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15 Advantages of Using the Project Management Methodology

When it comes to the mer­its of project man­age­ment method­olo­gies, peo­ple work­ing in this area often dis­agree. Some­one believes that for the suc­cess of the final prod­uct, con­stant com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the cus­tomer and the per­former is enough, and the method­ol­o­gy is a sec­ondary thing. You can also hear the oppo­site opin­ion: with­out a method­ol­o­gy, chaos will swal­low even the coolest ideas.

The truth, as always, is some­where in the mid­dle and is that the team needs to find a method­ol­o­gy, adapt it and get the most out of its use. By the way, 39% of com­pa­nies sur­veyed by Hub­staff in 2021, said they have imple­ment­ed hybrid project man­age­ment prac­tices. There­fore, we will talk about the advan­tages and mpor­tance of project man­age­ment method­ol­o­gy as such.

The suc­cess of using the method­ol­o­gy in the project large­ly depends on the dis­ci­pline in the team and a firm inten­tion to fol­low the rules.
Anoth­er impor­tant point is that before choos­ing a method­ol­o­gy, you need to care­ful­ly under­stand what the ulti­mate goal of the project is. Flex­i­ble and active com­mu­ni­ca­tion between cus­tomers and per­form­ers is very impor­tant here. If the com­mu­ni­ca­tion result­ed in clear require­ments for the project, you can pro­ceed to the methodology.

If no one is com­plete­ly clear about what should come out at the end of the work, no method­ol­o­gy will allow to achieve a decent result. 

What is a Project Man­age­ment Method­ol­o­gy and Why is it Important?

The project man­age­ment method­ol­o­gy is a sys­tem that allows you to reduce risks, opti­mize the efforts, avoid dupli­ca­tion and bring mutu­al under­stand­ing to a new lev­el in the team. The main com­po­nents of the method­ol­o­gy are the prin­ci­ples, meth­ods and rules of work­ing on the project.

Answer­ing the ques­tion, what is a project method­ol­o­gy, we can say that it is a struc­ture that helps to man­age the project in the best way and ensure the max­i­mum pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of the peo­ple involved. If we talk about the method­ol­o­gy with­in the com­pa­ny, it pro­vides the stan­dards, tem­plates and guide­lines for the rou­tine actions required in most projects.



In addi­tion, the method­ol­o­gy adapt­ed to the com­pa­ny’s work style even­tu­al­ly becomes a kind of basis for all future projects and sim­pli­fies all stages of their life cycle.

Method­ol­o­gy helps to save resources. For exam­ple, you will go through ini­ti­a­tion and plan­ning faster, reduce the time to train employ­ees, etc. 

Thanks to the method­ol­o­gy, your busi­ness will:
  1. avoid mis­takes made in the last projects;
  2. con­stant­ly grow;
  3. have com­mon under­stand­ing of process­es, respon­si­bil­i­ties, roles etc;
  4. elim­i­nate the influ­ence of the human fac­tor;
  5. be ready to solve com­plex tasks and problems.
In short, the impor­tance of the project man­age­ment method­ol­o­gy is that it helps to avoid most of the unpleas­ant sur­pris­es that can be found on the way to suc­cess. There­fore, we can sure­ly say that the impor­tance of the project man­age­ment method­ol­o­gy is great, and there are many more valid pros than cons. Below are some spe­cif­ic advantages.

15 Ben­e­fits of Project Man­age­ment Method­ol­o­gy and How They Influ­ence Work Efficiency

Each com­pa­ny will notice its own advan­tages from using the method­ol­o­gy, but we will talk about the most com­mon ones. 

