Identifying project delivery patterns: could that resolve the conflict between the Agile and Waterfall software practices?

Discussion title:

Identifying project delivery patterns: could that resolve the conflict between the Agile and Waterfall software practices?

Discussion details:

Patterns are being used in architecture (see Christopher Alexander’s work), in software development, in movie scripts, etc.

When it comes to project management, the PMI or PRINCE2 processes are patterns, as they are providing generic solutions to generic problems. However, these could be considered as being low-level patterns from a project end-to-end delivery standpoint.

Let’s think about project management patterns that are above the PMI or PRINCE2 distinct processes (patterns). For example, let’s consider different kinds of sailing trips:

• A barge going up the river to deliver some material
• A fishing boat going to fish commercially salmon in the ocean
• A kayak going out for a vacation day fishing trip in a relatively small lake
• An icebreaker ship going to save another ship that’s stuck
• A cruising ship, going to off shore with or without a predefined destination
• A ship going on a scientific expedition up the Amazon river for fauna and vegetation research in the river and nearby shores

The above examples need different upfront preparation, they have or not a clear destination, they have a clear or fuzzy achievable goal, they could have a clear timeline or not, they need a different type of cost management. I guess that we can find more examples like these. We could start transforming all kinds of “project tips” in delivery patterns and to name them (e.g. project type: “barge up the river”, “salvage expedition”, “scientific expedition”, “cruising to destination”, etc.).

I am suggesting that creating various project delivery patterns, we could also help stepping above the noise and resolve the polarized conflict in the software industry between Waterfall and Agile...

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