Hybrid Project Management – Combining Traditional with Agile
Hybrid Project Management is the answer to respond to the fact that Agile has taken the world by storm. There are many circumstances, however, where agile is not the answer. It may not be possible to work iteratively and deliver incrementally every project deliverable. The contract may limit the delivery flexibility. Culture and environmental conditions may constrain collaboration and communication.
In these circumstances, projects can still have agility by combining the agile approach with the traditional project management approach.
What is Hybrid Project Management?
Hybrid Project Management combines the best of conventional project management with the best of agile methods. As a result, teams can use this project management approach in most projects.
Hybrid project management may adopt different configurations. A common configuration is to plan upfront with the traditional approach and use agile in product development phases. Through this, the team can divide the development cycle into small and time-limited sprints. By adopting sprints, the team can handle requirement changes and still contain cost and schedule risks. This happens when the team achieves a certain stage with one hand. Or the product is a minimum viable product, by another hand. Then the team can concentrate on future improvements.
Putting Hybrid Project Management into Action
As we mention Hybrid Project Management can adopt different configurations. Below we will show you an example of how the combination of these two approaches can work.
Plan with Waterfall
The waterfall approach will help you to plan high-level deadlines, deliverables, and contracts with customers.
Execute with Agile
Use the Agile approach to execute your project work. You must divide the work into tasks. The team should take less than a day to do those tasks. Then create a backlog with all the tasks necessary to fulfill the project’s phase or the whole project. With the commitment of the team decide to work by sprints from 2 to 4 weeks.
Prioritize the backlog before each sprint. In other words, the team should decide the work that needs to be done in the sprint. Remember to estimate each task to find out how much work can be done in one sprint.
The entire team must meet, at the end of the sprint, so they can analyze what went well and what they can do differently to improve. This is a retrospective meeting. Also, in the meeting, collect metrics with the other members of the team, to see how many tasks were completed by the team and the total estimation. Use these metrics to estimate the next sprint!
Monitor and Control combining the 2 approaches
Tools, such as the project burndown chart, can help you visualize progress. Ceremonies, like the daily stand-up, will help you control if the team is doing the work according. Also, the team will check the project’s deliverables and goals confirming the achievement. The agile approach promotes communication during the interior process, so meet with all stakeholders by the end of each sprint to present project progress and value delivered.
Continuous improvement using the Agile Approach
You can use Agile ceremonies like the Daily stand-ups, sprint retrospectives, and so on to meet this objective of continuous improvement.
Close the project with the Waterfall approach
At the end of the project, the team performs a lesson-learned exercise. This exercise will allow seeing what went well and what could be improved.