Conventional Wisdom Revealed
December 5th, 2002 by HalHeavyweight vs. Lightweight (Project) Methodologies
Reading Jason P. Charvat offers us a view of the conventional wisdom of project management. In Charvat's latest article in Builder.com he sets out to compare project methodologies on the two ends of the spectrum of approaches. In so doing, he gives credence to 'one approach is better' or more suitable than the other depending on the circumstances of the project and the style preferences of the project manager. Charvat does a superficial job of describing the practices. He fails to recognize poor practices saying,
"Sometimes a project is simply cobbled together out of a series of quick-paced decisions. This can be effective if the project is small, but as the project grows, it can become increasingly difficult to add new features."
Charvat dwells on the weaknesses of the heavyweight approach while giving emphasis to the benefits of the lightweight methodologies.
In describing a "practical example" of a heavyweight approach he says,
"Everything needs to be planned far ahead on such a lengthy project, and management likes it to be predictable. They have this down to a fine art."
Sure, people want predictability and control, but planning to the gnat's ass months and quarters in advance doesn't produce that predictability. Project team members will tell you so. He fails to grasp that point.
Charvat lists 10 "essential points" for selecting a project methodology.
- Budget
- Team
- size
- Project criticality
- Technology used
- Documentation
- Training
- Best practices/lessons learned
- Tools and techniques
- Existing processes
- Software
Yet he fails to tell you how to consider those issues.
Charvat goes on to sing the praises of the lightweight methodologies (scrum, agile, XP, etc.). He lists one benefit after the next, but like many others, he misses the central issue of projects — projects occur in the future and consequently face uncertainty and variability. While we might show some deference to the preferred style of the project manager, the main concern we have on projects is to manage in a way that acknowledges uncertainty. Further, we certainly don't want to add to the variability on the project by multi-tasking and from poor coordination of action. To some degree or another projects need to be managed for learning and innovation while avoiding the introduction of (more) variability and mitigating inherent risk.
Neither heavyweight nor lightweight methodologies (as described by Charvat) explicitly consider the underlying nature of the project setting. Take a look at the article and leave your rating. Oh…stay tuned; Charvat promises to examine and compare the different lightweight project methodologies. You can bet I'll be offering my views!
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December 6th, 2002 at 3:29 am
Take a look at the comments readers left on Charvat’s article.