What are the four types of project management?

There are several project management types and frameworks you can use to manage projects, successfully. Choosing the right one is crucial because it dictates how you structure your team and how you plan and monitor your projects.

1. Waterfall project management

Waterfall or traditional project management is focused on “perfect planning.” Before you even get started, you break down and schedule the entire project from start to finish.

If you’re working with physical products with lots of dependencies or services where your SLA demands perfection, consistency, and set-in-stone deadlines, there’s no better alternative.

2. Kanban project management

Unlike the Waterfall framework, Kanban project management focuses on continuous improvement. Using a Kanban board like the one above, your team plans how to improve products, campaigns, or processes.

Kanban helps you visualize your work to limit work-in-progress (WIP) and quickly move work from “Doing” to “Done.” Kanban is great for teams that have many incoming requests.

3. Scrum project management

The Scrum framework is the most popular way to implement Agile project management. It divides larger projects into shorter, 1–4 week sprints that adapt to demands as the project evolves.

It also lays out rules for team size, team roles, planning, meetings, deliverables, and more. While popular among software developers, it’s also great for teams that seek to deliver functioning increments of their work during a project. For example, you could use it for marketing campaigns, product design, or other creative projects.

4. Agile project management

Agile is a project management buzzword and is often prescribed as a catch-all solution to inefficient companies. However, it has its own unique shortcomings, including scope creep and collaboration issues.

For example, it can be hard to scale this framework beyond a smaller team level because it relies on smaller increments and details. On the other hand, for many teams, having the flexibility to amend project plans as time goes on is integral to ensuring they can finish the project, period.