Projects are neither completely predictive nor agile any more. They are hybrid in nature. That is the reality. So far, project management had two distinct streams, the Adaptive (Agile) and the Predictive (traditional). The purists believed in any one of the streams. They are busy justifying their views. Now, the industry has changed. Irrespective of the type of work, majority are working from home and that demands adoption of both agile and predictive best practices in the day to day work. That trend is here to stay. The Project Management Institute (PMI) was the front runner in this by including Agile in the Project Management Body of Knowledge four years back. This was followed by the new Scrum Guide 2021, which has become more generic. Scrum is the most popular among the Agile frameworks because of it’s adaptability to various disciplines of project management. According to Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, the founders of Scrum, they made the Scrum Guide 2021 more generic so that it becomes easier for all types of projects to adopt it. The trend is very clear. The boundaries between agile and predictive is vanishing, if not yet vanished.
Unfortunately, when I visited the Agile Manifesto Page, it still reads as ‘Agile manifesto for developing software’. From an EPC project practitioner’s perspective this is very demotivating. The engineering phases of any EPC project is a good candidate for agile adoption, but still the agile manifesto is maintained exclusively for software development. Like every other EPC person wanting to leverage agile I feel stranded and unsupported.
These two factors leads to the need for the Hybrid Project Management Manifesto;
The Hybrid Project Management Manifesto
As practitioners of Professional Project Management, We believe that; All projects are unique in nature, Tailoring the processes, by incorporating the best from every project management framework is better for project success, than relying on any single framework. For this; We will continuously update our knowledge and skills without any bias to any one particular project management framework, We will always maintain an independent open view in all our actions to ensure project success. I am very optimistic about this, because there are many who opposes this view as well as those support this view. It is high time we stopped saying ‘Agile Vs Waterfall’, instead we must learn to say ‘Agile and Waterfall’ and for that the apt word is 'Hybrid'. Thanks to the traditionalists who contributed us with great tools like the critical path analysis, earned value management and the likes. These are time tested concepts which is here to stay. The agile practices like time boxing, the short term planning, daily team meetings, self organizing teams can be effectively used within phases of every project. That will result in a healthy co-existence. Think of burn down charts co-existing with earned value management and helping to protect the earned value. Nothing is good or bad, the project context determines it’s suitability.
Hope Hybrid manifesto will help us to focus on the project’s success than worrying about the technicalities of frameworks.
The Hybrid manifesto is evolving. You can help with your suggestions.
Abrachan Pudussery
Domain Expert at Wrench Solutions
