The Challenge
Companies set goals and develop strategies to achieve them, with projects as the key vehicles for execution. These projects can range from creating a marketing website to developing a new physical product. While each project is crucial, they differ in size, scope, and objectives. Consequently, they require different management frameworks, tools, and expertise. As a leader, this diversity of effort and expertise can make it challenging to maintain global visibility over the efforts vital to achieving your goals. Without a cohesive approach, chaos can quickly take hold.
Whether your teams are managing Agile, Waterfall, Scrum, or hybrid approaches, the challenge is the same: how do you ensure you have visibility into the work to gain reassurance that you’re on the right track when the work is so varied?
Key Strategies
Let’s break down some key strategies to help you cut through the chaos and focus on a cohesive team and operations supporting their work.
1. Centralized Reporting and Dashboards: Your Single Source of Truth
When you’re running projects across multiple frameworks, the last thing you want to do is review a dozen different reports to determine your progress. Enter centralized reporting and dashboards. Platforms like OnePlan help provide a single dashboard by integrating agile and waterfall-based project management software systems. Think of this as your project’s command center. By consolidating data from all your different frameworks into one centralized dashboard, you can get a bird’s-eye view of everything. The goal is to have a single source of truth where anyone from the team or stakeholders can check in on project status without decoding a dozen different formats.
2. Standardized Metrics and KPIs: Apples to Apples Comparisons
One of the biggest challenges with multiple frameworks is that they often come with their own set of metrics. Agile teams might be obsessed with velocity, while Waterfall teams focus on milestones. How do you compare apples to apples? The answer lies in standardizing your key metrics and KPIs across the board. Decide on a core set of metrics that matter most to your organization—think time to market, cost variance, resource utilization, and customer satisfaction. These metrics should transcend the framework and give you a consistent way to measure success across all projects.
Pro tip: Involve key stakeholders in determining these standardized metrics. If everyone agrees on what success looks like, it’s easier to get buy-in across different teams.
3. Effective Communication: Keeping Everyone on the Same Page
Communication breakdowns are the death knell for project visibility and cohesive operations. When managing multiple frameworks, you need to be even more vigilant about keeping the lines of communication open and clear. Establish regular communication cadences—weekly stand-ups, bi-weekly reviews, or monthly stakeholder updates. The key is to ensure that everyone, from the Scrum team to the Waterfall team, knows what’s happening and when.
Pro tip: Use a communication plan that outlines who needs to know what and when. This way, you avoid unnecessary noise while ensuring critical information gets to the right people at the right time.
4. Training and Knowledge Sharing: Bridging the Framework Gaps
Your teams might be rockstars in their respective frameworks, but that doesn’t mean they understand how the other side works. This can lead to silos and misalignment, especially when different teams need to collaborate.
Invest in cross-training and knowledge-sharing sessions. Make sure your Agile teams understand the basics of Waterfall and vice versa. This doesn’t mean everyone needs to be an expert in every framework, but a little understanding fosters collaboration and reduces friction.
Pro tip: Create a knowledge-sharing hub where teams can document their processes, lessons learned, and best practices. Encourage teams to share their experiences with other frameworks—it can spark new ideas and improve overall efficiency.
5. Risk Management Practices: Preparing for the Unknown
Managing risk is tricky enough in a single-framework environment. Throw in multiple frameworks, and things can get downright chaotic. Each framework might approach risk differently, so you need a cohesive strategy that works across the board.
Develop a unified risk management plan that includes input from all teams. Identify common risks and mitigation strategies that apply regardless of the framework. Ensure that risk assessments are a regular part of your project reviews and that there’s a clear process for escalating and addressing risks as they arise.
6. Alignment and Reviews: Keeping Everyone Moving in the Same Direction
Finally, it is crucial to ensure that all projects align with the organization’s overall strategic goals. This is where regular alignment and review sessions come in.
Schedule regular reviews that assess the progress of individual projects and their alignment with your organization’s strategic objectives. This helps identify potential misalignments early on and allows for course corrections before things go wrong.
Pro tip: Consider implementing a Project Management Office (PMO) or a similar governance structure to oversee this alignment process. A PMO can be the glue that holds everything together, ensuring consistency and alignment across all projects.
Make Your Frameworks Work for You
Managing multiple project management frameworks doesn’t have to be a nightmare. With centralized reporting, standardized metrics, effective communication, cross-training, cohesive risk management, and regular alignment reviews, you can maintain visibility and ensure your operations run smoothly. It’s about finding the balance between structure and flexibility—enough structure to keep everything on track but enough flexibility to adapt to each project’s unique needs.
By implementing these strategies, you’ll survive the chaos and thrive in it, leading your teams to success no matter what framework they’re working under. And who knows, you might even enjoy the ride!
