an example of a component/modular or 3D printed construction product that fits that criteria? When I think of 'construction' large buildings, bridges, and the like come to mind. There might be construction products for which Agile would work well, but I can't think of any.
Saving Changes...
Eric SimmsSenior Program ManagerBaltimore, Maryland, United States
Nov 12, 2019 12:28 PM
Replying to Kiron Bondale
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Eric -
Component/modular construction and use of 3D printing are two ways in which incremental delivery could be achieved.
Just as with a software product, there is the need to sufficiently explore architecture & design options early on to ensure we are not building ourselves into a future "blow it up and start over" scenario.
Kiron
Agile is noted for its ability to produce a working product every two weeks (approximately) to which additional functionality can be added. Can you give me an example of a component/modular or 3D printed construction product that fits that criteria? When I think of 'construction' large buildings, bridges, and the like come to mind. There might be construction products for which Agile would work well, but I can't think of any.
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2 replies by CEDRIC KAMDEM KAMGAING and Kiron Bondale
Nov 12, 2019 2:42 PM
Kiron Bondale
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Eric -
Agility is about improving the timeline for value delivery (time to market/frequency), quality and stakeholder satisfaction.
Sprint durations of 1-4 weeks make sense for software contexts but might need to be adapted for other industries.
Large-scale construction projects might still be delivered incrementally but increment sizes might be larger given physical or regulatory constraints.
Kiron
Nov 18, 2019 8:29 PM
CEDRIC KAMDEM KAMGAING
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hi Eric,
large scales construction projects in higly regulated environment require to produce a fully functionnal model of parts of the end result to be validated prior to moving forward especially construction of large buildings and bridges, mock ups must be produced first in the design and even the construction phase and those mock ups might be integrated as part of the final result in the construction phase. this is also a way to get early feedbacks on requirements from stakeholders, modify and add functionnality to models that will serve as baseline for the other parts of the end result, although the sprint time might not be as short as in other industries. i think the combo of both approaches can yield great results as long as they are tailored to the relevant situation.
Agile is noted for its ability to produce a working product every two weeks (approximately) to which additional functionality can be added. Can you give me an example of a component/modular or 3D printed construction product that fits that criteria? When I think of 'construction' large buildings, bridges, and the like come to mind. There might be construction products for which Agile would work well, but I can't think of any.
Eric -
Agility is about improving the timeline for value delivery (time to market/frequency), quality and stakeholder satisfaction.
Sprint durations of 1-4 weeks make sense for software contexts but might need to be adapted for other industries.
Large-scale construction projects might still be delivered incrementally but increment sizes might be larger given physical or regulatory constraints.
This issue is common across heavy industries. There are often engineering limitations as to what you can change later or you find you have inadequate margins for strength, exceed required capacities for things like power, etc. Sometimes that can be addressed by over-designing things so that the margins leave a lot of room for growth, but there is a cost to that as well.
Not everything is tightly integrated due to many dependencies though. Modular designs are tightly integrated within the modules but have limited interfaces to other modules so they allow more flexibility in the design process within modular portions of a project so long as the interfaces are maintained and they don't alter the project critical path.
Other activities have few schedule dependencies. You could have multiple changes to an existing product that are unrelated to each other, and most probably aren't on the critical path. These may be dealt with using sprints without having collateral impacts throughout the project.
The trick is sometimes figuring out where the timing and sequence of items are critical and where they are not. Where there are many interfaces between things, changes to one item may have far reaching impacts. Where there are few interfaces, there are more options for when and how required activities are performed. Saving Changes...
Anton OosthuizenSenior Business Analyst / Project Manager| Self EmployedPretoria, Gauteng, South Africa
I would question the why. Why do you feel that you want, or need to introduce Agile into the project? Also agile and Agile are two different things and agility can (and probably must) be used on any project whereas Agile is a matter of fit i.e. will it provide the benefits you are hoping for. Hitting a square peg into a round hole is never a good thing. Agile is not the start and end-all, it is just one approach. Saving Changes...
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