  1. Cre­at­ing a cul­ture of suc­cess­ful project man­age­ment. It is the method­ol­o­gy that can be the basis for it. That is, the best prac­tices that pro­duce results will be clear­ly described in the com­pa­ny. Instead, it will be clear which actions should be avoided.
  2. Clear def­i­n­i­tion of roles. It often hap­pens that not all peo­ple involved in the project under­stand the roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties. This espe­cial­ly applies to top man­agers, whose area of respon­si­bil­i­ty may remain almost a secret for sub­or­di­nates. The method­ol­o­gy makes all this transparent.
  3. Basis for tak­ing into account the expe­ri­ence of col­leagues. When a com­pa­ny does not have any method­ol­o­gy, or has sev­er­al, it is dif­fi­cult to share expe­ri­ence in such a way that it can be sys­tem­atized and used in the future. With a method­ol­o­gy, you can opti­mize this process and ben­e­fit from it.
  4. The growth of the gen­er­al qual­i­ty lev­el. From time to time sit­u­a­tions occur when the suc­cess of the project is due to a good coin­ci­dence, high qual­i­fi­ca­tion of one of the employ­ees, great enthu­si­asm etc. When these are iso­lat­ed cas­es, you should not sound the alarm. But if such not-so-pre­dictable fac­tors are relied on com­pa­ny-wide, some­thing is wrong with the busi­ness, it needs a pre­dictable methodology.
  5. No reg­u­lar rein­ven­tion of the wheel”. When teams do not share the expe­ri­ence as men­tioned above, it often hap­pens that you have to look for answers to ques­tions that some­one has already found. It is in the method­ol­o­gy that the basic wheels” should be described.
  6. Pre­dictabil­i­ty of results. When the team has stan­dards, it is pos­si­ble to clear­ly define the terms and dead­lines. They can be announced to cus­tomers or oth­er inter­est­ed par­ties. If you strict­ly adhere to the method­ol­o­gy, you can fin­ish the work even ear­li­er than planned, which will pleas­ant­ly impress the participants.
  7. Mak­ing effec­tive deci­sions. When all par­ties under­stand the roles and areas of respon­si­bil­i­ty, goals and tasks, ways of pro­gress­ing, then deci­sions are made with­out any infor­ma­tion short­age. There­fore, they are more bal­anced and cor­rect. Also, the method­ol­o­gy usu­al­ly states who makes deci­sions, so if an error occurs, it is clear who is respon­si­ble. There­fore, it will not be pos­si­ble to del­e­gate it.
  8. Increas­ing the team’s moti­va­tion, fol­lowed by increas­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. When the project has a min­i­mum of unpleas­ant sur­pris­es, the goals are clear, as well as the ways to achieve them, peo­ple work with greater plea­sure. The work that brings pos­i­tive emo­tions auto­mat­i­cal­ly becomes more effi­cient than work that caus­es negativity.
  9. Rapid growth of the qual­i­fi­ca­tion lev­el of project man­agers. When teams work with­in a method­ol­o­gy, it is much eas­i­er for man­agers to inter­act with them and grow pro­fes­sion­al­ly. After all, you don’t have to spend a lot of time find­ing life hacks that will sim­pli­fy coor­di­na­tion. A project man­age­ment method­ol­o­gy gives them a holis­tic under­stand­ing of the project. This allows deep­er under­stand­ing of processes.
  10. Under­stand­able and con­trolled use of resources. The method­ol­o­gy allows from the very begin­ning to define the scope of work to be per­formed and the resources required for it. If any­thing goes wrong, it will become clear very quickly.
  11. Ade­quate risk man­age­ment. Usu­al­ly, the method­ol­o­gy describes risk pre­dic­tion algo­rithms and actions to man­age risks. In addi­tion, the method­ol­o­gy has clear require­ments for com­mu­ni­ca­tions, which means that all inter­est­ed par­ties will know about the risk in a time­ly manner.
  12. The cus­tomer under­stands what he will get as a result. When there is no method­ol­o­gy, there is no guar­an­tee that the require­ments have been record­ed cor­rect­ly. There­fore, the client often has no con­fi­dence that he will receive exact­ly what he expect­ed. When you work with­in the method­ol­o­gy, the cus­tomer and the execu­tor agree that they under­stand the task in the same way.
  13. Prob­lems in the project can be noticed ear­li­er. When you have con­trol met­rics, projects with defects become vis­i­ble imme­di­ate­ly. So there is time to fix what went wrong.
  14. Pos­si­ble invest­ment areas become clear. For exam­ple, you may not have enough tools for effec­tive remote work. Funds invest­ed in them will bring tan­gi­ble results.
  15. The busi­ness will trans­fer from author­i­tar­i­an man­age­ment mod­els to demo­c­ra­t­ic ones. As we wrote above, roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties are usu­al­ly clear­ly defined in the method­olo­gies. There­fore, employ­ees under­stand what is expect­ed from them and feel respon­si­ble for it. And they also know what their col­leagues should do. Due to this, the lev­el of uncer­tain­ty in the team decreas­es, as well as the num­ber of conflicts.

