Is Agile the Future of Project Management?
Is Agile the Future of Project Management?
Agile seems to be growing in popularity among project management professionals, and with good reason. Its flexibility and adaptability make Agile ideal for projects where the significant constraints are not well understood. It also works for customers who want a high level of involvement and frequent deliveries of workable products. But is Agile the future of project management?
The simple answer is no. Despite the many benefits of Agile, it’s not well-suited to all projects — for example, anything that requires reproducibility. Picture a scenario in which a customer asks you to create three identical cars. If you decide to create a separate project and form a stand-alone Agile team for each one, it would likely result in three unique cars rather than three identical ones.
Agile is also unsuitable for:
- Projects where the outcome is already stable and well understood
- A customer who is unwilling to commit to the level of interaction required
- A company that cannot support an Agile environment
Waterfall is currently the best project management method for clearly-defined projects with concrete timelines and deliverables.