In software development, teams manage projects primarily in one of two ways: The traditional waterfall model and the modern agile model.
Introduced as early as the 1950s, the waterfall model has been the standard for several decades. The structured approach enabled organizations to deliver purpose-built software consistently.
Even though several alternative models were designed during that time, the framework really took off only in the 1990s. Various evolutionary project management models like rapid application development (RAD), extreme programming (XP), and agile emerged.
Both these models have their pros and cons, serving various purposes. In this blog post, we explore them in detail and help choose what’s best for you.
Agile vs Traditional Project Management: What’s The Difference?
- Understanding Agile and Traditional Project Management
- Traditional Software Development
- Agile Software Development
- Benefits and Drawbacks of Agile Vs. Traditional Project Management
- Decision-making in Agile and Traditional Projects
- Agile and Traditional Project Management Metrics
- Real-World Implementation of Agile and Traditional Project Management
- Agile and Traditional Project Management Tools
- Analyzing Possibilities of a Hybrid Approach to Project Management
- FAQs About Project Management Approaches
- Why do agile projects work better than traditional waterfall projects?
- How is agile different from traditional scope management?
- What is meant by scope management?
- What is scope management in agile?
- How do agile project metrics differ from traditional methods?
- What is different about the decisions in agile projects compared to traditional projects?
Summarize this article for me pleaseUnderstanding Agile and Traditional Project Management
Before we get into the differences between traditional and agile project management methods, let’s understand their definitions.
What is traditional project management?
Traditional project management refers to the heavyweight model of developing software, also known as the waterfall methodology. The traditional approach is:
- Linear: The process follows a straight line from the starting point to the end
- Sequential: The steps within this model are executed independently and follow one another
- Structured: Steps, processes, and flow of information are outlined clearly
What is agile project management?
Agile project management refers to a lightweight model of developing software iteratively in small chunks. This approach is:
- Circular: Agile works on building working software, shipping it, and collecting feedback that informs future development
- Incremental: Products are built in small increments
- Adaptive: Project teams plan and adapt to changes on short notice without spending too long on planning upfront
If you’re new to the world of modern software development practices, here is a comprehensive beginner’s guide to agile methodologies.
How is agile different from traditional project management?
| Feature | Traditional methodology | Agile methodology |
|---|---|---|
| Approach | Cascading process, moving through stages sequentially | Iterative and incremental sprints |
| Planning | Detailed, upfront | Adaptive, ongoing |
| Timelines | Set for the entire software, often spanning years | Set for each sprint/milestone |
| Flexibility | Low, with little room for changes once the project begins | High, with the ability to adapt to dramatic changes at any stage |
| Customer Involvement | Limited to initial requirement gathering | Continuous involvement and feedback |
| Team structure | Siloed, sorted according to functions | Cross-functional, self-organized |
| Risk management | Accounted and managed at specific milestones | Continuous management |
| Deliveries | Single delivery at the end | Multiple deliveries post short sprints |
| Documentation | Extensive, pre-planned and comprehensive | Minimal (This model prioritizes working software over documentation) |
| Suitability | When you have well-defined and stable requirements | When there are changing and uncertain environments |
What you’ve read so far is just the primer. Let’s get into the details of each model and how it works in everyday software development.
Summarize this article for me pleaseTraditional Software Development
Traditional project management has its roots in the construction and manufacturing industries, where the cost of implementing changes can be extremely high. When adapted for software development, it followed the same structured approach.
The earliest and most commonly used traditional software development model is the waterfall.
Stages in waterfall development
In this model, software is delivered in five phases:
- Requirements gathering
- Design
- Implementation
- Testing
- Deployment and maintenance
Characteristics of the waterfall project management model
Sequential execution: The phases in the waterfall model are sequential, with each phase only beginning when the previous is complete. Typically, teams spend significant time upfront in research and planning to ensure all requirements are met.
Clear structure: The planning phase ensures that there is a clear and somewhat inflexible structure to the entire project. This helps keep the large projects and big teams on track over time.
