18 Software Project Management Methodologies for Software Development

Undoubtedly, the project management methodology is an essential part of any project since all businesses and enterprises use it to improve their project performance. Given that there are many software project management methodologies besides the traditional Agile methodology, it may be challenging to select the most suitable one.

With that in mind, the following article will help you better understand some aspects of the popular project management methodologies apart from traditional project management Agile. Besides, with our tips for choosing the right project management methodology, you could easily make your choice and attain your business goals.

Understanding Software Development Project Management

Whether you’re a seasoned project manager or new to the field, grasping these foundational concepts is key to successfully navigating the diverse landscape of software project management methodologies. So, let’s embark on this journey to gain a deeper understanding of the core principles that underpin effective software development project management.

What is a Software Development Project?

In a restrictive definition, software development is just a process of writing and maintaining codes. However, a real software development project covers much more tasks, from researching and conceptualizing ideas to launching, maintaining, and improving final deliverables.

Project Management for Software Development

Whether an outsourcing company is working on small-scale projects for startups or complex ones for large enterprises, project management is an integral factor in the software development process.

Software development is no longer the job of only software engineers, but rather involves many other stakeholders such as UI/UX designers or business analysts and therefore accompanies a higher level of complexity. Therefore, software development management is essential regardless of project scope.
This process entails various principles and practices, beginning with input parameters specified by clients and even pasting after the software goes to the market. 

Without project management, all people involved in the project hardly establish obvious goals and then fail to devise respective plans to meet the end on time and within budget.
Worse, the lack of project management translates to inefficient organization and supervision of the project, resulting in poorly functioning deliverables and crippling losses in terms of finance and reputation.

In this article, we’ll deduce some common methodologies or models to monitor projects successfully as follows:

1. Scrum;
2. PRINCE2;
3. Waterfall;
4. Lean;
5. Kanban;
6. Six Sigma ;
7. Extreme Programming;
8. Critical path method;
9. Gantt Chart Method;
10. Agile.

10 Best Software Project Management Methodologies for Software Development

1. Scrum

People consider Scrum the most widely used agile methodology framework, so Scrum still follows some fundamental agile principles such as responding quickly to customer feedback and changes, focusing on effective communication, and making collaborative efforts in short cycles.

However, Scrum itself has distinct properties. First, the designers of this management model designed it for the shortest iterations called “sprints”, which usually last for two weeks and never exceed one month.

The scrum team often involves fewer members than the agile team, with no more than 10 people including a scrum master, software developers, and a product owner. Which, a scrum master doesn’t act as a leader, but rather as a team facilitator who educates both stakeholders and team members about scrum principles to ensure the high quality of deliverables organizes daily meetings to examine progression, and eliminates impediments to software development, and more. 

A scrum process operates according to the following steps:

• Sprint planning: All people involved discuss the sprint goal and choose metrics that contribute to achieving the goal before building a sprint backlog.
• Implementation: During the process of coding software, all members hold daily meetings to track progress. 
• Sprint review: This step occurs at the end of the scrum sprint. It’s time for developers to present their work to a product owner and receive feedback.
• Sprint retrospective: In this phase, members look back on what worked well in the past sprint and how to improve products.

Specific Details

Because Scrum focuses mainly on quality and operates within a limited time frame, it is suitable for projects in fast-changing environments.

Rather than a fully-featured management methodology, Scrum is an approach with a set of principles and processes of Agile. However, it has different methods and tactics to deal with project management. Specifically, it emphasizes the project team, short “sprints,” and regular stand-up meetings. To be more specific, there is often no project manager, so the team needs to possess excellent team collaboration, self-organization, and self-management capabilities.

Thanks to the Scrum sprints, you can have no difficulty in managing large and complex projects. The “sprint” 30-day approach and daily stand-up meetings also contribute to the rapid iteration and development of your project. However, because the Scrum team is self-managing, the undisciplined and uncommitted team members will put the project at risk.

Large, complicated software development projects with highly experienced and dedicated development teams could capitalize on Scrum. This methodology, however, can also apply to other projects of IT and digital marketing.

Recommended reading: What is Agile Software Development?

2. PRINCE2

PRINCE2 is a project management methodology that divides the responsibilities between a board and a project manager. The board is responsible for necessary resource management and business justification, while the project manager deals with daily tasks and manages the whole team. This method includes all the needed tools, practices, and procedures to control resources and focus on the end-users and final improved product.

With the requirement of extensive documentation and the guiding principle “learn from experience”, this method emphasizes the role of experience in reducing your project risk. But you have to redo the documentation and re-allocate resources when changes are necessary, which may slow down your project.

The UK government predominantly uses this methodology, PRINCE2, in almost every project. You can opt for this methodology for complicated and big projects with consistent requirements. They can range from construction, architecture, and education projects to digital marketing and IT ones.

