Practices For Research Project Management: PMBOK And Scrum Methodologies Compared

Project Methodology: Definition and Importance

Question:

Discuss About The Practices For Research Project Management?

The PMBOK or Project Management Body of Knowledge is the collection of the best terminologies, guidelines, practices and processes that is used by the industry of project management as a standard. As new practices and methods are discovered, the book of knowledge needs to be disseminated and updated. According to Schwaber, Scrum is a framework which is utilized to address complex problems those are adaptive in nature and used to deliver high quality products both creatively as well as productively. The framework is created by keeping in mind the focus on value and high visibility of the project which is taken into account by the developers for creating a deliverable. The research aims at describing and comparing these two common methodologies and how the chosen methodology can be related with the project life cycle.

A manager assigns a project to achieve the proposed planned results and goals within a defined budget and schedule. For assisting managers at every step of the project, certain methodologies are implemented from the initiation to the closure of the project.

Project methodology is the straightforward way to assist the team through the development and execution phases of the PMLC or Project Management Life Cycle. It is a model which is followed by project managers for achieving the project objectives and is used for employing the design and planning of the project. According to Jack Meredith, Samuel Meredith and Samuel J. Mantel, project methodology is the application of everything that a project manager needs to manage the project parameters (“A guide to the project management body of knowledge: PMBOK (®) guide”, 2018). The manager is expected to develop and execute a plan according to the specified parameters such as cost, specification and schedule. This approach focuses on the outcomes of the project in terms of requirement. A deliverable is produced by every project phase which is used to meet the objectives of the project. To provide breaks in the project logically with the key decision points, phasing of the project is carried out. The methodologies can be divided into three criteria namely initiation, control and closing.

The initiation contains the goals, assumptions, deliverables, objectives, risks, scope, costs, duration, benefits and issues related to the project. The control phase involves the tracking and management of the project. The closing phase is often overlooked but it is important to decipher whether the project has managed to perform with the given costs, duration and tolerance (Abrahamsson, Salo, Ronkainen & Warsta, 2018). A customer acknowledgement is necessary to understand if the project has achieved its goals and objectives.

A well planned project management methodology is necessary for carrying out a successful project. As projects are getting complex in nature, they include a lot of parameters which are difficult to manage. The complexity of managing these projects is much greater along with the risk factor. The methodology enables the organization to tackle such projects in a systematic and well organized manner. This allows the operational team to have a tactical, strategic and operational advantage in project management.

PMBOK and Scrum Methodologies: A Comparison

Project methodology is used for providing confidence to the senior management, partners and customers that the delivery organization is capable enough to run such large projects in a profitable manner (Stackpole, 2013). This allows the delivery organization to carefully analyze the difficulties and risks associated with the project and put strategies into place to minimize the extent of the risks and overcome.

The tactical benefit of the methodology in project management is that it allows the managers (who are working off site) to have confidence in status assessment validity. These allows them to figure out the problems and overcome it whether they are technical or business related. On the operational level, the methodology allows the operational team to do the correct thing in a correct way for the first time (Pasian, 2015). This allows the organization to deliver the project in a cost effective way under schedule.

PMBOK is a framework (general in nature) which can be used in any type of projects and no specific methods are followed. It is not actually a framework but a series of guidelines that can be utilized in project management tools and techniques. Whereas, Scrum relies on specific methodologies where the steps are mentioned clearly which is aimed at product (especially software) development (Brewer & Dittman, 2013).

A global view of the aspects of project management is provided by PMBOK which is used a reference for any development project. Due to the dynamic nature of Scrum, it promotes a change in the work culture where all the elements are not followed properly.