Systematic collaboration: The waterfall approach defines roles and responsibilities clearly, while also establishing communication protocols. Teams certainly collaborate in the waterfall model, of course, but this is often restricted to overlapping aspects and operational matters.
Fixed requirements: Once the requirements are gathered and signed off, there is no room for changing them, irrespective of how long the project lasts.
Testing late: Quality analysis occurs at the end of the project lifecycle.
Thorough documentation: This model stresses on the need for comprehensive documentation to prevent any loss of knowledge when team members leave or new ones join. It also provides traceability in case of concerns later in the process.
The agile project management model differs on all these counts.
Summarize this article for me pleaseAgile Software Development
Agile software development emerged to meet the limitations of the traditional model, such as its inflexibility, inability to adapt to change, and high risk of failure. In many ways, agile development is antithetical to the waterfall model.
Principles of agile development
This model is defined by its twelve principles, outlined in the agile manifesto.
- Focusing on customer satisfaction through early and continuous delivery
- Welcoming change, however late in development
- Delivering working software frequently in two-week to two-month sprints
- Regular collaboration between business and engineering
- Structuring projects around motivated individuals
- Choosing face-to-face conversations for conveying information
- Treating working software as the primary measure of progress
- Maintaining a constant and sustainable pace indefinitely
- Paying attention to technical excellence and good design
- Carefully choosing the work to do and what not to do
- Enabling self-organizing teams for better decision-making
- Ensuring regular reflection and adjustment
Agile development methodologies
Agile has emerged as an umbrella term for all lightweight, iterative methodologies, such as Scrum, Kanban, Lean development etc.
Scrum
Agile scrum is a lightweight framework emphasizing collaboration and an iterative approach to software development. It is defined by:
- Time-boxed sprints: Short periods allocated for scrum event
- Scrum meetings: Daily meetings where the scrum team synchronizes activities and plans their work
- Iterative development: Working on a limited set of features in each sprint with continuous backlog refining
- Transparency: Scrum project management promotes transparency and agility through stakeholder feedback and interactions
- Artifacts: product backlogs, increments, burnup/burndown charts, etc. support effective Scrum implementation
Kanban
Kanban is a visual agile workflow management method that emphasizes continuous delivery. It works with your organization’s existing processes and is characterized by:
- Work-in-progress (WIP) limits: Workflows with to-do, in-progress, and done columns limit the number of tasks in the flow to ensure focus
- Flow: The Kanban model uses a flow of tasks through various steps
- Continuous improvement: Teams use data from the Kanban board to identify problems and test solutions
Lean software development
Lean software development is designed around eliminating waste and delivering only the necessary software. It emphasizes optimizing the entire value stream rather than individual steps by:
- Eliminating waste: Whether it’s in time, effort, or resources, Lean models minimize them systematically
- Amplifying learning: Teams actively seek feedback by presenting prototypes, running tests sooner, etc.
- Deciding late: Teams make decisions as late as possible to ensure they have all the facts they need
- Delivering fast: Development teams increase delivery speed with short iteration cycles
- Empowering the team: Decisions are decentralized, enabling teams to catch errors or remove blockers soon
Phases in agile software development
To be fair, agile software development also follows stages similar to that of waterfall, with minor but significant differences.
Initial planning or inception: Defining the project vision, goals and high-level requirements. At this stage, agile teams understand the business prerogative of the software.
Requirements gathering: Outlining project scope, making technology decisions, creating user personas, writing user stories, estimating timelines, planning sprints, etc.
Design: Creating prototypes, testing with users, collecting feedback, iterating
Development and deployment: Executing the project in 2-4 week sprints, running standups, conducting demos, collecting feedback, etc.
Testing: Customer feedback, market response, product performance, etc.
Retrospectives: Reviews with development and business teams to recalibrate understanding and needs, building greater flexibility into the system
Bonus: Comprehensive guide on how to create an agile project plan.
As you see above, both agile and transitional software development models are comprehensive, considered, and have been successful in various applications. If you’re choosing between them, here is a short recap of their benefits and drawbacks.
