Fortunately, I am not only involved in software development, software modernization and source code analysis projects.
For some customers I also realize infrastructure and IT security projects.
These different types of projects give me a good look at different approaches and often contrast strongly with each other.
Development projects can usually be carried out with a high degree of agility and in an extremely iterative manner. The same applies conditionally to legacy modernization projects, but here elements from the classic waterfall principle must sometimes already be incorporated, simply because certain components in the project must be known and decided in advance.
The opposite pole to agile projects are infrastructure projects. Here, the individual components, networks and devices must be known and planned in advance. Here we come up against the limits of agile project management. Phases cannot be carried out iteratively in some cases.
But there is no such thing as good or bad. A good project manager should strive to combine the good from several worlds and should proceed sensibly.
As a rule of thumb, the fewer physical components a project has, the more agile it can be.
Author: Gabor Fried - 23.04.2021
