Project Management Body Of Knowledge

Focus is kept on the recurrence of condensed work cycles and also at the functional product yielded by the outcome, but in waterfall technique only once chance is been given to the development team to keep the project aspects right. But under the agile technique each and every feature of development including the design, requirements, is thoroughly checked under its lifecycle (Mahfuj et al, 2012). There is always some time to steer in another direction if a team stops at regular interval say after every two weeks and re-evaluates the project done.

After having reviewed definitions and perspectives by three author groups, I’m inclined to conclude that waterfall methodology is essentially defined by its insistence upon the completion of product development steps in a sequential manner in order to accommodate a client’s need for a product or tool that will enable their business to be performed in a temporally defined effective (or desired) manner. By utility, for the sake of quickly delivering a product to the satisfaction of its client, a development team who employs the waterfall method may do so because of waterfall’s logical yet rigid structure. Its step-by-step nature promotes an easy to follow guide, though many of the tasks involved in the process of its development are anything but easy. Further, waterfall’s rigid nature seems to reinforce the notion of its logic, if but for the sake of timely product completion and client budget. Due to its methodological rigidity, however, products developed by way of waterfall may tend to be rigid in their own right.

Several adaptations to the traditional approaches like agile, interactive, phased, extreme, etc have been made but each will be expected to meet the requirements of the project objectives, timeline, resources, and deliveries of the stakeholders. Other industry standard certifications like ISO9000 and regulations like the Sarbanes-Oxley have also influenced methodologies and processes used by several organisations (Kerzner, 2003). Generally, managing projects should involved five major process which include the project initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and controlling, and then project closing. See Fig. 2 below.

Project Management Office (PMO) and Agile method are highly reputable terms in many organizations, especially in their IT projects. The PMO is a group of people or committee within an organization that is responsible to define and maintain standards and practices for traditional project management. The ultimate objective for the PMO is to gain the benefits that are derived from applying Project Management (PM) methods, practices and policies. Thus, the PMO over time will become the origin for documentation, guidance and metrics regarding to any practices that are involved in managing projects within the organization, as well as it will be the communication channel that

The waterfall model consists of five phases such as requirements, Design, implementation, verification and maintenance. The method is a sequential design process where progress is seen as flowing downwards in a steadily manner, each development phase has its own distinct goals. The model is similar to water flowing down a cliff it can only flow in one way and cannot go back up it is the same with waterfall development ,after a development phase is completed it proceeds to the next development phase you cannot go back.

The Waterfall methodology was created by Winston Royce in 1970 and is based on the idea of "...progressing linearly from conception, through requirements, design, code and test..." (Neill, 2004). One of the main assumptions about this method is that the requirements will change very little if at all and that users will not be involved in development or be providing much feedback (Neill, 2004). A really good definition given by Laplante and Neil on this methodology is, "This model of development assumes that requirements are set, stable, and fully evolved before analysis begins, because development progresses linearly through the phases from requirements through system deployment. A phase is revisited only if artifacts created in that phase fail inspection review, or test. If you run into people who dispute this argument, remind them that water doesn 't flow up a waterfall" (10).

The Waterfall method was originally developed in 1970 by Dr. W Royce to assist with the development of software. It has survived to this day through adaption and revisions enabling it to be one of the most widely used models (Charvat 2003). Its namesake originates from the analogy of a waterfall flowing downwards with the model following suit, cascading towards completion (Balaji and Murugaiyan 2012) this is known as a serial lifecycle. Each phase (starting in the top left corner) within the serial lifecycle is completed before moving on to the next phase until the end goal is reached (see Figure 1). This kind of method suits projects that have clearly defined stage goals, outcomes or solutions that are highlighted in the initial strategy of

The framework definition applies to PMBOK. It is a collection of techniques, knowledge and principles on Project Management. It uses a common terminology,

The Waterfall method is essentially a sequential approach for software development. At each stage of a project, the all tasks and goals need to be completed before moving to the next stage with the goal of reducing error. The first signs of the Waterfall method

The Waterfall method uses documentation at the onset of the project that clearly defines the software requirements. The creation of the documentation and source code usually takes a significant amount of time. This time consuming process is usually circumvented when using an Agile approach (Arken, 2008). The process, however time consuming, is also extremely important. By clearly defining the goals and objectives of the project, stakeholders like the customers and developers are on the same page at the start. Another clear benefit to having documentation of project requirements is realized whenever there is a change of personnel during the project lifetime. The creation of documentation helps prevent project failure if one or

1. A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge; PMBOK Guide. 2008 Fourth edition. United States of America. Project Management Institute, Inc.

The current project management process that we currently employ (the agile scrum framework) shares many of the same characteristics of the ‘Ten Step’ structured project management process.

The original Waterfall model has a foundation that is supported by two distinct characteristics. First, the methodology is rooted in the fact that that the software be developed in stages. “Originally created by Benington in 1956 and later modified by Royce in 1970, the quintessential Waterfall model is linear and sequential in evolution, typically with milestones at each phase of development. (Pavolka, 2005). As seen in figure 1 (Ruparelia, May 2010), the typical thresholds consisted of Evaluation, Requirements, Analysis, Design, Development, Validation, and ultimately Deployment. The evaluation phase, at the aggregate level, helps to reveal the situation at hand. The requirements phase is arguably the most important phase of the Waterfall plan as it lays out the project statement and sets the framework and expectations for the project. The next phase, Analysis, works as a comparison between what capabilities are needed versus what constraints currently exist. That leads into the Design phase in which the software developers determine the architecture required to meet the customer’s expectations taking into account the constraints previously identified. Development is the next phase that takes the inputs from the Design phase and outputs a tangible product ready for testing. The testing or Validation phase is the process in which the software is checked for two things: a) any and all bugs are identified and removed and b) the original scope of work including all

Waterfall method is one of the traditional software developing method that has been implementing for decades. Usually, clients have requests, then software developers create an initial paln; after client approves the plan, developers follow through the plan; at the end, developers test and finish the task. Upon clients’ additional requests or tests, developers add up the extra features, but in most of the case, it would be too late or too hard to change. The entire process is not very communicative or translucent since clients and developers generally meet just once or twice throughout the project. In the article Why Making Software is so Difficult the author mentioned that software production is very

Among the various approaches adopted in project management is Agile Methodology, one that is mentioned frequently among experts and considered as one of the key approaches adopted in organizations. As pointed out by Stare (2013), Agile Methodology can be described as a particular way that is embraced in the management of projects and teams in Information and Technology among other fields. There are various practices associated with the Agile Methodology and some of them include the ability to assume simplicity, creation of documentation based on value, enabling rapid feedback to all stakeholders, and embracing change among others practices. Since its emergence in project management, various research studies have been conducted in a bid to explore the possibilities of using the Agile Methodology in other industries that are not specifically meant for software development. Given the fact that corporations are