Agile vs predictive: explained for the beginners

Modern project management is predominantly shifting to Agile methodology because of many reasons including the need of an early delivery of an MVP and immediate realization of project benefits. MVP or minimum viable product is that a subset of the overall deliverable that is enough for the customer to start using. Usually it takes a number of sprints to get an MVP. In this discussion we will take an example of constructing 4-floor building

In the predictive project management, the customer signs a contract with the contractor to design and build the 4-floor house in detail at the beginning. The project will flow sequential phases of requirements, design, build and handover. The customer will expect single delivery of the 4-floor building and has to wait until project finishes to benefit from the house. This is characterised by late delivery of value

In the agile project management, the customer comes up with the bigger vision of the 4-floor house (including the overall house design). This is called the product roadmap where they specify that they need the first floor first so that they cant rent and generate income. Then the second floor is delivered as soon as it finishes and so on. The product roadmap contains the full requirements including CAD design of the whole 4-floor building and becomes product backlog once finished.

A hybrid project manager using both predictive and agile is shown below. Each floor is delivered separately as an increment. The sequential phases of build-test-handover is executed in each increment using agile. The design requirements are developed at the beginning in detail using predictive. Thus what we have is predictive in the planning followed by agile in the execution

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Jama, A. .A. (2022). Practical project management: With Microsoft project illustration. Somalia: Pure Training Centre. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09QGVRKY3