Project Management Methodologies: Roles and Project Life Cycle

This report defines project management methodology and its role, contrasting Waterfall and Agile methodologies. It highlights similarities and differences, advocating for Agile's flexibility in software development. The report also relates Agile to the project life cycle, emphasizing initiation, planning, execution, and closure phases based on customer requirements and iterative sprints. Desklib provides access to past papers and solved assignments for further study.

Running head: PROJECT MANAGEMENT 1
Project Management
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

PROJECT MANAGEMENT 2
1. Define what a methodology is and the role it serves in project management.
Methodology is a sequential process, technique, practice and regulations applied by the
project manager and project team in delivering a successful project (Kerzner & Kerzner,
2017). The methodology supports a top-down approach to a project manager which directly
ties the project life cycle stages and the initiation project flow by providing common ground.
The methodology serves various roles in project management such as offering a common
ground for planning and communicating before the inception of the project work (Joslin &
Müller, 2015). It supports suitable planning and communication before the beginning of the
project work; acts as a mean for effective management and control of the project and helps to
develop a set of activities that are learnt over time.
2. Research and Study about various methodologies & processes in the list below.
There are various methods and approaches used in project management to manage
multiple types of development, design and delivery of products. In this case, the two
methodologies that are discussed include waterfall and agile methods.
Waterfall methodology
Waterfall methodology is a progressive project management technique whereby the
stakeholders and customer requirements are collected at the start of the project. Waterfall
model consists of five phases that are requirements, design, implementation, verification and
maintenance. In this sense, a project can only move to the next phase when the initial phase
has been accomplished.
Agile Methodology
Agile is a process where the project team mange the project by subdividing it into
different stages which involves continued collaboration with stakeholders with continuous

PROJECT MANAGEMENT 3
improvement and iteration at each stage (Hiekata, Mitsuyuki, Goto, & Moser, 2016). The
Agile methodology starts with customers describing how the end product will be used and the
type of problems that it anticipates to solve. Consequently, this clarifies the client's
expectations of the project team.
Similarities between Waterfall and Agile Model
The objective of both Waterfall and Agile methodologies is to deliver a high quality
product over a specified period in a responsive and efficient way. Therefore, both
methodologies perform similar actions such as collecting project information, coding, testing,
maintenance, product release and implementation among other things.
Difference between Waterfall and Agile Model
 In waterfall model all project development stages like planning, design, and testing
among others are accomplished once that is when the final product is built while agile
methodology it follows an iterative development approach whereby development
stages such as prototyping, design, and development among others can appear several
times in the course of the whole software development life cycle (SDLC)
(Elghondakly, Moussa, & Badr, 2015).
 Waterfall model is an internal process which does not involve the customer’s
participation once the project takes off. On the other hand, an agile model is an
approach which concentrates on the customer’s satisfaction; hence it involves
customer’s participation throughout the project development period.
 Waterfall methodology is subdivided into distinct development stages whereas Agile
methodology has segregated the project development lifecycle into sprints (Siqueira,
Reinehr, & Malucelli, 2017).

PROJECT MANAGEMENT 4
 Based on the waterfall methodology, the development of the software has to be
completed as a sole project that is then divided into several phases where every phase
only appears once during the SDLC course. Nevertheless, the Agile model can be
regarded as a collection of many dissimilar projects that are nothing but iterations of
distinct stages whose focus is to enhance the overall quality of the software using
feedback from the product customer.
 Waterfall methodology is a structured software development approach which in most
cases is considered a rigid model while Agile methodology is more flexible.
Based on the similarities and difference between the above methodologies, in my view,
the most appropriate methodology for software development is Agile because it is highly
flexible hence it can change with changes taking place in the software development industry.
3. 3. Finally, identify how your chosen methodologies/processes in 2. Relate to the
project life cycle (PLC):
Agile is my chosen methodology; it is related to the project life cycle in the sense that
before it can commence the software development process, it begins by identifying the
customer’s requirements and how to solve their problem through initiation phase. The model
then plans on how the problem is to be solved by subdividing the project into small
manageable sprints (Khan, Srivastava, & Pandey, 2016). The next step is execution where
the project team starts working on the project sprints. The last phase is close which occurs
after the product has been delivered to the customers and it has to be satisfactory.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT 5
References
Joslin, R., & Müller, R. (2015). Relationships between a project management methodology
and project success in different project governance contexts. International Journal of
Project Management, 33(6), 1377-1392.
Kerzner, H., & Kerzner, H. R. (2017). Project management: a systems approach to planning,
scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Hiekata, K., Mitsuyuki, T., Goto, T., & Moser, B. R. (2016, October). Design of Software
Development Architecture Comparison of Waterfall and Agile Using Reliability
Growth Model. In ISPE TE (pp. 471-480).
Siqueira, A. A., Reinehr, S., & Malucelli, A. (2017, September). Using a statistical method to
compare agile and waterfall processes performance. In European Conference on
Software Process Improvement (pp. 523-532). Springer, Cham.
Elghondakly, R., Moussa, S., & Badr, N. (2015, December). Waterfall and agile
requirements-based model for automated test cases generation. In 2015 IEEE Seventh
International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Information Systems
(ICICIS) (pp. 607-612). IEEE.
Khan, R., Srivastava, A. K., & Pandey, D. (2016, November). Agile approach for Software
Testing process. In 2016 International Conference System Modeling & Advancement
in Research Trends (SMART) (pp. 3-6). IEEE.
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7894479/

PROJECT MANAGEMENT 6