What project management methodologies to use?

A good strategic plan of a company should pay attention to study which project management methodology is the most appropriate for their business model. The objective is to obtain the maximum benefit from the human resources that are used.

"A project manager must know what is the best project management methodology for your company"

There are companies that manage to come up with an own management method that fits perfectly with your company. Others, however, prefer to rely on the most extended methodologies and adapt them by making certain modifications. In any case, the main thing is to know the importance of applying a method to optimize the work.

Methodologies for project management

For many years, companies have known the benefits of using project management methodologies. These are the 4 most used major typologies:

1. Agile Management

Thanks to the use of some of the methodologies included in the agile project management, it is possible to coordinate the work of the teams and assign tasks more quickly and efficiently. These methodologies are flexible and adapt to all types of projects, so they have become the most used. In particular, there are two methodologies that stand out for their great use:

• Gantt diagram

The Gantt Chart is the most used project management tool. Its creator, Henry Laurence Gantt, designed at the beginning of the 20th century a diagram with two axes of coordinates: the axis that shows the tasks to be performed and the axis that shows time.Thanks to this simple graph, you can make an exhaustive follow-up of the tasks to be executed and the times used or planned to carry out its closure.The tool can be easily designed using free spreadsheets and is also adapted to all types of projects, although its use is more widespread in projects subject to few changes such as construction or educational projects.

• Kanban Methodology

The Kanban project management methodology comes from Japan and, in recent years, is gaining popularity in companies around the world thanks to its fluidity and the multitude of benefits it brings to the users. The tool based on this methodology offers the possibility of visualizing in a table all the tasks of a work team and establishing the times and team members assigned to each of those tasks. In this way, all workers can know at what point a project is located and how much extra work each person on the team can admit. The use of this methodology gives the companies a multitude of improvements, among which are the correct distribution of tasks, an excellent organization, an increase in collaboration among team members and a boost in performance.

4. Cascade Model (Waterfall)

This methodology consists in derailing a project in sequential stages that will be executed one after the other, giving rise to a cascading scheme. This model was born in the construction sector since, once a stage of the process ends, making changes in previous processes is an economic and laborious effort. Soon this model became part of the management of projects of various sectors, leading to some drawbacks: the main has to do with the long waiting times that are generated between phase and phase of the process.Regardless of the project management methodology used, the important thing is that a company knows how to execute tasks diligently, making the best use of its human resources.

"Success comes for all those who are busy looking for it"

Henry David Thoreau