Among all, one linear project management perspective is known as waterfall methodology. In this methodology, the requirements of customers and shareholders are collected in the initial steps of any project, and it leads towards the making of sequence of the project plan to fulfill the required requirements.
This approach is called the waterfall model as it streamed into each and every section of the project similar to waterfall. It is a thoroughly and well-structured methodology that remains along the project as it works efficiently to fulfill the requirements.
The well-known-waterfall model for project management is being used in various industries that mainly include Information Technology, construction and software development life cycle also named as SDLC.
Phases of the Waterfall Model:
The waterfall methodology comprises six to seven linked phases that are designed in linear order. It shows that the next phase can’t be started until you have completed the previous one. You should know that the name of each step of this waterfall is different and is based on their inventor – Winston W. Royce in given below steps:
- Requirements: one of the prime features of Waterfall methodology with project management is that all the essential requirements of customers should be collected in the initial steps of the project. It results in planning of remaining phases without the comparability of customers till the project becomes finalized.
- Design: The next phase in waterfall methodology is ‘Design Phase” which is further streamed into a couple of phases known as Physical design and Logical Design. The subphase – Logical Design is possible when the required solutions are compact and speculative. The second subphase – Physical design is possible when the speculative schemes and ideas are composed by solid instructions.
- Implementation: In this phase, the programmers of the project understand and incorporate the specifications and requirements from foregoing phases and then are able to generate the actual code.
- Verification: In this next phase of waterfall methodology, the customer is able to review all the ups and downs of the product to ensure that it will fulfill the initial and upcoming necessities of this project. It is only done by releasing the details of the completed product.
- Maintenance: When the customer is using the product even in the maintenance phase, they find various bugs along with various errors and deficient features that are possible during production. In this way, the production team fixes all these flexes to meet customer fulfillment.
Waterfall Project Management Software:
It is one of the Novel project management software which helps the customer to design and give proper structure to project processes from beginning to the end. On the other hand, it helps the managers to arrange their tasks, organize schedules in Gantt charts and also control the project while passing through various phases.
Waterfall project softwares can be repetitive and flexible as compared to complicated frameworks and various projects to make changes most often. Besides, the software allows you to make changes in real-time with reports and dashboards in order to relocate resources and pointing bottlenecks to prevent the team from any restrictions in their work.
Besides, Microsoft Project is also the most used Project Management Software. It comes with major drawbacks, that’s why Project Manager is the best alternative among all.
Desktop VS Online Project Management Waterfall Software
If you are going to have waterfall software, then you need to select between online or desktop application, cloud-based project management software. It may not be considered a big problem, but some differentiation is found in both types. You can make informed decisions while knowing differentiation.
Pricing:
The pricing of Desktop waterfall software is a bit costly and it can rise when you need to pay licensing fees for each user and team member. Besides, online waterfall software is premium for subscription and payment package plans are different and depend on the limit of their users.
Connectivity:
No doubt online waterfall software requires internet connectivity to work. It means that the reliability and speed can be different depending on the internet service provider. It has the drawback that you can lose connection and your work will be interrupted.
Beside, the difference is minor but the desktop waterfall software has benefits as it doesn’t cause interruption in your work because of internet connectivity.
Another one is PDCA cycle project management framework which various industries can use to make various project related changes. It stands for Plan, Do, Check, and Act.
Conclusion:
PDCA cycles vary from other Management strategies as it helps the project members to make essential and small changes and can check the success of every step before starting a new one.
