What is waterfall project management? Have you heard of this methodology but
was wondering exactly what it was, well in this video I'm gonna share with you
exactly what it is so you can decide whether it's good for your project or
not, and if you stay tuned to the end of this video I'm gonna give you a free
checklist on some 10 master hacks for productivity so that you and your
project team can be extremely successful with whatever methodology you choose. Hi
if you're new here welcome, my name is Adriana Girdler, I'm a Productivity
Specialist and a project management professional, if you run projects and
you're probably wondering what methodology to use, I'm gonna share with
you and tell you what exactly is waterfall project management, the pros of
cons associated with it, so you can decide if this is something you want to
use. What is waterfall PM, well waterfall project management is a style of project
management that happens in a very linear process and it's very phased based so
you have to finish one phase before you can even move on to the next phase, with
waterfall project management, the only way you can go back to a previous phase
is if you actually start to the beginning of phase one, it's a
progressive style, so if there's something that you made a mistake with
you have to go all the way back, each phase is going to be extremely dependent
upon what it is that you're trying to do and interestingly documentation is a
huge part of this, we're talking documentation for everything thorough
documentation where you really need to know when you start the project, what
exactly you're doing, how are you gonna go about doing it because there is no
room for being agile whatsoever in this particular methodology, to put this in
context a really easy example of waterfall project management would be
construction building a house, so think of it like this you cannot put on a roof
or drywall if you don't have the framing in place and once your concrete flooring
is poured, you can't redo it you'd actually actually have to go low but
actually, actually, you actually have to go back and rip it all out in order to
redo it, if there's something wrong with it, so you can see how to
things are, you really must go from phase 1 to phase 2, so on and so forth and it's
really difficult to jump around. Have you ever used waterfall project management
methodology on a project? If you have, write down waterfall in the comments
below. What are the benefits of waterfall project management? Well the first one is,
it's actually easy for the project manager to manage with it, think about it,
it's very phased based so you're only really focused on one phase and you're
only really thinking in the next phase as you're finishing up and getting close
to the completion of the phase that you're just working on the other part
too, is the documentation it is very document heavy and as a result very
detailed on planning and all that information that is needed so you just
have to go back to the documentation to figure out what has to be done next, and
you can rearrange things, there's really no guessing. Number two it clearly shows
progress think, about the example I gave a little bit earlier on about the
construction, you need to know if you're gonna build a house, exactly all the
stages, all the phases, exactly what you're gonna do, who you need, and when
you need them because you have all of these moving pieces and parts that you
have to organize, which is why it's so phase based, and as a result of that it's
really clear as to the progress so something kind of goes off kilter you
know, I really ahead of time every single phase ahead of that that's going to be
impacted. And number three potential to save time and money, now I do want to
highlight this word potential because you can plan everything perfectly but we
all know there's never a project that's 100% perfect, there always is some issue,
but with waterfall project management if you have a major problem and you have to
go all the way back, let's say with the construction example, that foundation you
found something wrong and you've already did some framing you're kind of out of
luck, and it's really not good it's totally gonna wreak havoc on the
schedule depending on what you have to do and how are you gonna resolve that
issue, so if everything is going well and you know exactly what you're doing and
everything is done perfectly, man you know exactly how it is, and what you
budget it is exactly what's gonna have happen, so again some really good
benefits with potential to save time and money. When is waterfall project
management used? Well this is really the dependent upon you, my recommendation is
you do it for shorter projects because that maybe don't even have a lot of
phases associated with it, so that you know when you plan it all out, that is
really going to go from start to finish quite quickly and that phase approach
will work well for you, but when do you not use waterfall project management,
well that is when you don't have all the answers and you really need to have
agility, or you know you're going to be doing lots of testing and there's going
to be tons of revision going on, this is why in the software industry they don't
use waterfall project management, they use agile project management, because it
really helps for that, but again there's not one bad methodology it's a question
of what's right for you, so if you are gonna use waterfall project methodology
then I highly recommend, do for shorter projects, get really good at it and if
it's something to repeat over and over again, it's not a bad way to do it. I hope
this video gave you a much better understanding of what is waterfall
project management, now what I would like for you to do is go to that download
below, grab that link so that you can get my 10 master hacks productivity checklist.
So that you can be extremely productive with your project team, please subscribe
to this video, give it a thumbs up, and share it with all the people that you
know, if you've ever used waterfall project management or if you plan on
using it, please share with me in the comments below, I look forward to hearing
from you, until the next video!