when to choose waterfall and Agile Project Management

APMGinternational.com

Episode 63

Program Name: 60-minute Level up

Program source: https://www.dhirubhai.net/video/live/urn:li:ugcPost:6930864092702236672/

Program link: www.apmginternational.com/levelup

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Qanbar Ali Zareh: Course participant https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/qanbaralizareh/

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I have been and project management specialist and project management with small-scale infrastructure projects, therefore my project management, while our project was for the local community, and based on professional discussion our approach should agile approaches. Now I am not PMP certified and not agile certified and this self-learning would be as background for PMP preparation.

APMG International has conducted live programs, and the topic of when to choose waterfall and Agile Project Management is one of my favorite subjects.

The discussion was interesting, and I have decided to note the discussion for self-learning and sharing with you. If you are a project manager, project specialist, or project team this note will help you learn many things new.

There are 12 questions coming from participants and answers for the questions are based on the number of panel interests and professionality answers. Under each question, the answer are coming as A,B,C, and D which means. A is the answer from panel member one, B is the answer from panel member two, etc. whatever you will read in response to the questions are their ideas, not mine, but if you want to share your own ideas and discussions it would be appreciated and please to my LinkedIn profile and let me know.

Discussion Topic: when to choose waterfall and Agile Project Management.

1.?????What are the key factors to consider when choosing a project management methodology?

2.??????Can we blend a traditional waterfall and agile approach? Is this something you have tried and if so, how did it work out?

3.???????Can agile and waterfall be useful in construction project management as I am thinking of getting more knowledge on it. What are the career opportunities related to it?

4.???????What key risks do you need to manage when running a program that involves a project using a combination of waterfall and agile?

5.??????What are the drivers and barriers to adopting a hybrid project manager9 means a combination of an agile waterfall?

6.???????Is there such thing as a pure agile approach?

7.??????Is the division between agile and waterfall starting to get unhelpful? Is it stopping more creativity about projects?

8.??????How does the agile model overcome the limitation of the waterfall model?

9.???????What is the best approach for agile implementation?

10.???Is it possible to build in approaches such as DevOps into agile or waterfall?

11.???Is it said agile is for software development, it this just people putting agile frameworks like Scrum under the Agile Umbrella as they don’t know any better?

12.???From a skill set aspect, can project teams deliver both waterfall and agile interchangeability it is better to dedicate the project team to a particular methodology?

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Moderator: Ellie Browett Channel Innovator Director

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1.????What are the key factors to consider when choosing a project management methodology?

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a.?????????????The key factor is the benefit of the project need to obtain compared to the cost of deliverables, and will it be possible to have an already short deliverable that at the benefit you can do incremental and there is the organization open for that, or are they driving through a channel they say?just want to do that or they are open in the outside where they know we need to look at business environments as well as see thy might different role to develop.

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b.?????????????Business cases are fundamentally and important to any project when choosing a methodology needs to consider things likely Knowledge, experience, and expertise within the project team are thy familiar with the particular methodology? Or not and how quickly these can be started need time and fundamental is for me how agile is stable with the requirement? how agile is stable with the requirements and anticipate a lot of changes for changing technology are they stable or not.

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c.??????????????I believe fundamentally you are to be Using project management methodology is applicable in the organization, hopeful you have been trained and onboarded on that. It does not matter if it's official training or something else. Besides that, for me the fundamental; of project management if its delivery management you can apply any of the project management methodologies that’s PRINCE II or PMI, they will all ask you complemented if the right delivery approach that’s agile approach might be applicable it might not be even the technology space, we know that of the project that’s not processed in agile fashion, importance different between project management methodology and delivery methodology.

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d.?????????????in Choosing between waterfall and agile, it very important to understand what your organization's methodology is if it’s being waterfall and what is your organization's culture like can you transition to agile very quickly again the other thing very important how involvement your customers can have in the project? if the customer is not involved much I would suggest waterfall and if you customers get involve all the time agile methodology is a good approach.

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2.??????Can we blend a traditional waterfall and agile approach? Is this something you have tried and if so, how did it work out?

