The dogmatic “either agile or classical” approach to project management has served its time – it’s the right mixture that counts

Agile development and project management methods are gaining in importance. After the complex introduction of classical development models such as RUP or PRINCE, many companies are giving more and more consideration to the deployment of agile methods. There is a variety of reasons for this. On the one hand based on the wish for more rapid and flexible operation mechanisms. But on the other hand because the effort involved in preparing the documentation and clear planning of all the necessary tasks and roles puts off many people involved in the project at different levels.

In fact agile methods do provide good options for managing projects more efficiently and for responding to stakeholder demands more flexibly. The development of a new product for example, with many unclear aspects from the client side, requires nothing less than an agile approach. Yet there is still a justification for classical methods and, for as long as they are tailored carefully, they make projects efficient. Classical control mechanisms are ideally suited to critical migration projects, for example, where the customer order is precisely and conclusively limited in terms of deadlines and scope and a large amount of formal documentation is required.

This article looks at the deployment of approaches with agile and classical models from various different perspectives. Instead of pursuing what is perhaps an almost naive enthusiasm for agile methods, their advantages and disadvantages are carefully discussed along with their areas of application. A combination of classical and agile approaches is presented that combines the advantages of both methods.

This paper was written and presented by Dr. Kirchhof and Professor Kraft for the PM Forum 2011 of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Projektmanagement e. V. (the German Association for Project Management - Link). The original article (in German) is available to download.