Comparison Of PMBOK And Agile Project Methodologies For AstraZeneca Vaccine Project

PROJ6000 Principles of Project Management

Similarities and Differences

1. i) PMBOK: The Project Management Body of Knowledge or PMBOK refers to as a set of standard guidelines and terminology for project management. The guide of PMBOK is responsible for providing information of general management for planning, organization, staffing, execution and control of the operations within the respective business (Barghi, 2020). There are ten knowledge areas that are mentioned in the guide and these are responsible for analyzing different phases of project management in an effective manner. There should be an updated application of the knowledge, tools, skills and techniques, which could enhance the opportunity of success in these projects.
2. ii) Agile: Agile project management, on the contrary is an iterative approach for managing software development projects, which mainly emphasizes on continuous releases and even incorporates customers’ feedback with each iteration (Layton et al., 2020). There are several iterations that are needed to be considered in the project lifecycle for the subsequent completion of the work. These iterative approaches are distinctively utilized in software development projects for the purpose of promoting velocity as well as adaptability in an effective manner. The following report outlines a brief discussion on the application of PMBOK and Agile project methodologies to the case study of AstraZeneca with relevant details.

1. i) Similarities: Both PMBOK and Agile project management methodologies comprise of a few similarities.
2. a) The agile teams can follow all good practices of project management that are articulated in PMBOK for planning their own projects and PMBOK guide provides an outline of the project life cycle phases, which eventually correspond to the agile releases (Rosenberger & Tick, 2018).
3. b) Moreover, both of these project methodologies are responsible for following a sequential manner and the steps are executed in an effective manner.
4. ii) Differences: Apart from these two similarities; PMBOK and Agile also comprises of a few differences.
5. a) PMBOK is mainly related to the traditional and plan driven project management that is completely based on a defined process control model and agile is a highly complex and adaptive approach and is on the basis of an empirical process control method.
6. b) Another difference is that in PMBOK, only the project manager holds ownership of the entire project and in agile, every member of the team holds accountability and ownership for the project.

AstraZeneca is a global bio pharmaceutical company that has released 1 billion vaccine doses for supply to 170 countries (AstraZeneca. 2022). The differences between PMBOK and Agile are required for the case study as with the agile approach; every member of the team would be responsible for executing the project and the similarity of a sequential process is required in the work.

The PMBOK guide considers risk management as the systematic process to identify, analyze and respond to different project risks. There are six distinct processes in PMBOK and these include risk management planning, risks’ identification, qualitative risk analyses, quantitative risk analyses, risks’ response planning and finally risk monitoring and control.

Agile project methodology has focused on four vital processes in the risk management cycle and these risk control steps are identification of risks, making an evaluation, consideration of responses and analysis of the reviews (Raharjo & Purwandari, 2020).

There are a few reputational risks and uncertainties that are inherent in the vaccine project of AstraZeneca and it was required to consider an updated version of risk management for ensuring that maximum efficiency would be gained.

The consideration of the risk management methods of PMBOK methodology would be responsible for providing a detailed discussion of the aspects that are required to be followed in the project work (Sobieraj et al., 2021). The quantitative risk analysis would be responsible for determining the probability of achieving the project’s goal, which implies that AstraZeneca would be able to understand the level of success to be obtained from the vaccine.

Agile project methodology would be responsible for ensuring that the risks would be identified and managed in a shorter period of time by only making an assessment and considering every response. AstraZeneca would be able to ensure that the risks are well evaluated with agile project methodology and a comprehensive framework would be required to be considered. The risk handling activities are involved in the lifecycle of the project and it can leverage them in causing the risks to occur.

Both PMBOK and Agile project methodologies are extremely distinctive and noteworthy for any organization to execute their respective project works. PMBOK provides a proper and updated guidelines to the project managers for ensuring that they would be getting an ideology of the procedures that are required to be analyzed and executed in a distinctive manner. This particular methodology is managed by the project management institute and every project can be successfully managed and improved without any kind of complexity. The types of projects that mainly considers PMBOK in their projects are construction, engineering, information technology, financial, business and many more (Faraji et al., 2022). As a result, it can be stated that PMBOK is applicable for all types of projects.

Risk

Agile, on the other hand, is appropriate for any kind of software project work. Regular team meetings are required for gaining review progress of any particular phase and hence the errors and issues are successfully avoided without any kind of complexity (Noteboom et al., 2021). Since AstraZeneca is making vaccines for COVID 19 patients’ it would be required to ensure that the project processes are executed on top priority and on an urgent basis. As a result, agile project management methodology can be termed as a suitable approach to deal with the procedures faster.

There are five phases of PMBOK and these are responsible for focusing on the different phases of the project’s lifecycle. These five phases are initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and controlling and finally closing. All of these five phases are the general phases of a project management and the lifecycle implies that the project processes and phases would be executed in a chronological order (Faraji et al., 2022). As a result, the organizational management would be able to define a business requirement that is needed to be considered for the project results.

