Before jumping into traditional or modern project management, let us take a look at what project management is. Project management is a process of planning, organizing and executing (or overseeing an execution to be exact) to achieve specific goals and objectives within a timeframe and budget.
The main goal of Project Management is to deliver the project successfully, to meet stakeholder expectations and to complete it within given cost and time
Project management basically provides the framework for managing the complexities and ambiguities in a project, making sure everything is aligned with the final goal.
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Traditional Project Management
Traditional project management, also popularly known as Waterfall methodology, is a structured and sequential approach to manage projects. It is one of the oldest and most widely used methodology for managing projects especially in construction, manufacturing and engineering industries.
This methodology comes with a set of phases where each phase must be completed before moving to the next one, a set of processes and documentation requirements.
Traditional project management also comes with upfront planning and clear hierarchies thus providing progression through sequential phases, detailed project plans, control procedures and hierarchical decision-making.
Core Principles of Traditional Project Management
To highlight the key features of traditional project management, it is quite predictive, sequential and process-driven while emphasizing planning, scoping and control. Let’s explore them in detail.
The Waterfall Methodology
Waterfall approach is a linear, sequential and step-by-step process which consists of a series of phases – Initiation, Planning, Execution, Monitoring, Control and Closure. This approach emphasizes that each phase should be completed before moving on to the next phase. This ensures that the process flow is sequential and unambiguous.
Detailed Project Scope
Traditional Project Management emphasizes the importance of upfront & clear project scope definition and requirements. A project manager who follows the traditional approach works to establish a clear and fixed scope from the beginning. This helps the project manager to maintain control and direction by drafting and outlining the project goals, objectives and its deliverables at the beginning phase itself.
Documentation and Reporting
Traditional Project Management emphasizes clear documentation on detailed project plans, progress reports and risk assessments. While documenting the project plan at the beginning phase helps to have a clear cut outline on the overall strategy, the progress reports and risk assessments ensure that every phase is well reviewed and changes are well-documented.
Role of the Project Manager
The Project Manager in this approach holds accountability for the successful delivery of the entire project from initiation to completion, provides detailed project plans, controls the project direction, manages the team, handles stakeholder management & communication, tracks project progress, manages scope changes if there are any, controls the budget if required and ensures that the timelines are met.
Risk Management
The Project Manager in Traditional Project Management also holds accountability for the risk management where they perform risk analysis to identify any potential risks, takes action to reduce the impact or severity of the risks, handles issues as they arise and makes critical decisions to keep the project on track.
Timeline Management
Project managers usually establish clear timelines and deliverables during the planning phase ensuring each phase has a specific start and end date. By monitoring and tracking the progress regularly on the schedule helps to identify delays early and allows time to take action. Timeline reporting and updates are provided regularly to stakeholders explaining if there are any deviations from the original schedule and recovery plans
Resource Allocation
To ensure the timelines of the project are met with quality and efficiency, the project manager allocates available resources to specific tasks and activities within a project. Effective resource allocation helps to increase productivity and reduces delays and ambiguity. It is important to notice that the resource allocation has been done with balancing ensuring no resource is overloaded or underused.
Budget Control
It is the process of allocating, monitoring and managing the project expenses to ensure that the expenses stays within the approved budget. The project manager is responsible for allocating budget wherever required and controlling costs through detailed planning and regular reporting of the finances. Throughout the project lifecycle, it is essential to maintain effective budget control and cut down unnecessary costs to ensure not to overrun the approved budget.
Phases of Traditional Project Management
As we have mentioned above, Traditional Project Management is a sequential, linear and structured step-by-step process which involves a series of phases.
- Initiation
- Planning
- Execution
- Monitoring and Control
- Closure
The reason that this process is called sequential & waterfall approach is each phase has to be completed before entering into the next phase.
Initiation: This is the stage where the purpose of the project, goals and scope of the project are defined. This phase includes project charter development, stakeholder identification, establishing project feasibility and business case creation.