3. Waterfall

This methodology is a traditional development process that involves the execution of project activities in linear sequential order. There are six major phases in the Waterfall model including:

• Software requirements: A project manager works with a customer to define the problem, cost, risk, and project management metrics requirements in the first stage.
• Analysis: All stakeholders and team members analyze the problem and establish business concepts and models to tackle it in this phase.
• Design: Software architects and developers create a technical design including layouts, scenarios, and data models. 
• Coding: This stage involves implementing the technical solution by programming software and apps based on predetermined specifications.
• Testing: Before delivering to end-users, testing and debugging are necessary. These procedures ensure the program is bug-free and meets client requirements.
• Operations: This stage occurs after the product launch, including technical support, maintenance, and improvements.

Specific Details

This strategy relies on the results of the preceding phase because each step starts after it ends. If the client makes modifications in the Coding stage, the whole process has to go back to Design. Waterfall’s drawback. This development methodology is best for individuals who have a clear product vision from the start and rarely change their requirements.

Stakeholders can readily find errors in the Design stage, which helps them program later. The client and development team may estimate costs, timelines, and phase performance.

Waterfall methodology often requires a phase to finish before starting another. Requirements, designing, implementation, finding, testing, and maintenance are typical steps. Gantt charts can arrange subtasks, task relationships, and project phases using this methodology.

The intuitive step segmentation makes this Waterfall approach straightforward to employ for beginners. However, the distinct phases require “excellent” performance in each. If you find an error or need to alter something, you must start over, which slows project development.

This strategy works best when consumers know what they want and your project won’t alter. Waterfall project management can help in regulated industries with comprehensive project tracking and documentation.

4. Lean

Lean is a method that was once used in manufacturing, more specifically, the Toyota Production System. Despite initially being a method to minimize waste in the manufacturing process, it now refers to three wasteful practices throughout the project management process, known as Muda (wastefulness), Mura (unevenness), and Muri (overburden).

This method can allow small teams to achieve more remarkable results and create valuable products with profits in a short time without overspending on materials. It also guides enterprises to adapt to changing customers’ requirements. However, they need to have a large budget to invest in it because it is expensive to implement despite reducing costs.

Many projects across different industries from construction to education are using Lean. However, only some projects whose focal point is to reduce waste for more efficient workflows could get the most out of this methodology.

As the name states, lean software development works toward the idea of eliminating all redundant features, requirements, and so forth from the software development process. Although this model shares some pieces of philosophy with the agile methodology, there is some difference between them. Apart from waste elimination, lean software development services encourage the product’s fast delivery, adaptability to any dimension, and more. These major principles enable risk and cost mitigation and boost a better decision-making process. 

However whether the framework works well hinges on the development team’s competence and the commitment to all Lean principles. Therefore, to guarantee the effective use of this model, development teams often use such tools and techniques as value stream mapping, options thinking, etc.

5. Six Sigma

Six Sigma (6σ) is a customer-driven quality management methodology focusing on eliminating defects during the entire production process. It requires evaluating existing data and error reports to detect non-conformities that fail to match the initially approved product requirements. And thus, it contributes to a better quality of the project output. 

By focusing on this method, companies could turn out more competitively priced products and win more customers. However, because Six Sigma looks into business processes minute-by-minute and produces a lot of empirical data, it might lead to complicated and time-consuming procedures. Moreover, adopting its protocols often increases the overall costs for businesses.

This method could function well in larger organizations and enterprises specializing in engineering, manufacturing, healthcare, marketing, etc. You can use the Six Sigma methodology in any other industry where your primary goal is to deliver high-quality products to attract more clients.

6. Extreme Programming

Extreme programming XP is another popular project management methodology. It is to better software quality and ensure responsiveness to client’s changing requirements. Despite similar values or principles to Scrum, it features rules around technical practices of designing, coding, and testing, making it convenient for various types of projects. 

Using the Extreme Programming method, the project team doesn’t need to use too much documentation. Instead, it will tackle the problems and ensure regular testing for the software products to be on time. However, this method focuses more on code rather than design. This is a downside because good design is crucial for software apps.

This methodology is suitable for projects with unpredictable development or requiring more considerable changes. This method could have applications in complex project environments when your projects are not allowed to fail. You also want to focus on speed, innovation, quality, and profitability. 

7. Critical path method

The critical path method CPM, critical path analysis, is to identify and schedule your project’s critical tasks and all their dependencies. The longest sequence of critical tasks will constitute the critical path and establish your project timeframe. It is quite helpful for determining the priority of your projects’ activities, reassigning the team roles, evaluating risks, and distributing resources. 

This method allows you to schedule crucial tasks better and complete the project as quickly as possible without any critical steps being missed. However, everything needs to be carefully planned initially. Thus, those with little real-world scheduling and project planning experience may find it hard to calculate the time and distribute resources to each activity accurately. 