The second methodology of agile project management comprises of six phases and these include conception, inception, iteration, release, maintenance and retirement. The entire life cycle of the agile methodology can vary eventually depending on the aspect or result, selected by a team. All of these six phases are needed to be considered for getting an updated result. The life cycle is the structured series of phases that a product goes through as it moves from the initiation to the end (Zasa et al., 2020). Each of these phases of the project management life cycle are needed to be executed in such manner that the wasted resources could be prevented and the negative impacts are reduced without any complexity.

After analyzing both the project management methodologies of PMBOK and Agile, it can be stated that agile is the most suitable methodology to be applied in the case study of AstraZeneca. Since it would provide an iterative process, it would be quite easier for the organizational management to deal with the issues and complexities and gaining maximum efficiency. It is being checked that the requirement to move quickly has increased the overall complexity of the project of vaccine and hence, there is an urgency in executing the work (Žužek et al., 2020). Agile is termed as distinctive for executing any urgent project and also thrive in adaptive cultures.

The main advantages that would be gained from the application of agile project management methodology in AstraZeneca are as follows:

1. a) Superior quality product and a better control of the processes and operations.
2. b) Moreover, the existing risks would be reduced and there would be a high chance of increased flexibility and continuous improvement of the aspects and procedures.
3. c) AstraZeneca would also gain a better visibility of the processes in the project and there would be a distinct prominence in executing the work processes (Noteboom et al., 2021).
4. d) They have identified the gap of project management processes fit for moving at the speed of the project needed. It would be eradicated successfully with the application of agile methodology.

References

AstraZeneca. (2022). [online]. Accessed from https://www.pmi.org/-/media/pmi/documents/public/pdf/case-study/astrazeneca-case-study.pdf?v=0f58ca3a-8e50-4714-8bf8-caef06d3ebaa&sc_lang_temp=en  (pp. 1-8). [Accessed on 25th March 2022].

Barghi, B. (2020). Qualitative and quantitative project risk assessment using a hybrid PMBOK model developed under uncertainty conditions. Heliyon, 6(1), (pp. 1-21). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e03097  

Faraji, A., Rashidi, M., Perera, S., & Samali, B. (2022). Applicability-Compatibility Analysis of PMBOK Seventh Edition from the Perspective of the Construction Industry Distinctive Peculiarities. Buildings, 12(2), 210 (pp. 1-27). https://www.mdpi.com/2075-5309/12/2/210/htm   

Layton, M. C., Ostermiller, S. J., & Kynaston, D. J. (2020). Agile project management for dummies. John Wiley & Sons, (pp. 3-94). https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=_Pn6DwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR3&dq=agile+project+management&ots=D3LxNUBoCO&sig=5WLhI1VSR7GBRbTGiCd2-Aty_lk 

Noteboom, C., Ofori, M., Sutrave, K., & El-Gayar, O. (2021, January). Agile project management: a systematic literature review of adoption drivers and critical success factors. In Proceedings of the 54th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 1-10). https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/10125/71434/0662.pdf  

Raharjo, T., & Purwandari, B. (2020, January). Agile project management challenges and mapping solutions: a systematic literature review. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Software Engineering and Information Management (pp. 1-7). https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3378936.3378949?casa_token=p9opL_6PP_wAAAAA:i12pKabL_5lqqo6tjhDTi44j8WGZXzrMk-3LBsye0EsRbBS9ibNDbjM_rR2yekp_ATocpkFpRXm69g   

Rosenberger, P., & Tick, J. (2018, November). Suitability of PMBOK 6 th edition for agile-developed IT Projects. In 2018 IEEE 18th International Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Informatics (CINTI) (pp. 1-5). IEEE. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Philipp-Rosenberger-3/publication/338206364_Suitability_of_PMBOK_6_th_edition_for_agile-developed_IT_Projects/links/60b4a17d45851557baaf32db/Suitability-of-PMBOK-6-th-edition-for-agile-developed-IT-Projects.pdf 

Sobieraj, J., Metelski, D., & Nowak, P. (2021). PMBoK vs. PRINCE2 in the context of Polish construction projects: Structural Equation Modelling approach. Archives of Civil Engineering, 67(2) (pp.1-30). https://journals.pan.pl/Content/120012/34.ACE-00239v.3_B5.pdf  

Zasa, F. P., Patrucco, A., & Pellizzoni, E. (2020). Managing the hybrid organization: How can agile and traditional project management coexist?. Research-Technology Management, 64(1), (pp. 1-21). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348218293_Managing_the_Hybrid_Organization_How_Can_Agile_and_Traditional_Project_Management_Coexist   

Žužek, T., Gosar, Ž., Kušar, J., & Berlec, T. (2020). Adopting agile project management practices in non-software SMEs: A case study of a slovenian medium-sized manufacturing company. Sustainability, 12(21), 9245 (pp. 1-17). https://doi.org/10.3390/su12219245