Recently, I read Elisa Warner’s article on adaptive vs. predictive and Abrachan Pudussery’s article Adaptive vs. predictive styles of project management. My immediate reaction though is why can’t we have both styles. Can’t we have our cake and eat it too? I tend to think we can and I think Elisa meant something a bit more specific in her blog. We can predict based on the current knowledge and when that knowledge changes we can repredict(adapt and predict). If our organization stays close to waterfall, it has the option to adapt and the system will repredict. Better yet, the system should keep predicting anyways based on incoming data of task completion(waterfall or Agile). This of course is why alvazan.com’s Premonition X was built in the first place(shameless pitch, sorry! but we will be giving the secret away of how to do it yourself without us).
I have worked with many clients and in different contexts and some of your clients may force you to interface them in typical waterfall style meaning
- Request for price with requirements
- SOW signed
- More detailed requirements given by the customer
- Project complete and given back to the customer
