Predictive or Agile Approach for Project Development
By Kristian Bainey
Choosing a delivery approach is one of the earliest and most consequential decisions on any project. This article offers a structured way to make that choice rather than defaulting to organizational habit. Kristian Bainey examines the factors that should drive the decision: how stable the requirements are, how much uncertainty sits in the solution, how frequently stakeholders can engage, what the regulatory and contractual constraints demand, and how the organization is set up to fund and govern work.
The article treats predictive and agile approaches as tools suited to different conditions rather than competing philosophies, and it gives fair attention to hybrid arrangements where a fixed outer structure surrounds iterative delivery inside it. It also notes the practical consequences of the choice for planning, reporting, change control and stakeholder expectations.
Project managers, sponsors and PMO leaders will find it useful when setting up a new initiative or when reassessing an approach that is not producing the intended results.
Key takeaways
- Requirement stability and solution uncertainty should drive the approach decision.
- Hybrid delivery is a legitimate design choice, not a compromise.
- The approach chosen changes planning, reporting and change control expectations.
This is an original summary published by K-PIC Systems. Read the full original article