AGILE-WATERFALL HYBRID APPROACH IN INNOVATION PROJECT MANAGEMENT

References: 4th International Multidisciplinary Scientific Conference on Social Sciences and Arts SGEM 2017, www.sgemsocial.org, SGEM2017 Conference Proceedings, ISBN 978-619-7408-17-1 / ISSN 2367-5659, 24 - 30 August, 2017, Book 1, Vol 5, 41-48 pp, DOI: 10.5593/sgemsocial2017/15/S05.006

ABSTRACT

Practice of project management is continually changing in the contemporary business. Working with the small teams and often with the limited budgets, while facing frequent changes in the business requirements, project managers are under continuous pressure to deliver fast turnarounds. Following the demands of new trends in the business management, leaders in the R&D sector are optimizing and adopting different and new styles and strategies more effectively. Waterfall models are suitable for projects with very clear product requirements and where the requirements will not change dynamically during the course of the project completion. Currently, agile is the most popular model used in the IT industry. Customer’s interaction is the backbone of the agile methodology, and open communication with minimum documentation are the typical features of an agile environment. This paper proposes a new hybrid way of managing innovation projects, flexibly combining the traditional (TPM) and the agile (APM) methods that is particularly dedicated to the new product development (NPD). We have described the attributes of some traditional and agile methodologies that can be far and widely used in the new product development. We have also provided the challenges associated with implementation of the agile processes in NPD. The proposed hybrid method is completely flexible and adaptable to the unique characteristics of the innovation project. Also, this paper investigates what is the necessary organizational transition in the manufacturing enterprises, required before converting from the traditional to the proposed new hybrid model.

Keywords: innovation, project, agile, waterfall, model