Choosing the Right Process
Before joining Solid Digital I’d used a variety of project management methodologies from Waterfall, Waterfall with Scrum, Integrated Project Management and a variety of other hybrid methodologies. At Solid Digital we primarily use Waterfall, Agile, or a hybrid methodology.
Looking to gain a clearer understanding of Agile project management and it’s own subset of methods I set out to a panel discussion “Beyond Scrum: Finding the best flavor of Agile for your team,” hosted by the Technology Association of Oregon.
I expected to hear a clear list of qualifiers indicating when to use Agile and what method of Agile to use for different types of projects. I’m sure you can guess, this isn’t what happened at all. It turns out everyone has the same struggle.
With the variances in every project, from technical complexities to internal and client teams along with the experiences and expectations each person has around running a project, the options are endless. Trying to find a one size fits all solution is impossible. You can “templatize” and outline project management process all day long but in the end it comes down to what works best for the group to get what needs done along the way.
That’s when it finally clicked, I didn’t just need the right project to fit the mold, modifying the process to ensure the best results is a natural and necessary part of the process.
Flexibility FTW
At Solid Digital we build in that flexibility, we ingrain this into our culture and ask ‘do we really need this?’ for every process that’s documented to build a culture that empowers our team to fix what’s broken, change what needs changed, do what works to get the job done. We have a set of methodologies we turn to and during our planning phase we curate them to meet the needs of our client and projects.
Bottom Line
We want our clients to know what’s happening at each step of the way, to be able to communicate the details to their stakeholders and to rest assured we’ve got the details covered.
In the end it doesn’t really matter what project management methodology got us there.