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a.?????????????of course, we can blend agile with the traditional approach, there is a benefit to both, particularly for using agile you are going to have to incorporate agile into the way your organization works, whether an organization works through barriers to get things done. in that situation, you may need to put some project management approaches on top of the agile. On the other hand, if you are using in traditional project management approach for team delivery, a lot of the agile techniques or maybe all agile techniques will be very useful. The key thing is to understand agile mindset either in a traditional or agile environment is a key highly productive way to get people to deliver work, therefore it's a good thing to blend.

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b.??????????????practical experience is an old traditional approach legally you can apply waterfall methodology, optimize the business, and see how to work with the market situation, let’s do that in an agile way, as your block if you must also adapt your agile way of working on delivery things that fit. A combination of both is possible and you need customers to build the bridges.

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c.??????????????For sure?Blending is possible, where and in which phase or stage of the project we need to be clear about what approaches we are using for which stages we do not get some ugly kind of hybrid course within the stages and phases, we need to have a clearing of the staff and for sure we can blend is possible. In addition, different approach lends themselves eventually in different parts of your project, maybe testing waterfall of something more traditional approaches, when you trash out requirement may be more agile, I think yes, we can.

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d.??????????????I look at waterfall vs agile as the continuum between two extremes when neither extreme exists.?If you try to find the waterfall approach you will fail, it exists only in theory, not in practice at one thing.?And, if you at agile approaches according to the state of agile there are 16 agile techniques, how many of those need to apply for yourself agile, is it enough stand-ups every day? It is one of the agile techniques, what do you need to apply five or six and do not forget most of the agile techniques and principles reach in about change management or organizational change management or traditional project management it’s also quite important so, in vibrantly when you do project management you have blend. Some project managers more servant leaders or authoritarian and it also depend on the situation of the project. Always a blend.

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3.??????Can agile and waterfall be useful in construction project management as I am thinking of getting more knowledge on it. What are the career opportunities related to it?

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a.??????????I have recommended agile and have a look at different techniques that make up a toolbox that agile, stand-ups you can do in the construction industry you can use visualization of tools like Kanban, planning, rolling wave planning, reflect the culture probably different culture, probably different construction project.

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b.??????????Daily stand up there is certain things like fit-out and kit out of buildings obsoletely appliable, at the same time hard construction probably remains as a waterfall approach, because of requiring planning a lot of organization different resources, and it’s also important can apply certain type of approaches Kanban and daily stand-up tools certainly used in the construction project for decades.

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c.???????????it’s important to understand that you can use some of the agile techniques when you have construction project management. In terms of the methodology, I do not know if either agile methodology is fitting for especially construction projects, in that case, it would be better to use waterfall methodology and focus can use some tools and techniques from agile.

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4.???????What key risks do you need to manage when running a program that involves a project using a combination of waterfall and agile?

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a.?????????????The key risk is the effect of the cost waterfall is straightforward and still develop things to do, the situation might have changed because you are building waste in agile you change the dependency between multiple deliverables in the waterfall its dependence of delivery and the time in of those deliver important to manage.

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b.?????????????the key risk which very important to consider one the governance, its waterfalls you governance very intensive, in agile you don’t have an artifact, you need to just consider back down by either you do not exclude one by another in terms of governance and also, do you have you the customer is involved because whatever if you produce anything and your costumer is not involved you are on the risk of not producing criteria based products.?in the waterfall you can determine if the costumers are not involved there is not much risk. In the end, I would say it’s very important

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c.??????????????the timing and dependency between what you are doing artifact and products between you are approached in different stages and being clear on using approach and dependency also comes down to the planning.

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d.?????????????the communication between teams while using different languages and commonly understood and having one voice toward customers, and considering beyond the team and method would be a challenge for the project manager

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5.??????What are the drivers and barriers to adopting a hybrid project manager means a combination of an agile waterfall?

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a.????????one of the key drivers is using one other approach the Knowledge and expertise and maturity of the organization you work with. For example, of the customers said what to do agile and after three months said we cannot do agile, and we need to go more on traditional and we need to sign reequipment before getting implemented.?It’s the level of comfit, you achieve and remember your if you follow approaches regardless of which one it is. It’s part of your Assurance systems and assurance means providing confidence to the senior management you deliver, if they are not comfortable with one of the approaches, you will not be successful ultimately, the stakeholder's role and expectation are also important.

