Project Management Methodology

Table of contents

For many of us immersed in the world of project management, it’s common to hear the term project management methodology. That said, the word “methodology” isn’t my favorite, and I feel it ends up being a failed attempt to make every project the same. But what is a project methodology? Why is a methodology for project management a double-edged sword? Isn’t there a standard already?

First, we need to agree on what methodology actually means. So let’s start there.

What is a project management methodology?

Methodology (…) refers to the set of rational procedures used to reach the objective or range of objectives that governs a scientific investigation, a doctrinal exposition, or tasks that require specific skills, knowledge, or care.

Definition of Methodology on Wikipedia - February 3, 2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodology

The term methodology refers to a set of “sequential steps,” or even ordered procedures, that must be followed to reach an objective.

When we talk about project management methodology, we’re talking about a sequence of steps we must follow to manage a project correctly - which doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing as successfully.

Important! Managing a project well isn’t the same as it being a good project. Sometimes the best thing a great manager can do is request the early cancellation or suspension of a project. For example, if something changes in the context that invalidates the hypotheses or assumptions on which the project’s value depends - it’s rare, but it can happen.

Many people perceive methodology as a kind of instruction manual defining how to manage projects in a given context - such as an organization or an area within it.

Advantages a project management methodology offers

Methodologies in general offer structure and order. So, those starting out in project management see methodologies as a sort of path to follow. That said, this isn’t the only benefit. Among the advantages of a project management methodology, we find:

1. Concepts and terms: Clarity

Methodologies offer a common language. Something very much needed in the corporate environment. Project terms can often be confusing for people, and can even result in ambiguity due to other definitions used within the company.

The first benefit of a methodology is creating a “shared understanding.”

2. Life cycle: Definition, stages, and controls

Methodologies, by their structured nature, must define the project’s life cycle. While each project is different and unrepeatable, the life cycle is almost always the same within a given organization.

For example, a consumer goods company running projects around operational improvement might define the following life cycle.

3. Best practices: Lessons learned

Methodologies also propose solutions to the most common needs of projects within an organization. Among them: how communications should be managed, how the project’s tactical objectives are established and tracked. Just to name a few.

4. Management tools: Organizational assets

Likewise, methodologies offer a list of tools - often including templates - that may or *must* be used in the practice of management itself, ranging from innocent recommendations to detestable formal budget requirements in specific spreadsheet formats or forms with useless headers like “form date” and “document drafting date” that, far from being useful, only take up space in text documents.

A good methodology reminds project managers which tools are available - for example, on which platform we can hold a video call, or which tools we have to track tasks assigned to the project team.

5. Control mechanisms: Metrics, indicators, control limits, and gate checks

Many methodologies dig deep into control models. A clear inheritance from command-and-control organizational models. In my opinion, most organizational methodologies exist for the sole purpose of strengthening control and visibility over progress and risk. In this way, we define metrics - things to measure, indicators - relationships between metrics and expectations or plans, and control limits - the point at which an indicator moves from “fine” to “worrying” to “bad,” which are often tied to traffic-light colors (green = good, yellow = worried or under observation, red = in trouble).

Among these mechanisms - which could also be counted among the practices or tools - we’ll find a set of performance indicators, many of them tied to earned value, or plan-versus-progress.

Likewise, many methodologies promote gate checks - mechanisms for evaluating a project as it moves from one life-cycle stage to another.

Project life cycle

To the careless eye, the life cycle might look related to the waterfall paradigm. Be careful here: projects are temporary instruments and, therefore, projects have a beginning and an end - that is, a life cycle. Even projects managed under an agile paradigm are temporary.

It’s possible that the phases of a project managed under the Waterfall paradigm look the same as the stages of the life cycle. But they aren’t. The life cycle goes beyond the project’s own existence.

Something similar happens with the product life cycle. This can be managed under an agile paradigm. So, projects end up competing with each other for access to the resources that manage the product. In the “more agile” operating models I’ve seen, project requirements get broken down into the products being modified and then compete within the backlogs. This topic deserves more room, so I promise an article on it in the near future.