Planning: Once the objective and scope of the project has been defined, the project manager starts with the planning. This is the conception phase where a comprehensive project plan is created. The project plan basically includes timelines, budget, resources, risk assessment and detailed tasks.
Execution: At this phase the project plan will be implemented by coordinating tasks, managing resources, stakeholder communication, tracking the progress and quality assurance thus leading the team to meet milestones.
Monitoring and Control: This is the phase where the progress of the project will be continuously tracked to ensure it sticks to the initial project plan. This phase involves managing the changes, measuring the performance, taking action to reduce the impact of the risk, resolving issues as they arise and ensuring quality.
Closure: This phase involves delivering the final product or service to the stakeholder. Once the above phases are successfully implemented as per the initial project plan and completed, we move on to this final stage. At this stage, project completion criteria will be reviewed, project success will be reviewed, documentations will be finalized and team dissolution takes place.
Tools & Techniques in Traditional Project Management
Throughout the phases of the traditional project management lifecycle, there are few management tools that are used to simplify and effectively implement the tasks.
Gantt Charts: Gantt chart contains a vertical and horizontal axis where a set of tasks are presented in the vertical axis and time will be given in the horizontal axis. This helps to see a visual representation of the project schedule.
Critical Path Methods: CPM is basically a risk assessment tool. It identifies critical activities, determines project minimum duration and helps in schedule optimization. Tasks listed on this path are usually critical hence any delays here will delay the entire project.
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS): WBS is hierarchical breakdown of a project into smaller and manageable components. This helps in breaking down larger tasks into small, manageable chunks, making it easier to track.
PERT Charts: PERT stands for Program Evaluation and Review Technique. When the duration of a particular task is uncertain, this chart is used to analyze and schedule tasks. PERT charts help in calculating the overall project timeline based on some criteria.
Project Management Software: There are some built-in project management software available these days which most organizations have started using. Tools such as Microsoft Project, Trello, Smartsheet and Swatle are used to create detailed project schedules, track progress and update timelines in real time.
Comparison to Modern Project Management
Most of the organizations today have started using modern project management methodologies like Agile. Let us see how Agile methodology is different from traditional project management.
While traditional project management follows a structured, linear and sequential approach, Agile follows an Iterative and Incremental approach. Traditional waterfall methodology has fixed scope and requirements. Changing the scope is not usually encouraged whereas agile methodology has flexible scope and requirements.
Waterfall model follows a detailed upfront planning whereas agile follows a rolling wave planning technique which involves breaking down a project into phases or waves and working through them in an iterative fashion.
While the traditional method follows a strict and formal documentation, agile method involves minimal documentation. Another important difference between two models are, traditional method is more of plan driven execution whereas modern method is more of value-driven execution.
Advantages of TPM
When comparing with modern project management, agile methodology does sound flexible with more advantages. However, there are some advantages of using Traditional Project Management method. It comes with proper structure and predictability by providing clear timelines and deliverables. It involves control over the project scope, cost and quality ensuring the delivery is as planned. The roles and responsibilities of the resources are well defined.
Challenges and Limitations of TPM
Projects these days require a lot of changes during execution based on the requirement. Traditional method does not allow any flexibility hence it is not easy to adapt to changes. Since it involves heavy documentation, more resources are likely needed for documentation purpose and due to its rigid structure and high documentation there is a risk of delays in projects.
When is Traditional Project Management most effective
Traditional Project Management is ideal for large and complex projects especially when project requirements are clear and not likely to change. Usually in the large scale infrastructures like construction, management and engineering, traditional method is most effective. It can also be effective on government projects where compliance and documentation are necessary.
Certain contracts demand fixed project scope and price, some industries require detailed documentation, some stakeholders require traditional oversight. For such scenarios, Traditional Project Management is most effective.
Conclusion
Even though the project management methodologies are evolved now, traditional project management still remains relevant by providing structure for complex projects, control of high risk initiatives, compliance for government projects. Success in modern project management requires a good understanding of both traditional and modern methods, knowing when to implement each. Sometimes using hybrid approach by blending both methodologies for different components in a project brings better outcome.