Modern PM methodologies in IT

I think one of the biggest shifts happening right now is that organizations are becoming less focused on “pure” methodologies and more focused on building delivery systems that can adapt to different types of work.

In practice, most large IT organizations I’ve worked with eventually evolve toward some form of hybrid operating model — not because they are trying to be trendy, but because different domains have very different execution characteristics.

For example:

• infrastructure and platform work often requires stronger governance, dependency management, and operational controls
• product engineering teams may benefit from more iterative and autonomous delivery models
• enterprise transformation programs usually need a blend of long-range planning, portfolio governance, and incremental execution

So the methodology itself becomes less important than whether the organization has clarity around:

• decision-making
• prioritization
• ownership
• governance
• feedback loops
• and cross-functional coordination

I also agree with some of the earlier comments that methodology discussions can sometimes distract from deeper organizational issues. I’ve seen organizations adopt Scrum, SAFe, Kanban, or hybrid models successfully — and I’ve also seen all of them fail when leadership alignment, governance, incentives, or execution discipline were weak.

On the statistics side, PMI’s recent Pulse of the Profession research still points toward continued growth in hybrid delivery models versus strictly predictive or strictly Agile approaches. Gartner, McKinsey, and Digital.ai’s State of Agile reports have also consistently shown that most enterprise organizations now operate with blended delivery approaches rather than methodology purity.

That said, I’d treat most methodology statistics cautiously. Many surveys measure how organizations describe themselves rather than how they actually operate day to day. In practice, two companies can both report being “Agile” while having completely different governance models, operating cadence, and decision structures.

At this point, I think adaptability and operational clarity matter more than methodology branding.

Hi Vadim,

A bit of a loaded question! I think it's truer to say that Agility is the dominant philosophy in IT these days. "Hybrid" is a bit of a slippery concept because all the H-word really seems to amount to is the aspiration to "be more flexible". Yet flexibility, empiricism and adaptability are all characteristics of enterprise agility of the last 30 years. It seems to me that hybrid really just means getting better at being Agile (others have argued on this site that "hybrid" doesn't actually exist!)

My experience in the technology profession is that innovation, governance and risk management are ever more important because of the relentless pace of change. Agility is the enabler: empowerment of teams, quality assurance, alignment with business value, customer collaboration, evidence-based results. There is no such thing as agile methodology, but agility as a characteristic of organizations is more important today than ever.

TL;DR, I've had the most success with Scrumban (hybrids can be agile/agile), and using Scrum for development embedded in a larger "waterfall" project that involved a lot of new hardware, process change, and training.

Continue reading if you want more of an "it depends" answer that doesn't really answer your question.

I keep trying to answer your question, and I keep coming back to "the methodology/approach usually isn't the core problem." Improving execution doesn't automatically improve outcomes, but this isn't what you're asking for. Statistics don't tell the whole story, and when they're presented by CEOs and salespeople you have to look for bias in the story - they're promoting a vision that may be more grounded in emotion than facts. The Pulse of the Profession tells a project management story, not a story about the variables in the businesses involved.

The methodology/approach is a symptom that gets blamed because it's easier than acknowledging that your governance is slow, nobody was paying attention to market conditions, increasing pressure from investors, and/or poor strategy. Methodology still matters - I wouldn't run an SAP S/4HANA brownfield implementation using Scrum, especially in an organization that had never used Scrum before - but understanding the organizational variables that help determine whether a methodology will be successful is critical. I want to say understanding the variables should come first, but if politics are involved you'll want to be careful when exposing organizational inefficiencies.