How project methodologies relate to management paradigms

But wait! Are methodologies the same thing as management paradigms? Definitely not. There are paradigms or contexts in which projects (or phases of a project) are “defined and executed,” and there are management methodologies. To explain the difference with an example, let’s say you’re a renowned chef and want to open two new restaurants.

The first is a new location of your most well-known restaurant, with its famous dishes already defined and essentially a replica of the others. This is a problem that, barring major surprises, already has a predictable outcome. The best thing you can do is draw on your experience (and your team’s) and repeat, with some adjustments and improvements, the process you’ve followed in the past to set up other locations.

Your other project, on the other hand, is opening a restaurant outside your comfort zone, in a new country, or in a new format - like fast food, a food truck, or something you consider radical. While it’s good to have a plan, the experimentation process you should follow to create something new can’t be pre-written.

If you want to know more about paradigms in project management, I invite you to read my article Which Is Better: Agile, Predictive, or Hybrid?

Well, this is a very interesting topic - methodologies and paradigms - but let’s look at the three most popular project management methodologies of the moment.

PMI’s project management methodology

If Mr. PMI existed, he’d be embarrassed by that title. There’s no such thing as “the PMI methodology.”

Today, PMI - the Project Management Institute - is recognized globally for its work formalizing and specializing the practice of project management. Among its products - or most outstanding results - is the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, known as the PMBoK Guide - Project Management Body of Knowledge .

Although historically the PMBoK was initially a very prescriptive document, today it’s a document divided into two major “blocks.”

The first is a kind of explanation of the profession, the roles within the project management context, and some organizational structures that can enhance the practice and outcomes of projects; the second is a kind of structure of practices and tools ordered by “context” and “domain” that serves as an instrument for understanding “what is done” in project management.

2026 update: today the PMBoK is already on its eighth edition (released in November 2025). The jump from version 6 to 7 - and now to 8 - is without a doubt a major transformation, and it shows a wonderful evolution within PMI itself - as an organization and as a volunteer association - one that speaks to guiding values and principles, and gives less prominence to the desperate idea of “the steps to manage a project.”

PMBoK process groups

An important clarification: the process groups are divided into initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing. Again, the careless eye will say “the project’s phases,” but NO! NO! NO! and NO! Why?

  1. Monitoring and controlling can’t be a phase. Imagine that at your restaurant you finish setting up the new location, leave for a week, and come back to “monitor and control” how the launch went. Whether it went well, so-so, or badly, it already happened! What control can you exercise over something that’s already done?
  2. It’s the tasks you carry out day to day that you could “classify” into these contexts. For example: a) work-planning meeting for the week, 8:30 a.m. (guess which process group we might be talking about); b) at 9:30 a.m. a new vendor joins the project, right on schedule, and it’s time to kick off their involvement; c) at 2:00 p.m. you need to carry out a performance review of your team members, since the organization’s cycle has come around and it’s time to assess progress on some members’ career plans.

As you can see, these are two specific reflections that clearly explain why process groups are NOT the project’s phases.

Why isn’t the PMBoK a methodology?

As I said before, the PMBoK’s heritage is strongly prescriptive, but for several years now the guide has become more of a “dictionary” of practices and tools (in its part 2) and a kind of “reflection” on the purpose of management (in its part 1).

Nowhere does it tell you which steps to follow to structure, plan, and execute a project. You or your organization should evaluate which practices the PMBoK documents and whether, within your paradigm and business or personal context, that practice adds value to your project and to the practice of project management itself - something we call tailoring.

If PMI isn’t a methodology, why is it first on the list?

Give credit where credit is due. Although PMI doesn’t offer a methodology in its PMBoK today - it may suggest one in other documents - the influence of this document on many methodologies implemented in organizations today is undeniable. That’s where the famous phrase “the PMI methodology” comes from. These “methodologies” are, at best, a serious and consistent effort to analyze the practices and apply “some” of them within a company and its projects.

Side note: unfortunately, many people never really studied the PMBoK properly, and instead of understanding and adapting it, they just copied and pasted, creating methodologies where every single practice presented had to be applied. What true foolishness! Can you imagine buying a dictionary and trying to write a document forcing yourself to use every word in it? You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve seen that scenario in real life.