Summarize this article for me pleaseBenefits and Drawbacks of Agile Vs. Traditional Project Management
Benefits of traditional project management
Traditional project management methodologies drew from the best practices of the most successful industries of the day. This brought with it several advantages:
- Preparedness: Waterfall model spends significant time early on in the cycle to eliminate mistakes later on
- Structure: It is highly structured and documented, making it easy for large teams to implement consistently
- Easy to understand: The sequential phases, milestones, well-defined scope, timeline, and budgets are easy to understand throughout the organization
- Simulations: As waterfall models often have the complete path mapped out, it is easy to simulate the project and identify pitfalls
Benefits of agile project management
In the fast-moving, rapidly evolving market today, agile project management methodology is deemed more successful due to various reasons.
- Adaptability to change: Agile projects welcome change, evolving the software in parallel with the market
- Customer collaboration: Business stakeholders play a crucial role in software development, ensuring marketability and competitiveness
- Risk mitigation: If you’ve made a mistake or a wrong assumption, no sweat, you can fix that in the next sprint
- Accountability: Highly motivated, self-organizing teams take accountability for the quality and performance of their software
We’ve discussed agile as a response to the drawbacks of traditional approaches. But agile isn’t without flaws, either.
Drawbacks of agile project management
Critics of the agile methodologies argue that they are:
- Unsystematic: Without clear processes and documentation, projects soon become chaotic
- Too eager to adapt: Every time there is a change, agile methodology is quick to adapt. However, in that process, teams might miss out on regulatory compliance
- Ambiguous: Teams might face difficulty in estimating time, often planning sprints too tightly or spaciously
- A mindset: It is often said that agile is a mindset that can seem abstract and impractical to large teams
Based on this understanding, let’s explore a few processes and practices.
Summarize this article for me pleaseDecision-making in Agile and Traditional Projects
| Traditional project management | Agile project management |
|---|---|
| Centralized, made by those in leadership | Decentralized, made by those closest to the problem |
| Made by a select few, leading to bureaucracy | Made by many as the situation demands, adding to flexibility |
| Made early, while planning the project | Made late, as the situation emerges |
| Experience-driven, made by project leaders who’ve seen similar situations before | Data-driven, based on real-time information in the project |
Summarize this article for me pleaseAgile and Traditional Project Management Metrics
With everything so different, metrics are bound to be too. Let’s look at what metrics traditional and agile project management prioritize.
Output vs. outcome
- Traditional projects focus on measuring outputs like completed tasks, budgets and schedules
- Agile metrics focus on measuring outcomes such as customer satisfaction, time to market and impact on business performance
Pre-defined plan vs. continuous improvement
- Traditional project management measures adherence to a predefined plan, like schedule variance or budget variance
- Agile metrics, on the other hand, measure the team’s ability to adapt to changing requirements, such as cost per iteration
Project-level vs. team/individual level
- Traditional project metrics focus on the overall project performance, often at a high level, such as milestone completion rate or budget utilization
- Agile metrics focus on individual and team performance for insights into team productivity and efficiency, such as velocity or story points per sprint
Lagging vs. leading indicators
- Traditional project management uses lagging indicators that measure past performance, like no. of completed tasks
- Agile indicators track leading indicators, which offer early insights into future performance, such as work in progress and flow efficiency
Let’s see how these metrics and practices apply to real-world software development projects.
Summarize this article for me pleaseReal-World Implementation of Agile and Traditional Project Management
NASA’s AGC software with waterfall methodology
The software for the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) that guided the spacecraft to the moon was developed using waterfall approaches.
- NASA engineers documented the precise requirements and specifications for the AGC software
- They conducted design, implementation, and testing to verify that the software met all requirements
- They produced extensive documentation in each phase to ensure the software’s reliability and safety
However, it might be interesting to know that NASA’s approach to the waterfall methodology might not be as structured as we now think of it. One of the early contributors to the Apollo mission, Jim Highsmith suggests that in the 1960s and 70s, there were highly unstructured approaches to software development, which then evolved into structured waterfall methodologies in the next decade.