In an IT development project, the development process of the project cannot be predicted efficiently. Some parts of the project can be foreseen but it is difficult to keep track of every elements of the project. A delay in the development process leads to dissatisfaction of the client and increased costs. With the help of Scrum methodology, developers can organize the development process and ease out the development cycle. With the help of the Scrum Master, a lot of clarity can be provided to the development team as well as the client side (Kononenko & Kharazii, 2014). The methodologies help the team to keep track of the IT development project and overcome the hurdles properly. Studying each and every element of the software becomes easy as segregation of the elements of the software are offered by Scrum. This helps the client manager or the clients to understand each process and determine the next process. With the help of predictive analysis, Scrum helps the developer team to have greater control over the project, track all the project levels and prevent delays. The processes are broken down into several software development parts and the most important features of the project are developed first in a fixed time.

The Scrum is also designed to handle changes and adapt with the development environment with the help of iterative delivery and empirical process control. This allows the developers to make changes to the project without compromising the development environment (Roudias, 2015). Both the perspectives of the user and the business are taken into account which is essential for the project life cycle. The client can give feedbacks and check the progress at any time. A problem in the implementation of the project life cycle highlights the fact that the sprint has not been completed in the desired time and steps are taken to avoid the delay.

Benefits of a Well-planned Project Management Methodology

The chosen Scrum Methodology further relates to the IT development life cycle as the project is handled by a self-organizing team where no team leader assigns a specific task to the developers. The entire team handles the decisions as a whole. The team is also cross functional giving the developers of the IT development project enough time to take feature to its implementation from the idea. Every day the team members, the Scrum Master and the product owner have to sit through a daily meeting where the tasks and issues are discussed. The daily meetings are seen as a method to synchronize the work of the developers (Sachdeva, 2016). At the end of every sprint, the progress is shown to the product owner as well as the stakeholders who provide their valuable feedback that can be used in the next sprint. This feedback loop is essential for every development life cycle and allows the developers to make changes to the product functionality.

Conclusion

Although PMBOK is recognized globally and contains good practices which has been accumulated over the years, it is not suitable for small projects and employs difficult processes for keeping the development team connected. It contains projects from all types of industries and the general techniques, tools and outputs are defined. Whereas, Scrum is the framework which does not impose a precise procedure to be followed but provides several processes where following all the processes are not mandatory. It gathers requirements from every deliverable and uses the feedbacks to maintain an exact cost and time estimation of the project. It is perfect for small teams and generates scope for including adaptable changes in the project development life cycle. To conclude the report, it can be proposed that several environment variables need to be taken into context for choosing a correct methodology for the given project. The requirements, agreements and possibilities of including the requirements with the technology are important factors that should be addressed by the project managers. PMBOK is a good option if the scenario is predictable, simple and less likely to include change requests. Scrum is perfect for those scenarios where the requirements are not even close to the proposed agreement and the project is complicated as well as chaotic in nature.

References

A guide to the project management body of knowledge: PMBOK (®) guide. (2018). Amberton.mylifeblue.com. Retrieved 3 March 2018, from https://amberton.mylifeblue.com/media/Syllabi/Fall%202014/Graduate/MGT6154_E1.pdf

Abrahamsson, P., Salo, O., Ronkainen, J., & Warsta, J. (2018). Agile Software Development Methods: Review and Analysis. Arxiv.org. Retrieved 3 March 2018, from https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.08439

Brewer, J., & Dittman, K. (2013). Methods of IT project management. Purdue University Press.

Kononenko, I., & Kharazii, A. (2014). The methods of selection of the project management methodology.

Pasian, M. (2015). Designs, methods and practices for research of project management (1st ed.). Gower Publishing, Ltd.

Roudias, J. (2015). Mastering Principles and Practices in PMBOK, Prince 2, and Scrum: Using Essential Project Management Methods to Deliver Effective and Efficient Projects. FT Press.

Sachdeva, S. (2016). Scrum Methodology. International Journal Of Engineering And Computer Science. https://dx.doi.org/10.18535/ijecs/v5i6.11

Stackpole, C. (2013). A User’s Manual to the PMBOK Guide. John Wiley & Sons.

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