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b.????????the key drivers are to determine which part is going to apply agile and which part apply waterfall, and the barriers are the same risk not to be added and what kind of governance you need on the project is its artifact and do the customers are involved those are the barrier of the customer are not involved it will be very difficult to deliver on in agile components

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c.????????The driver adapting hybrid approaches must be to understand what to what can predict and is not smart too and cannot predict the element of the project can be a product and less product and the element of the project cannot predict we will take agile approaches. It’s the more scene able to go with them the barrier is the confusion because that creates confusion between the teams and where the people unsure to the approaches about the governance and methods etc. it’s very careful to make sure you understand what the positive the predictability is and what the efficiency and the ability to deliver agile is. otherwise, we will have this confusion that’s a significant barrier when you are trying to blend two different ways of thinking together.

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d.????????in principle always saying agile well can and waterfall only you must, sometimes in governance ask while can waterfall and do agile, therefore need to change the attitude of governance to make that you really do that give you the value, not just do what they tell you. Push back governance and they should understand the difference between agile and waterfall

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e.?????????one of the key drivers is the people like the idea and effort to be flexible that can give them, that can be a tendency for the people things can be like a panacea that’s going cure everything, that chunks good people in the room, that hugely motivated the magic will just happen. And the people must get some care way, people used practice agile, and the culture must be right one of the barriers are we ready for this as an organization. Since the people do know the organization What the people said agent of the organization. Get the organization culture and we can contain cost some time.

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6.??????Is there such thing as a pure agile approach?

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a.?????????????Some people are religious on the agile approach, have to follow up particularly way if it's not in an agile manifesto or in SCRUM you are doing wrong. That is counter to agile, Agile is about applying smart ways, efficient ways of doing work for your team and work for your organization. And there is such thing as a pure agile approach, that can retain and say can be applied. But there is the agile mindset and there is thinking about agile removing the barrier, about getting the team, to work together to deliver the elements and all ideas of servant leadership.?There is an agile mindset, I do not think there is a pure agile approach and there should be.

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b.?????????????immediately must think about Yin and Yang meaning is the Agile mindset which I think is fundamental, that’s I see a crucial and important. That is the other part that is agile in a real-life application where in my eyes a lot of things have gone wrong. And I would prefer to go back to the agile manifesto the principle they have to be applicable, isn’t the same thing I am looking to the framework, they have their right to be and they could think it should forget as commercial, the framework is so complicated that I need someone to train me?and I need a consultant to explain the terminology of that framework to me and reaching a boundary in my eyes. So, in the Yin and Yang minds of discrete approach, you need to look at what is good for you and for your organization.

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c.?????????????As we discussed extremes of anything, Pure, what do you mean by pure? I am not sure absolutely 100% this and that, for me agile is a philosophy and mindset or a set of behaviors you like, and 100% that is the effect of the agile manifesto, therefore we do not know 100% pure, because everyone has the experience and practicing his own methods.

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7.??????Is the division between agile and waterfall starting to get unhelpful? Is it stopping more creativity about projects?

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a.??????????As already discussed, It’s actually really unhelpful, and you should pick the approach that’s right for the delivery of your project or work package or deliverables, that’s applicable within the environment you are its the culture of your organization, maturity of the people work with, and applied it and be creative as SCRUM master?And project managers and team leaders to help the people who work to understand what you think and aim for what the outcome desirable. That’s a lot of thinking obviously rather than following one discrete approach. Its people work with and should not forget that.

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b.??????????the answer is yet and agrees with the statement, I do think the division between agile and waterfall is unhelpful, and I am not sure I have seen a pure waterfall project or pure agile projects. In such kinds of things, we have to push to the extremes and be more creative with the project and huge opportunities to use new technology, huge opportunities to take different approaches. And Silo thinking in one area may not be that helpful.?There are probably some elements that waterfall could manipulate and re-thought about and re-use would be helpful even for Agile projects. We have been in a debate that kind of pushes to extremes, which isn’t helpful.