Spotify scaling with agile
Spotify’s agile transformation is exemplary. As leaders Kniberg and Ivarsson write in their whitepaper, Spotify adapted the agile model to perfectly suit their needs.
- The engineering department is organized into ‘squads’ that can design, develop, test and release to production autonomously
- Teams have the freedom to choose their way of working, including artifacts and rituals they follow
- They have a long-term mission and are encouraged to apply lean startup principles
- Squads have a product owner and an agile coach, in addition to developers, quality analysts, and DevOps
Summarize this article for me pleaseAgile and Traditional Project Management Tools
Whether you pick the traditional or agile methodology or go hybrid, choosing the right tools for your projects is incredibly important. Here are a few ways in which ClickUp can support you whatever you choose.
Traditional project management
Task management: Traditional project management favors teams functionally divided into specific departments that handle different parts of the project. ClickUp Tasks help assign the right people to the right job and manage dependencies, if any.
Project planning: ClickUp’s 15+ views help simulate the project and arrive at the right way to execute it. For instance, the Gantt chart view helps plan dependencies, and the calendar view is good for time-bound planning.
Documentation: Traditional models of software development are big on documentation. ClickUp Docs can handle all that and more. Create workflows, roadmaps, knowledge bases, and product documentation in a collaborative way.
Progress tracking: ClickUp enables you to create customizable dashboards to measure exactly what you need. ClickUp Dashboards support progress tracking and reporting over long timelines and cascading work styles. Through time, you can also perform critical path analysis to identify bottlenecks.
The agile project management method needs slightly different tools, and ClickUp has that too.
Agile project management
Collaboration: ClickUp for agile teams has communication features embedded throughout the platform. Comments on Tasks, real-time editing and user-tagging on Docs, screen recording on Clips, etc. foster conversations in context. The ClickUp Chat view brings all these conversations together, so you never miss a message.
Ideation: ClickUp Whiteboards are great for collaborative ideation, designing workflows, consolidating information, and solving problems. What’s more, ClickUp accelerates implementation by allowing you to create tasks right from the whiteboard.
Sprint management: ClickUp’s features are designed for every aspect of sprint planning and management.
- Use Sprints in ClickUp to set dates, assign points, and automate the sprint cycle.
- ClickUp tasks can help organize work into features, bugs, milestones, and more. You can also add detailed descriptions, set acceptance criteria, and tag dependencies
- The ClickUp board view helps visualize work as workflows, easily identifying the overloading of any sprint
Don’t be intimidated by a blank slate. Use ClickUp’s agile sprint planning template for a jumpstart on your sprint management.
Reporting: ClickUp Dashboard has a number of reports designed exclusively for agile teams. Burnup/burndown charts, team workloads, time estimates and timesheets, sprint velocity, cumulative flow, individual workloads, personal productivity, and more!
If you’re inclined toward Scrum practices, ClickUp’s Agile Scrum Management template has everything you need to kickstart your journey.
Bonus: Fifteen project management templates from ClickUp
With the right intention, processes, and tools, both agile and traditional project management methodologies have their merits. They serve different purposes but are perfectly suitable for the right projects.
What if? Just what if you can have the best of both worlds?
Summarize this article for me pleaseAnalyzing Possibilities of a Hybrid Approach to Project Management
There are various scenarios where neither agile nor traditional models might work well. For instance, if the requirements are bound to evolve, traditional project management is unsuitable. If the team is too new or junior to be self-organized, an agile approach might fail. It is also possible that you are in the middle of a transition from traditional to agile models.
In such cases, a hybrid approach might be best. Here are some pointers on how you can design your own hybrid model.
Requirements: The more flexible your needs, the more agile you need to be. In your hybrid model, you might gather a majority of requirements upfront and leave some room for flexibility downstream.
For instance, if you’re building a task management system, you might decide that you need a task name, description, start date, and deadline at the beginning. You can decide if you need a time tracker later on.
Structure: Agile needs you to break down your product into small, manageable, independently deployable features. This might be a challenge for early career developers.
In such situations, the hybrid model might seem to find a middle ground with the help of an experienced Scrum master or agile coach.
