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Ask HN: Project Management Frameworks

4 points by civilized ↗ HN
There is increasing pressure in my org to adopt a project management framework. I want to understand the different frameworks and the problems they're meant to solve, so I can more meaningfully contribute to the discussion. The problem is, the materials online never seem to explain that question I'm interested in - what problem is this framework trying to solve, how does it do it better than other frameworks, what are the tradeoffs in adopting this framework. You just get a giant flowchart and vague assertions that seem designed to imply this framework is universally wonderful for all possible problems.

Is there any resource that looks past the marketing fluff and explains what specific problems each project management framework is designed to solve, the tradeoffs in adopting the framework, and in what scenarios you might want to use one over the other?

2 comments

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jarl-ragnar
All project management is risk management

https://www.infoq.com/presentations/risk-project-management/

Know what you’re building but risk of schedule and budget overruns - waterfall and possibly earned value management (loved by the defence and aerospace sectors).

Not sure what you’re building so risk is you build the wrong thing - agile, get something minimal into the user/customer hands and course correct based on feedback.

No individual framework is perfect.

2ndBkfstBurito
I know what you mean—there's a lot of marketing drivel in PM. Hopefully, this suggestion will help in a few ways (since you're looking for choice, a comparison between many frameworks, and maybe even a good option to start). I've had good success in exploring Disciplined Agile. Key to DA is "Choosing your Way of Working" or "WoW". The goal is to take the best from several frameworks (Scrum, XP, Lean, etc.) and allow these features/artifacts to slot into your team's specific needs. Learning DA means you get to learn the basics of lots of different methodologies in the context of prioritizing your work above following the (sometimes arbitrary) rules of a specific framework.