Before you get started, here is some more context about the program:
You’re working as a graduate consultant at Accenture
Your client is a large global financial services firm who are launching a new brand
called SoliD. SoliD is designed to provide financial services for teens and millennials.
You’re working with a wider team at Accenture but you are responsible for the end-to-end
project management on this account.
Your job to ensure your client is happy and the project keeps on track.
Effective Project Management is a critical skill in client services. This program is a great opportunity
to build your skills!
Here are four different project management approaches
Outlined below are four different project management approaches that you might use on the job.
Please read through each project management approach before moving onto the next step.
In the next step, we’ll provide you with some example projects and you’ll be asked to match the right
approach to the right project.
Plan Driven Project Management
As the most traditional method of managing projects, Plan Driven project management – or
sometimes referred to as Predictive – aims to plan as much of the scope, costs, schedules, and
resources as early and as thoroughly as possible to minimize waste due to misalignment, uncertainty,
rework and changes. Controlling expenditures, resource allocation and utilization, schedules and
deadline, quality standards, and stakeholder requirements are critical to the success of the project.
Agile Project Management
Agile methodologies aim to embrace changes early and often in a project to reduce the impact of
changes later. This is accomplished with shorter timeboxed cycles to produce work, gather feedback,
and iterate based on feedback and learning. Allowing and encouraging change is crucial. Being
transparent and honest enables teams to get more input on work in progress and ability to adjust
quickly. Scope and outputs may shift, expand, and/or contract as the product evolves.
Second Agile Project Management
Agile methods are best suited for smaller, more self-organizing teams. Self-contained teams allow
more ability to inspect and adopt faster and with less overhead or dependencies. Nevertheless, as
organizations grow and more teams require greater communication and collaboration to fulfill
common goals and objectives, there must be frameworks in place to support larger coordinated
efforts.
Operating agile at a larger scale demands more visibility and synchronization. This includes within the
near-term timeboxes as well as within longer-term initiatives. For instance, related teams or
programs may allocate an entire sprint primarily for planning and coordination. This enables teams
to better forecast what they may be doing or leading towards. But more importantly, it allows the
teams to uncover where and when they depend on each other. Teams can “see” farther out and
understanding the cross team relationships to achieve various aims. Then throughout these
“program iterations”, teams meet regularly to stay in sync or coordinated.
Hybrid Project Management
The approaches of project management do not need to be mutually exclusive. There are times when
aspects or techniques from one method can be incorporated from those of another. This blended
approach can support those projects that can benefit from elements of the various approaches.
For instance, teams may want to follow the pre-determined timeboxes of agile teams, yet maintain
more traditional long-range planning. This enables teams to be aligned in the cadence of other teams
while retaining their predictive plans.
