Following a proven path saves money, reduces risk and speeds progress to quality delivery.
Very few projects genuinely pioneer - it's probable that what you are about to do has been done by someone, somewhere before.
Whereas the purpose of a project is to deliver a beneficial change to an organisation, a development method is a documented, systematic and proven way of completing work, used to guide the efficient creation of a key deliverable.
Knowledge, know-how and expertise is codified into development methods. These are used to get projects off to a flying start, and navigate them through to a successful outcome.
A good development method embodies the wisdom gained over time through practical application and experience. Development methods can be re-used time-and-again to:
Smart businesses benefit from adopting proven development methods as their own.
How Development Methods are used
Some project management methods will lead you to break a business initiative into several projects and align each with a single development method to create one key deliverable.
Each project is then run within a business function, such as IT, as a 'workstream'. This approach usually fails because of the difficulty of achieving collaboration and cohesion between functionally separated teams.
In practice, business initiatives are more effectively delivered by a single cross-functional project which creates all the key deliverables.
Instead of thinking in terms of an IT or an HR project, all projects are 'business projects' which are made up of several key deliverables and development methods, and many suppliers.
The project can be thought of as a vehicle 'tractor unit' used to haul key deliverables to their destinations to trigger benefit realisation. Development method 'trailers' are hooked-up to the tractor unit and the key deliverables 'Constructed-in-Transit'.
A single chronological project plan is used to blend the parallel streams of creative activity to ensure collaboration and cohesion.
In this structure Programme Management is the management of a 'fleet' of cross-functional projects.
Development Method Library
The Verdandi library of proven and innovative development methods includes:
If you think sharing our library of development methods is of value to you, please talk to us.