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c.???????????Once agile paid at the same the divide must greater and we have angles perspectives, and we through project management out of window who will create same room and do great stuff, and the traditional project manager around that time did not like it, and in early days agile is quite mature and I like to say agile is not grown up and it’s great to do recognition around it. And I have seen more and more the traditional waterfall project manager become familiar and accepting now. It is not a good thing, I think it's breaking down and the more different technologies, techniques, and tools that come about, it does some way to break it down. Let’s take a recent example we go out of Covid and lockdown one of the key tenants of agile is collaboration traditionally. Maybe you will be at home and say my projects are agile because we all say that we all are using zoom, teams, and techs.?In the end which is a good thing.

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d.???????????It will be helpful to have the division between agile and waterfall because you know in the waterfall you have to look at the business just because the thing around the project might have changed so much that would be better to stop the project because you go and do what was agreed with waterfall approach will be your waste. In Agile you need to look at the change in your environment and make sure what is adapted is being delivered. I have had several waterfall projects and I was able to pull out the block and kill the project.

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e.???????????There is also This belief that Agile has been graced and project management graced, and waterfall unit-created project management methodology. A lot of agile lists do not include any of the waterfall methodology and techniques which is very unhelpful because it does help evince from being creative side by side and the tools and techniques quite use efficiently.

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8.??????How does the agile model overcome the limitation of the waterfall model?

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a.?????????????Simply more change friendly, there isn’t a project around us not changed in requirements, nothing ever specific and absolutely, perfectly right up and front. Almost, of course, you do have the ability to change in a waterfall-type project and it can be slower, so, it’s the ability to change and you learn more about the project and what they really want rather than what you encourage to from the outside. You change if you have that flexibility and what design to do.

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b.?????????????this is a big question that you can probably spend days diving into, so a lot of elements but the core thing Agile mindset and mindset of the organization the mindset of people that really brings the key benefit of agile over the waterfall the drives the deliveries sooner, quicker and making we getting feedback loop sooner and quicker. There are a lot more elements that are the delegation of responsibility that agile allies have, it’s the connection between the developers and consumer, user, and all these there is huge maintenance. While the topics need more time for discussion, you can probably pick each element of the agile manifesto and thus the reason why agile had to benefit overall waterfall.

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c.??????????????I would prefer to go over the topic of Communication and emphasis communication and what’s the difference between agile vs of waterfall. Firstly, we had our people and technical delivery teams moving on, we have developers who want to work from 3:00 in the afternoon until mid-nights we have people in different locations and different cultures and backgrounds, what does agile do? It forces the communication in a daily stand up, it is a minimum of communication would probably not find with none-exiting waterfall approach in addition to that they?mentioned already the communication with the costumers much more regular and has been enforced for the business to come to the table to help people making join design decision for out the life cycle and it’s been a requirement over the teams and its come back in the different shape and expected. Again, communication on a regular based on actions will expose early delivery of deliverables and get feedback and go to the next iteration.

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9.??I have seen challenges with agile particularly if you have a weak product owner who is responsible for approving the backlog(requirement)

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a.????????the role of the product owner is a very interesting one and we got two extremes of product owners: one who is an expert and who knows everything, who can answer all questions of the delivery team and he/she knows all the detail and the other extremes we got product owner who is just dispatched rather take request from the users, from the costumers and dispatched to the team, there are two extremes of product owner, a natural fact neither of those are good we need somebody highly skilled in this product owner role who has deep knowledge of the requirements to in extending and also need to go back to the customer and to the user whatever they are verified to continue the communication.

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b.????????A week product owner is a problem because they are just dispatched writers and not controlling the elements and they are not put that level of knowledge either it’s very important that the product owners know the business and know the technology trying to deliver and well connect with key stakeholders and user.

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10.???What is the best approach for agile implementation?

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a.????????There are of course a lot of agile ways working there is a small initiative of doing on scrum way, that when they have a big business impact and bigger business change make sure you use the agile project management, when it really the more stable organization that you just want to continuously improve what you do, and focused on delivery and not so on deployment, it go for agile skill framework, there is not one agile approach to implement and it depends on what you want to deliver off-course the best approaches makes you do business deployment and business also trained on how to get the increments quickly every and start using them.