Leadership: An agile team needs to be self-managed. If you have a team of mature professionals who can be self-managed, confidently go agile. Empower them to deliver high quality software.
Otherwise, create systems for monitoring without micromanaging them. For instance, the project manager can lead the daily standups. The project management tool can curate information and automate workflows to support the team.
ClickUp’s agile project management template is a great way to enable this. This fully customizable intermediate-level template enables you to streamline requests into a backlog, plan sprints, track progress on a board view, and run agile ceremonies effortlessly.
Iterativeness: Traditional models decide on one way, develop, deploy, and move on. Agile teams make space to improve already developed products and eliminate tech debt.
You can slowly move to a hybrid model by accommodating some time/resources for eliminating tech debt while moving at a stable pace with new features.
Openness to change: Teams comfortable with traditional models are unlikely to want to move agile entirely. Given agile project management is a significant mindset shift, it can also be challenging.
Hybrid approaches enable slow change. It allows teams to move toward a more effective approach in a non-disruptive way.
Now that we’ve seen waterfall, agile, and hybrid models, how do you choose the one for you? Let’s take a look.
Summarize this article for me pleaseLeveraging the Right Project Management Approach With ClickUp
As a project manager, the decisions you make about the work you’re doing can be critical. This includes the project management approach and the tools you use. While looking for what’s right for you, consider the following.
1. Team size and skillset
- Traditional project management is best if the project is big, long-term and requires multiple specialized roles
- Agile management is better for smaller, cross-functional teams with space for lateral movement of team members
2. Project complexity
- Traditional methods work better for stable, well-defined requirements with little to no interruptions from stakeholders
- Agile methods work well for projects that are evolving and have uncertain requirements
3. Customer involvement
- If the customer prefers to give you their requirements and stay out of your way, the waterfall approach works better
- If you need continuous customer collaboration and regular feedback for better outcomes, agile is the way to go
4. Project timeline
- Traditional methodologies are preferred for long-term initiatives
- Agile works best when you need to deliver working software as quickly as possible
5. Budget constraints
- Traditional project management is better when the budgets are pre-defined and tightly managed
- Agile methodology works well when there are budgets for experimentation
Whichever model you choose, make sure you have the right tools for it. ClickUp for software development is designed to help you plan, build, and ship world-class products from one place.
With task management, agile templates, accelerated execution with ClickUp Brain, the platform has everything a project manager would need.
Follow traditional project management methodology, go agile, or design your own model with ClickUp. Try ClickUp for free today!
Summarize this article for me pleaseFAQs About Project Management Approaches
Why do agile projects work better than traditional waterfall projects?
The primary reason agile works better is its adaptability to change. With continuous stakeholder involvement, feedback loops, iterative development, and testing early, agile projects deliver faster time to market, higher quality products, with better risk mitigation.
How is agile different from traditional scope management?
- Traditional scope management defines all requirements upfront and minimizes changes throughout the project.
- Agile software development embraces change in scope, allows for requirements to evolve, and builds resilience in the system.
What is meant by scope management?
Scope refers to the nature, volume, and standard of work to be completed. Scope management is the discussion, documentation, and evolution of a project scope.
Good scope management helps project managers plan better, stick to deadlines, and deliver as planned.
What is scope management in agile?
While agile project management welcomes change, it needs to be limited to those that align with the needs of the user. Scope management in agile involved:
- Building a process for receiving change requests
- Evaluating change requests for alignment with user needs and business value
- Managing backlog and prioritizing features
- Planning and managing the impact of the change on upcoming sprints
How do agile project metrics differ from traditional methods?
Traditional metrics focus on adherence to plan. Examples include schedule variance, budget variance, no. of hours worked, etc.
Agile metrics focus on adaptability and outcomes. Examples include velocity, sprint completion and customer satisfaction.
What is different about the decisions in agile projects compared to traditional projects?
In traditional projects, all critical decisions are made upfront, in the planning phase, even before the development begins.
In agile projects, decisions are made as close to the event as possible to ensure teams have all the information they need to make the choice.
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