Читать книгу Microsoft Project For Dummies - Cynthia Dionisio Snyder, Cynthia Snyder Dionisio - Страница 12

The profession of project management has evolved significantly in the past 20 years. As a profession project management is more respected and more in demand than ever. Organizations depend on project managers to drive change and deliver value. There is widespread recognition that project management skills aren’t just for professional full-time project managers; they can be used by anyone who manages projects as part of their job, even if they aren’t in a project management role.

With the rapid growth of technology and technology-driven projects, the way we manage projects has evolved. When Microsoft Project was first released in 1984, projects were plan-driven, meaning that we tried to plan out everything that would happen, in detail, up front. Then we would execute based on that plan. That approach works when you can define the project scope and requirements up front, such as engineering or construction projects. We call this a waterfall approach because the completion of one phase leading to the start of another looks like a waterfall, as shown in Figure 1-1.

© John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

FIGURE 1-1: Waterfall approach.

As the pace of technological growth accelerated, the waterfall approach was no longer effective for technology development projects. By the time you had planned and executed a two-year technology project, the technology had changed, and the end result was already out of date. Therefore, a new approach to managing technology projects evolved.

In early 2001 an approach called Agile project management was created. Agile is a mindset that is documented in the Agile Manifesto. It starts with four values:

 Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

 Working software over comprehensive documentation

 Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

 Responding to change over following a plan

Note there is less emphasis on following a plan, and change is expected. This is very different than managing construction projects where following the plan is paramount. There are also 12 principles that are documented in the Manifesto. You can find the Agile Manifesto here: https://agilemanifesto.org.

Over time project practitioners have recognized that the type of project you are managing determines the project management practices you should employ. For scope that is stable and can be well-defined up front, a waterfall approach is appropriate. For scope that is not well defined or can evolve based on feedback and market changes, an agile approach (also known as an adaptive approach) is appropriate. To make things more interesting, there are many projects with some deliverables that can be well defined and other deliverables that can’t — for these projects a hybrid approach that incorporates aspects of waterfall and adaptive approaches is best.

As project management practices have evolved, so has Microsoft Project. This version of Project allows you to set up Gantt charts that are resource loaded to manage well-defined scope and Task Boards to manage evolving scope, all in one glorious piece of software. To keep things simple, I use Parts 1 through 4 to talk about how set up and manage a Waterfall Project and I use Part 5 to show you how to set up and lead an Agile Project. For those of you who work on hybrid projects, you can use both waterfall and Agile functionalities.

Project does use the term Agile. Projects with evolving scope that use adaptive approaches are called Sprints Projects.