things on track:
• Daily stand-ups: A short (15 minutes max) meeting held each day to discuss progress, what’s next, and what blockers exist. You stand during this meeting in order to keep it short, because who wants to stand for that long?
• Sprint planning: A creatively named meeting that is a bit longer (an hour max) and comes with the objective plan of what will be done within the sprint.
• Sprint review: A meeting to review all work done at the end of a sprint. In this meeting, you might collect feedback, decide something is done, or decide on an alternate route.
• Sprint retrospective: A meeting held after the sprint review for up to an hour to discuss what might make future sprints more productive.
• Kanban: The literal translation of this Japanese word is “sign-board” or “billboard.” A visual approach to scheduling that aids decision-making concerning what to produce, when to produce it, and how much to produce. It was created for lean manufacturing by an industrial engineer at Toyota. If you’ve used a tool like Trello, you’ve used a Kanban board to move tasks through stages to completion on a project (see Figure 2.3).
FIGURE 2.3 Place cards on your Kanban board to track progress. Want an example of a tool that will help with this? Check out Trello, JIRA, or Pivotal Tracker.
• Extreme Programming (XP): It’s not a part of the X Games, but you might find yourself drinking Mountain Dew while administering this Agile approach intended to improve quality by responding quickly to change. In essence, change can happen within sprints, and teams can change the course of their work being done/planned immediately.
• Adaptive Project Framework (APF): This one may resonate for PMs who recognize that you have to adapt your methodology to the project’s goals. With APF, you document project requirements, functions, subfunctions, and features before determining project goals. The team then operates in iterative stages rather than sprints, but stakeholders can change the project scope at the start of each stage. So, truly, you adapt to the project and its people.
Change Management Methodologies
Risks are inherent in all projects. You just know something will come up, and you want to prepare for them. These methodologies are meant for PM folks who are hyper-focused on what could pull a project off the rails and subsequently come up with stable ways to get it back under control.
• Event Chain Methodology (ECM): If critical path wasn’t enough for you, you want to take a look at ECM. The six principles of ECM make up a technique that is focused on identifying risks and their potential effects on a project’s schedule. Think of it this way: the ECM PM is living in doomsday. Everything is a risk, and they know how to handle it. On one hand, it makes the team comfortable. On the other, it can be sort of gloomy to always think about the worst that can happen. After all, your control ends somewhere, right?
• Extreme Project Management (XPM): Not to be confused with XP or a sick afternoon of Parkour, XPM is all about embracing change and altering project plans, requirements, resources, budgets, and even the final deliverable to meet changing needs. Extreme!
• PRiSM (Projects Integrating Sustainable Methods): This methodology for managing change is focused on sustainability, or using existing organizational resources, to reduce negative impact on environmental or social impacts. It follows six principles that are derived from the UN Global Compact’s Ten Principles. This is serious process work that can make your lives better in major ways.
Other Business Processes, Methods
New ways of working materialize every once in awhile and catch some traction. In fact, one could easily pop up before the publishing of this book, because we’re always looking for better ways of working based on what we deliver. While not all of these may really be classified as “methodologies,” and they might not apply to you, they are worth mentioning because you might be able to lift an ideal from one methodology to apply it to your own work.
• Lean: Do more with less! This methodology is focused on removing unneeded steps, resources, and budgets in order to deliver a product.
NOTE LEAN UX
If you’re in the web world, you’ve likely heard about applying the Lean methods to user experience work, which has traditionally weighed heavily on project budgets due to an abundance of deliverables (site maps, wireframes, flow diagrams, content inventories, taxonomies, and so many more). Lean UX brings ideas and the actual design of the experience to the forefront of the process, with less emphasis on deliverables. A simple process might look like Figure 2.4.
FIGURE 2.4 Brainstorm, build, launch, test, iterate . . . and keep going until you get it right.
• Six Sigma: This is a disciplined, data-driven methodology developed by an engineer at Motorola, and it has been adopted by many large organizations focused on manufacturing. It seeks predictable process results to improve the quality of final products by following a set of steps and removing the cause for defects. A Six Sigma process is one in which 99.99966% of all opportunities to produce some feature are statistically expected to be free of defects. That’s quality assurance and profitability!
• PRINCE2 (PRojects IN Controlled Environments): This methodology was developed for use by the UK government. The project is tightly controlled and planned before it begins, with stages clearly structured. This process-based approach leaves very little room for questions, as it is based on seven principles, seven roles, and seven process phases with direction on very specific documentation. The role of the PM is a bit different with PRINCE2, as he or she is responsible for basic activities like scheduling, while an appointed project board handles activities like resourcing and goal setting and the team.
• Benefits Realization: This methodology’s first focus is on the value you deliver to your customers and stakeholders rather than the fact that it was completed. This seems like a core value that should be a part of any project.
Devise a Methodology That Will Work for You
While it’s important to have a solid understanding of the many different ways to operate a project, you don’t have to feel as though you’re tethered to just one way of working, particularly in the digital space. After all, you need to do what works for your team, your clients, and your project. Maybe that means you take a Lean approach to deliverables to meet a smaller budget, or an Agile approach because your team wants to work iteratively and share work rapidly. You get the idea: do what feels right. Don’t overthink your process. Try something new, adjust when you see the need, and focus on solid communication and delivering quality work.
If you’re having a hard time deciding what steps in a process will work for you, think through these questions and scenarios:
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