Scrum methodology

Scrum fanboys will jump at this title. And they’re partly right.

Unlike the PMBoK, Scrum is much more prescriptive . It’s so prescriptive that straying from the standard is considered a Scrumbut . Scrum’s creators describe it themselves as a “Scrum is a lightweight framework that helps people, teams and organizations generate value through adaptive solutions for complex problems.” - if you don’t understand the last part, you can read this article .

Scrum is a lightweight framework that helps people, teams and organizations generate value through adaptive solutions for complex problems.

The 2020 Scrum Guide

Scrum events

Scrum defines a set of events and a sequence for carrying them out. And even though there aren’t many, in my opinion they do function like a method (which is why it shows up on this list of methodologies).

Some people call the events “ceremonies” or “rituals,” but the truth is they’re just inventing words to sound different.

That said, Scrum leaves a lot of things undefined, and this “lack of information” can be both a great power and a great responsibility. For example, what is the backlog and how is it managed? Why do some idiots claim that backlogs can only contain user stories? Speaking of which, what are user stories - I don’t see that term anywhere in the official guide? What are story points, why do some idiots claim you can only estimate stories with points? Again, what are user stories?

As you can see, Scrum is simple to understand, and without a doubt one of the working models I like the most. But does it work for everything? OF COURSE NOT!

PRINCE2 methodology

In the context of projects, PRINCE stands for “PRojects IN Controlled Environments.” And of the three mentioned here, it’s the only one that considers itself a methodology.

Although it isn’t very popular in the Americas - due to PMI’s own influence - PRINCE2 is the standard in the English context and in its former colonies and other territories with strong UK influence.

PRINCE2 clearly and prescriptively establishes principles, aspects - themes - and processes.

If you’re new to the world of projects and will allow me some advice, reading the official PRINCE2 guide can be liberating - the opposite happens with versions 4, 5, and maybe 6 of the PMBoK, which feel more like torture.

Agile methodology? LEAN methodology?

Well, if you came looking for a list of potential methodologies, you won’t find it here. You could certainly search the internet for titles like “Agile Methodology” for your projects and find plenty of results, but remember that slapping on a title doesn’t make it a formal, popular methodology.

Applying principles and values within project management methodologies

Now, these terms are created by people trying to apply - well or poorly - the principles and values of a school of thought (like LEAN or AGILE) to the project context. And of course that’s possible - you can define your own Agile methodology, but that doesn’t make it a Global methodology.

In fact, PMI itself, with its 50+ years of history, finally understands the value of principles and values over prescriptive processes. Something the “agile” world laid out in the Agile Manifesto 20+ years ago.

Useful tips for defining a project management methodology

No methodology, by its prescriptive nature, will be able to anticipate the needs and challenges of projects within organizations. However, not having a methodology - or “framework,” the name people try to give it as it becomes more flexible - can be a real headache for the practice of management itself.

So, here are some tips drawn from my experience consulting on project, program, and portfolio management.

5 key tips for defining a project management methodology

  1. Avoid reinventing the wheel. Standards and guides have been around for many years and are the result of the work and experience of hundreds or thousands of people over decades. Assuming they’re wrong is a mistake.
  2. Look for support in the community. Professional project management associations, whether global or local, are very active and collaborative. You might be surprised. I once said at a conference that it was easier to ask someone from an association - PMI, in my case - for help than to go to an embassy for logistical support. It’s more likely that wherever there’s a group of volunteers, than an embassy or consulate.
  3. Read, apply, learn, and adjust. This is just an adapted version of project management’s favorite cycle, the PDCA cycle . Defining a methodology is a continuous process of learning and consolidation. Drop the idea of designing the perfect methodology on the first try.
  4. Move away from absolute prescription. Leaving room for divergence in management will let project managers - who know each particular project better than anyone - decide on the best management tools.
  5. Categorize your projects. I’m not a fan of “one size fits all.” By definition, projects are unique. Why insist on the idea that every schedule or work plan should look the same?

Did I miss any? Want to suggest another one? Do you agree or disagree? Leave your comments and let’s open the debate!

· 13 min read · Last updated: 2026-09-12