This method is most appropriate for projects with interdependent components. Therefore, you can use it when necessary to finish a task before another can begin with flexibility or prefer a visual way to map out the tasks’ sequence.

8. Gantt Chart Method

A Gantt chart’s display is in the form of a bar chart that demonstrates all events and tasks of a software development project. The left side of the chart shows a detailed list of activities performed in multiple phases such as planning or execution. Meanwhile, the top illustrates a determined time frame. A horizontal bar represents the duration, start date, and end date of an activity. 

The Gantt chart method accompanies various benefits including:

• Monitor which task is assigned to whom;
• Make project adjustments more convenient;
• Examine and report how things work;
• Help stakeholders clearly visualize how the project is conducted;
• Detect and report issues during the software development life cycle, thus producing suitable actions with ease.

Yet using this method in software development management comes with some drawbacks, more noticeably the time-consuming creation, management, and update of the chart.

9. Agile

Among the most popular methods for software development management used by various modern-day companies. Accordingly, an IT service provider breaks a whole project down into smaller workflows done in short cycles called “iterations”, each of which requires perpetual cooperation between project stakeholders and development team members. This hence encourages more efficient communication between both parties. 

Also, team members can both code and test each part of the deliverable in the same iterations. This mitigates time and cost risks, helps stakeholders focus more on the product’s quality, and speeds up the time of releasing the product to the market. 

Due to the mentioned characteristics, Agile is a tremendous methodology for projects experiencing constant changes or having ambiguous specifications from the onset.

Apart from the above methods, there is also another one called Kanban, which originated from Japan.

10. Kanban

Another prevalent agile framework that development teams use to visualize their work. In particular, a Kanban board, albeit physical or virtual, consists of several columns that represent respective items such as In Progress, Testing, or Done, whereas sticky notes that demonstrate specific tasks are attached to the board. 

This design allows all project participants to visually monitor the overall workflow and the progression of individual tasks in one place. When existing tasks are completed or when new tasks come up, information on the board will change accordingly. 

However, the Kanban model has some limitations such as no timeframe or confusion over whether the information is up-to-date. So those engaging in this methodology should prioritize information transparency and frequent communication so that team members may know exactly the project’s progress and at what phase the process is.

Bonus 8 Software Development Methodologies

Software development is a complicated process, and to get it done correctly, you need to find the correct methodology. There are over 100 different software development methodologies to choose from, and deciding which one is best for your team can be daunting. Luckily, we’ve narrowed it down for you and listed the top 10 software development methodologies out there. Take a look below and see which one best fits your team and project’s needs.

As with any industry, there are many different software development methodologies to choose from. You need to know all of the development methodologies. This is important because every project has different requirements and constraints. The best way to make sure you’re using the right methodology for your project is to be familiar with them all. With this article, you’ll find that each one differs in purpose and implementation depending on the type of software.

11. Black box testing

We’ve all seen this before, it’s one of the most common and recognized methodologies in software development. It’s a common practice to test and develop software, but you’ll find that a lot of teams that do this use a very high degree of formality and rigidity. Some of the techniques used to control the environment the software is running can lead to it being difficult to achieve good reproducibility and long-term metrics. However there is a cost to using this type of testing, namely time and resources. A more efficient, but more rigid approach to testing would be to combine a high degree of formality with a good amount of manual testing.

12. Prototyping Model

The prototyping model is the earliest stage of software development when you create a simple design and then move on to testing it. Prototyping is best used for problems that have a very small cost to solve. For example, a team of software developers might want to prototype a simple report using the Velocity Scrum framework. In the process of prototyping, they’ll have a working prototype that they can quickly expand into a fully functional software package.

The version control system built into the project management tool might be the next step, which ensures that a design document can be copied and pasted into a new document as the code changes. Next, the test team tests the code to find bugs and make any necessary changes.

13. Rapid Application Development Model

Rapid Application Development Model (RADM) is a flexible, agile software development process that can deliver major business value within just 6 months. That’s right — you can begin delivering massive ROI in under 6 months, and the entire process is designed to enhance your existing architecture with customer-centric innovations, while at the same time making you more efficient at deploying incremental changes.

The use case is driven development is a fast-paced, iterative approach to software development that focuses on real-world applications. It utilizes a continuous integration methodology, combining waterfall methodologies with agile methodologies.

14. Spiral Model

This method, which is based on the spiral model, is one of the most popular software development methodologies. Developers create a set of requirements for their proposed project. In turn, they submit them to the project managers, who place a value on them and turn those values into schedules and estimates.

Once these estimates are finalized, development starts. Some of the advantages of this method include Very good communication between the development team and the project managers. Can be used for both large-scale and small-scale projects. Built-in project coordination. You don’t have to worry about unclear project goals because everything is clearly spelled out. The project approach has clarity and logic. Focusing on needs and opportunities to deliver the best results.

