Choosing The Right Project Management Methodology

In short a project management methodology is all the steps you need to undertake to successfully deliver a project. This methodology will list all the project phases, activities and tasks required for successful completion of the project. It may also describe all these phases, activities or tasks in more detail and should also include all templates you may require. It may also, where applicable, provide you with practical examples.

In order to select the right project management methodology, you must first define your requirements. This will include describing what content you need, for instance must it list every project phase, action and activity. Must it be industry specific or can it be generic and should it also include the processes specific to your industry or organization. Further you must define the features it should include for managing your projects, such as reporting and tracking features and importing and exporting of information.



Another very important step is to review what you already have. This could be an existing methodology, documents and templates. If you have something that works 80 percent and maybe only need a bit of tweaking, why reinvent the wheel? Maybe you only need a few more templates or documented and formalized processes.

You may also want to do a bit of research on existing methodologies that are out in the market. These may come packaged with all your requirements, templates and features you have described already and can then easily be adopted for your specific needs.

If neither your current methodology or any market available methodologies provide for what you need, you can also look at taking best of both worlds and customize your own and existing methodologies to better suite your needs. This may be a bit more time consuming, but the benefit here is that it will closer fit your exact requirements.

Finally, when you have accessed all options and decided on a specific project management methodology, the most important action is that of implementing your selected methodology. In order to fully implement your methodology you must ensure that everyone adopts your methodology, you provide appropriate training on the new methodology, you communicate your methodology to all stakeholders, and you use your methodology in all your projects and ensure that you continuously improve your methodology.

By ensuring that you stick to these 5 steps, you can select the appropriate methodology and successfully implement and use it in your project management.