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b.????????as the agile techniques Kanban and some of the thinking beyond the Kanban, which few of them would be starting for the year, try and development incrementally with small changes all the time and do not believe a big bang works and initially try and respect role and responsibilities are there and all the time reflects to see how to make this better and better not on?monthly or yearly based but continuously to see how it apply. That to me easiest way to look at agile, the firm’s software development might be hump straight to scrum but in general, I think the Kanban principle that which approaches you to take would be very good.

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10.??Is it possible to build in approaches such as DevOps into agile or waterfall?

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a.??????????in DevOps essentially you can use agile and you looking at developing incrementally and implementing into operations it’s something that you can use in terms of agile and I am not sure to apply it in the waterfall. And believe that agile us something that you can use the approach or DevOps.

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b.???????????Agile if you want to do with waterfall, it became more program management approach where you deliver the project with the very good operational team, but also get the operations team deploying it and that can be the implementation of the outcome the change of management approach which will more program management based or getting it operational work.

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c.????????????The answers depend on you ask if you ask DevOps practical or agile practical, you get most likely different responses and the opinion is that yes you can it depends on you perceive the interaction between what is currency seeing as change environment and as your business as usual environment how that is operating and how much you government stay on and your decision making is even down to the lowest level of possible which you require in order to effectively and effectively use DevOps because if you do not have down to the lowest level your government would not support this. In the end yes we can do it.

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11.??Is it said agile is for software development, it this just people putting agile frameworks like Scrum under the Agile Umbrella as they don’t know any better?

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a.???????25 years ago, agile was software development now I see a lot more in practical business organization and for the improvement of business processes is gabbing opportunity to grow in the market Amazon is also one of the biggest examples that have done that. That is not software development, that’s business development where it can be very agile.

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b.???????I want to make a differentiation I will be agile for software development and enterprise should aim for agility and some of the principle and the mindset it needs to be interpreted in the right way,

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c.????????Agile should leave software and enterprise should be with agility, some of the principles and mindset should be interpreted in a better way. That will help in differentiating the frameworks as they could do what they do best because on agile software development does not get in the air of other frameworks who are doing another thing better.

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d.????????Agile is no longer purely for software development, it did grow up of software development, but grown-up software development because software is in an area where is a significant change, the rapid change we did not always understand what the future is going to look?like and we did not understand what the technology capabilities were so that why agile come in software development as that happened in bigger business, I think agile software development and agile is no longer software development, it’s really applicable in any businesses where we see rapid change and we have new technologies, new types of resources, new ways of deploying our resources, I think agile can work in those situations, absolutely

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e.????????Of course, agile comes from software development, I have seen successfully used in the retail project, marketing for example, however, just quickly take away, one another example when I am in the class, is it necessary to use a new clip summary. Probably not. Therefore, some projects would be applicable but not for everything.

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12.??From a skill set aspect, can project teams deliver both waterfall and agile interchangeability it is better to dedicate the project team to a particular methodology?

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a.??????????it depends on your organizational culture and organizational maturity, can you get people to adapt to either depending on need and requirements and on the other hand would YOU dedicate your project teams to a particular methodology and something like Microsoft perhaps and you should, there is no real answer to this and what is the organizational maturity.

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b.??????????It depends on the maturity of the organization, but I expect Project managers that will have to skills to approach their project teams in the waterfall as well as in agile methodology.

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c.????????????Depending on the maturity of the project team project manager must ask for different terms for that should be able to conduct at the team and help the team to deliver as we know between waterfall and agile whatever it might be making a need to do and reflect the maturity of those individual team members.

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Panel Members:

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1.?????Jeroen Geutsen https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/jeroen-geurtsen-841571/

2.?????Naine Sinequan https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/nadine-sinequan/

3.?????Jakie Hewett https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/hewettjackie/

4.?????Holger Heuss https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/holger-heuss-a372b8/

5.?????David McCreery https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/davidmccreery/

6.?????Charlotte Miller: Facilitator

7. https://www.dhirubhai.net/video/live/urn:li:ugcPost:6930864092702236672/