Analysis of Project Management Methodologies: PRINCE2 & Waterfall

This essay provides a comparative analysis of two prominent project management methodologies: PRINCE2 (Projects in Controlled Environments) and Waterfall. It elucidates the core principles, benefits, and operational differences between these approaches. PRINCE2, a structured method, divides projects into manageable stages and emphasizes justification, learning from experience, defined roles, stage management, exception handling, focused delivery, and tailored environments. The Waterfall methodology, conversely, follows a linear and sequential process with phases like requirement gathering, system design, implementation, testing, delivery, and maintenance. While both methodologies offer structured approaches, PRINCE2 allows for revisiting steps for modification, whereas Waterfall requires restarting from the beginning. The essay concludes that both are cost-effective but PRINCE2 offers more flexibility. Desklib provides this essay as a resource for students studying project management, offering insights and examples to aid their understanding.

Running head: PROJECT MANAGEMENT METHODOLOGIES
Project Management Methodologies
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author Note:

1PROJECT MANAGEMENT METHODOLOGIES
A project management methodology is said to be a model, which are implied by the
project manager for designing, planning, implementing as well as to achievethe assigned
project objectives (Kerzner&Kerzner, 2017). The role that methodologies play in a project
management is that they define how the project should work following a set of guided
principles as well as communicate with the various levels in a project management (Muller,
2017).
PRINCE 2
Projects in controlled environments or PRINCE2 is defined as a structured method of
a project management (Alvarez-Dionisi, Turner&Mittra, 2016). The basic working principle
of this methodology is that it divides the projects into small parts so that the whole project
could be manageable as well as all the stages could be quite controllable.This methodology
has been adopted in many countries including UK as well as Australia. There are seven
principles on which the PRINCE2 is based on. These are stated below:
1. The proper justification of continued business mentioned in a document.
2. Learning from experience.
3. The roles and responsibilities are to be defined in a specific manner.
4. The whole project should be managed by different stages.
5. The different exceptions should be handled on a real time basis.
6. The delivery of the products should be focused.
7. The project environment should be tailored in such a manner that the size, importance,
complexity as well as time capability are suited correctly.

2PROJECT MANAGEMENT METHODOLOGIES
The benefits of this type of methodology are stated below:
 As the methodology breaks the project into different stages it will be very predictable
to monitor the step by step project structure from the beginning till the project’s
completion (Rehacek, 2017).
 The best practice to achieve the successful completion of the project can be utilised in
this methodology.
 The standard of every aspect for the project is maintained with the help of this
methodology.
 This methodology is very cost effective as well as time saving.
WATERFALL
Waterfall project management methodology is said to be a linear as well as sequential
process for managing a project (Pace, 2019). There are several phases related to the waterfall
methodology of project management. This methodology follows that any phase could not
start until and unless the prior phase is completed and it is mandatory for each phase to get
terminated as this methodology does not allows the project manager to return back to a
previous phase. The phases of the waterfall model is explained below:
1. The first phase is said to be the gathering of the requirement as well as properly
documenting it.
2. The second phase deals with the design of systems.
3. The third phase is the implementation part where the actual coding takes place in
accordance to the requirement.
4. The fourth phase is the testing phase of the coding that is done in the previous step.
5. This phase deals with the delivery of the project after successful testing of the entire code.

3PROJECT MANAGEMENT METHODOLOGIES
6. Finally the sixth phase deals with the maintenance of the project after it has been
successfully delivered to the client.
The benefits of this type of methodology in project management are:
 The training sessions are kept very simple as this model allows the involvement of
team members at any stage.
 With the help of step by step implementation of this methodology it is simple to view
the progress that is happening at every stage.
 This methodology makes the management of the project very easy as it has step by
step nature of managing the system.
 As these model has simple model structure it saves money as well as time for the
delivery of the project.
From the above stated models or methodologies for managing a project it can be well
said that the PRINCE2 methodology is quite similar to the Waterfall methodology as in
both of them a step by step is followed for managing the project. But in case of waterfall
model it is not possible to return back to any prior step once the step has been completed
as well as without completion of a step it is not possible to jump over to the next step
(Kramer, 2018). For PRINCE2 it is possible to go over the step that needs modification
specifically. Moreover, both the project management methodologies are cost effective as
well as time effective but as the waterfall model does not allows to go to the prior step
and for any modification it needs initiation from the first step it could consume time.

4PROJECT MANAGEMENT METHODOLOGIES
References
Alvarez-Dionisi, L. E., Turner, R., &Mittra, M. (2016). Global project management trends.
International Journal of Information Technology Project Management (IJITPM),
7(3), 54-73.
Kerzner, H., &Kerzner, H. R. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning,
scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Kramer, M. (2018). Best Practices in Systems Development Lifecycle: An Analyses Based
on the Waterfall Model.
Muller, R. (2017). Project governance. Routledge.
Pace, M. (2019). A Correlational Study on Project Management Methodology and Project
Success. Journal of Engineering, Project, and Production Management.
Rehacek, P. (2017). Application and usage of the standards for project management and their
comparison. Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 12(4), 994-1002.