Recommended reading: What Is Software Development and Software Development Process?

15. White Box Testing

Sometimes, when we’re working on a software project, we want to be able to see what our application is going to look like before it’s done. That’s where white box testing comes into play. White box testing is a software development methodology that allows developers and testers to use virtual machines and simulation software to test a system without actually installing it or modifying the code.

White box testing can be especially useful in situations where we don’t know what components we’re going to be using or what functionality we’re going to be supporting. If you’re thinking about implementing white box testing into your application, you can check out the white-box testing methodology provided by the Society of Test Automation Specialists.

16. Extreme Programming Methodology

Extreme Programming (XP) is a general-purpose software development methodology developed in 1990 by XP creator Jeff Sutherland and his colleagues at Extreme Programming, Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The basic tenets of XP are: Users and stakeholders must be at the center of the development team’s actions. Stakeholders must be included early and often in the development process.

Development can’t be stalled while the client waits for a patch or fix. Cross-project collaboration is encouraged. Development is broken down into small manageable pieces that are completed early in the development process. “Simplify and then make it better,” is the motto of XP. At its most basic level, XP involves a set of programming principles for software development.

17. Joint Application Development Methodology

This is the method that is used by the greatest software developers in the world. So, in the joint application development methodology, you will combine the experience of two or more developers. The developer who started the project will receive the credit and the money for the final result. To implement this methodology, you will need two developers who are in a similar position in terms of skills.

However, the key point is that the developer who starts the project will receive the credit and the money for the final result. As the name suggests, this methodology is made up of objects and their relationships and works on the principle that objects are either visible or hidden. Once they are visible, they are marked as such.

Recommended reading: 6 Popular Types of Software Development Services in 2022

18. Dynamic System Development Model Methodology

One of the most well-known software development methodologies, this approach is known as DSDM (Dynamic System Development Methodology). It uses a software design approach rather than developing individual components to fill specific requirements. Developing components allows development teams to focus on one component at a time, rather than the whole application at once. This methodology provides flexibility but requires that development teams work cooperatively to do the job. Many developers, especially those newer to the industry, assume that DSDM is better for large teams, but in reality, large teams can become counterproductive. Instead, teams that work well together will get more done in less time.

5 Tips for Choosing the Right Project Management Methodologies

The above section shows that different project management methodologies are more suitable for specific projects. To pick the methodology best serves your needs, you must consider factors impacting what you select. Here are a few particular things you could keep in mind when opting for project management methodologies. 

1. Evaluate the project

You should be clear about the final deliverables and ways to get your project done by gathering initial requirements. Depending on specific project initial requirements such as budget, timelines, complexity, etc., you could pick different methodologies. For example, if you are required to form a large and diverse team, a flexible method will be most suitable. 

2. Evaluate your team also helps determine the right methodologies

The project management methodology is a blueprint for the project, so your team must know how to read it. Hence, if your team has little experience with a project management methodology, it is challenging to complete the project successfully. You should choose what fits your team members rather than forcing them to adapt to an unfamiliar method.

Moreover, you had better consider your team’s strengths and weaknesses to opt for the right project management methodologies. If your team is highly disciplined, motivated, and experienced, Scrum could be a smart choice. And if you have limited resources, a resource-efficient approach such as Critical Chain Project Management will offer better results. 

3. Evaluate your organization

Your company’s organization, culture, and past records will significantly determine the type of project management methodology you choose. Some project methodologies are only suitable for large organizations with established hierarchies. Others could work well for smaller, leaner ones.

For example, if your past records reveal that all your Scrum projects were delayed and poorly performed, you ought to avoid this methodology in the future.

4. Evaluate your stakeholders

With some methodologies, stakeholders must frequently be involved in every project stage. For example, in the Agile methodology, you need stakeholders to give feedback regularly. If they are busy, a method with lower requirements of stakeholder involvement would be better. Moreover, it would help if you considered the demands of your stakeholders. If they want to change the project scope regularly, you can accommodate this demand by selecting a more flexible project management methodology. 

5. Evaluate your tools

There is a certain correlation between the methodologies and the project management tools. So, the available tools you have may affect your choice of project management methodologies. You could list all the pros and cons of the software tools you currently use and look into the tool requirements of a specific project methodology. Ideally, you should pick the method that works well with your existing tools. It may be expensive to purchase new tools and time-consuming to retrain your team.

A Final Thought on Project Management Methodologies

In a nutshell, there are several project management methodologies with their strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, you should evaluate your project requirements, your team, your organization, your stakeholders, and your current tools. By doing so, you can select a methodology that aligns with your strengths and your project goals. Hopefully, our article has helped you learn something about popular project management methodologies besides Agile. And may you be able to choose the right choice the most suitable one for your business?

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