Fortunately, I am not only involved in software development, software modernisation and source code analysis projects.
I also realise infrastructure and IT security projects for some clients.
These different types of projects give me a good view of different approaches and are often in stark contrast to each other.
Development projects can usually be carried out with a high degree of agility and extremely iteratively. The same applies to a certain extent to legacy modernisation projects, but here elements from the classic waterfall principle sometimes have to be incorporated because certain components in the project simply have to be known and decided in advance.
The antithesis of agile projects are infrastructure projects. Here, the individual components, networks and devices must be known and planned in advance. This is where we reach the limits of agile project management. Some phases cannot be carried out iteratively.
However, there is no such thing as good or bad. A good project manager should endeavour to combine the best of several worlds and should proceed sensibly.
As a ‘rule of thumb’, you can say that the fewer physical components a project has, the more agile it can be implemented.
Author: Gabor Fried – 23.04.2021