Ways to Use Methodology

There are many project man­age­ment method­olo­gies, and even more hybrid options. There­fore, before choos­ing one of them, answer the fol­low­ing questions:
  • Has the team used any method­ol­o­gy in the past? If so, how suc­cess­ful?
  • What is the team struc­ture? Are there remote work­ers, outsourced?
  • How fixed or flex­i­ble are your cus­tomers’ requirements?
  • What is more impor­tant: get­ting a quick result or quality?
  • Is it pos­si­ble to increase the bud­get if nec­es­sary?
  • How strict should the require­ments be? Are there oppor­tu­ni­ties for exper­i­men­ta­tion?
  • How many stake­hold­ers are there in the project? How open are they to communicate?
You should also con­sid­er the type the future project man­ag­er belongs to:

“Per­form­ers” work well with­in the cur­rent busi­ness strat­e­gy, look­ing for employ­ees who will help solve prob­lems and move in a cer­tain direc­tion. They do not look for new oppor­tu­ni­ties for devel­op­ment that con­tra­dict what has hap­pened in the com­pa­ny so far.
“Experts” can look for new options for busi­ness devel­op­ment, rely­ing on the pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence of the com­pa­ny, reli­able research, etc. They con­sult author­i­ta­tive colleagues.
“Play­ers” are ready to look for oppor­tu­ni­ties where they are not seen by ana­lysts, as well as where there is no proven expe­ri­ence with reli­able num­bers. Some­times their pro­pos­als fail in terms of pay­back, but the oppo­site also happens.
“Prophets” have a broad out­look, often see­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for growth where oth­ers don’t. They are ready to rad­i­cal­ly change the ori­en­ta­tion of work. Often their words have to be tak­en at face val­ue, because there are no fig­ures or stud­ies that con­firm them.

It is also very impor­tant to under­stand the fea­tures of pop­u­lar project man­age­ment approaches.

Water­fall

The most tra­di­tion­al approach, with tasks per­formed sequen­tial­ly. That is, to start a new stage, you need to fin­ish the pre­vi­ous one. Pre­vi­ous stages are not ana­lyzed, so glob­al errors can be noticed at the final stage of work, when it is pos­si­ble to cor­rect them only by invest­ing a lot of mon­ey and time.

This method­ol­o­gy should be cho­sen when every­one is sure of the require­ments, almost noth­ing will change, there is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to draw up a detailed work plan, and the doc­u­men­ta­tion needs to be detailed.



Agile

The main dif­fer­ence between this method­ol­o­gy and the pre­vi­ous one is that the team can change some­thing in the project at inter­me­di­ate stages. 

Scrum, eXtreme Pro­gram­ming (XP), Kan­ban and Scrum­ban are vari­a­tions of Agile.

This method­ol­o­gy should be cho­sen when cus­tomers are ready for a dia­logue, but are not sure what they want to get as a result. This method­ol­o­gy is suit­able for those who want quick, not ide­al results. Detailed doc­u­men­ta­tion and clear dead­lines are not pro­vid­ed here.

eXtreme Pro­gram­ming, XP

It is anoth­er agile method­ol­o­gy with the fea­tures like sim­plic­i­ty, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, con­stant feed­back, respect and courage.

This method­ol­o­gy should be cho­sen when your team works togeth­er, no remote work, and col­lab­o­ra­tion is one of your priorities.

Crit­i­cal path method

In this method­ol­o­gy, the main atten­tion is paid to find­ing the key tasks which result in quick and high-qual­i­ty com­ple­tion of the project. You need to cal­cu­late the longest time required to com­plete the key tasks. It will be con­sid­ered a crit­i­cal path.



This method­ol­o­gy should be cho­sen when the project is com­plex, large-scale, with many depen­den­cies, but there is a clear plan and the team’s ten­den­cy to work accord­ing to algorithms.

So, we explained what the project method­ol­o­gy is and con­sid­ered the advan­tages of using the project man­age­ment method­ol­o­gy. The main thing is to under­stand that there are many method­olo­gies, and hybrids are also worth con­sid­er­ing. There­fore, deter­mine your main goals, based on them, choose a method­ol­o­gy and adapt it to your­self, build an action plan and move towards success.

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