Project methodology: 7 steps to project management

By Nathalie Pouillard & Coralie Petit

Published: November 12, 2024

Project management methodology structures the various phases of your projects. It promotes optimal organization, and is particularly necessary in the case of numerous, complex projects.

It reassures all stakeholders, including you as project manager, and establishes a framework that simplifies the launch and success of your projects.

Want to know more about this process? We've got methods for optimizing your productivity and project planning. 👇

See all software Project Management

The importance of project methodology

A single method?

In project management, there isn't just ONE project management methodology, but several possible combinations of methods and management tools, adaptable according to :

the type of project (web, technical, associative, etc.),
its characteristics,
constraints,
the context,
team experience,
corporate culture.

What are the challenges of a project methodology?

Project methodology enables you to :

find the best way to plan and execute your projects,
improve decision-making through clearly defined roles,
save time and money by reusing a management method for other projects,
manage project scope,
remember project milestones such as risk management,
control project expenditure,
quickly identify problem projects ,
mobilize a high-performance, autonomous team .

In addition to methods, the project must go through various phases to study its feasibility and ensure that objectives are met.

How to create a project methodology: 7 key steps

Step 1: Establish a complete diagnosis, an audit

👉 It's all about getting off to a good start:

Meet all stakeholders in the office or in the field (the customer or project owner, the engineers on the implementation team, the company's employees, the end users, the scrum master).
Gather and analyze needs, requirements and available resources for project implementation.
Study the local context (political, economic, etc.).
Determine which actions are relevant and feasible, and the level of complexity of the project.
What management methodology was used in previous projects? How does the team involved function, and what skills does it have?

Step 2: Identify project governance

👉 This is the stage at which the roles and responsibilities of each member of the cross-functional project team within the company, and in particular the steering committee, are clearly identified and assigned.

A good team that knows where it's going increases the project's chances of success.

Step 3: Defining objectives, drawing up specifications

👉 The objectives of a project are determined by the company's managers and the project team.

They are broken down into intermediate objectives ( milestones), each with its own purpose and deadline.

Example: the aim of the project is to launch a product, and one of the milestones could be the opening of an ephemeral boutique to preview the product.

Deliverables are both intermediate achievements (working documents, budgets, etc.) and project goals.

They represent tangible results whose success can be measured:

a model,
a product
a service,
a new organization.

The specifications are the first deliverable, as they compile the analysis work (diagnosis, definition of the project team, objectives, etc.) into a concrete document.

Step 4: Project scheduling

👉 This is when the project is broken down into stages, a set of tasks, with each outcome corresponding to milestones, themselves associated with deliverables.

Agile methods

Agile methods are very popular, especially for innovative and IT projects, such as the Adaptative Project Framework, because they emphasize segmentation. Each stage is a project in its own right, with its own objectives. Adaptations and corrections can be made at any time. The customer or project owner is also involved, working in collaboration with the entire project team.

Another scheduling method consists of breaking down the project into a multitude of tasks and sub-tasks, to increase the chances of completion and prioritize them.

The Work Breakdown Structure method

🔎 The Work Breakdown Structure( WBS) method enables you to :

prioritize deliverables in order of importance,
break down deliverables into sub-assemblies,
define the tasks required to complete each deliverable and sub-deliverable,
if necessary, break down these tasks.

The PERT method

🔎 Once the project has been broken down into tasks, the PERT method (or PERT diagram) diagrams the interconnection of tasks, which can be successive, simultaneous or convergent.
Each task has an estimated duration to determine the critical path.

Step 5: Planning, resource management and risk management

👉 The project team can now sequence tasks in a schedule, either chronologically or evolving in parallel, taking into account a safety margin.

The Gantt chart

🔎 The Gantt chart is often used as a complement to the PERT chart, as it is based on a timetable rather than the sequence of tasks. It graphically presents the progress of the project.

The critical path of a project...

Let's return to the critical path. This is the sequence of tasks in a project throughout its life cycle.

Any delay in a task has a direct impact on the following tasks and on the project deadline, and safety margins are defined for each task.Once positioned on the critical path, tasks have a zero margin.

☝️ The Critical Path Method (CPM) identifies the most critical path for achieving the objective. It is a complementary project management method to PERT, which calculates the shortest path.

... and its limitations

The limitation of the critical path, like that of the PERT diagram, is the absence of the "resources" dimension, which is essential for a realistic projection.
Resources are :

human,
budgetary
material,
technological.

The critical chain method

🔎 For a better understanding of project constraints and duration, we recommend using the Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) method.

Among other things, it enables you to:

identify risk factors (hidden or unforeseen costs, supply delays, material failure, technological developments, lack of communication and coordination),
prevent priority conflicts between different resources,
limit multitasking and wasted time,
relieve the project manager of detailed supervision.

🎬 This video retraces all the notions necessary for a good understanding of the subject:

Stage 6: Project implementation and follow-up

👉 The project steering committee looks for and deploys solutions to achieve specific objectives. This includes the management tool mentioned above.

Now that the project is underway, it needs to be monitored in order to :

anticipate potential delays or resource shortfalls,
monitor :
- progress of activities,
- adherence to schedule,
- expenses,
- results in relation to the initial project plan,
make adjustments if necessary.

Dashboards, with key performance indicators, or Key Performance Indicator, offer a visualization of determining elements (manpower, budget, etc.) and have the advantage of fostering communication between the project manager and stakeholders.

🔎 For tracking, the Kanban board is one possible visual method: it's a representation of the workflow, thanks to a system of post-it notes on a board. Each task passes from "scheduled" status, to "in progress" and then "completed".

Stage 7: closing and assessing results

👉 This is the time to take stock, to learn from what worked, what went wrong, and why.
A dedicated meeting can be organized with stakeholders, the project team, end-users, etc., and remarks are recorded in a summary report.

Other examples of project management methods

🔎 Scrum: this is the most widely used Agile method, especially for creative projects. It provides a framework: roles, an iterative rhythm, precise, time-limited meetings, short sprint planning, a progress graph, etc. Project players adjust it according to their experience and the context.
🔎 PMBoK: the Project Management Body of Knowledge is a guide produced by the PMI (Project Management Institute) to structure essential project management knowledge.
🔎 Prince2: the PRojects IN Controlled Environments method focuses on 3 points: project organization, management and control. It is a generic method used for large-scale projects.
🔎 Waterfall method: this traditional method, originally used in industries such as the automotive and construction industries, consists of advancing step by step, with a logical, sequential approach.

Some solutions worth a look

CESAR.TEAM

CESAR.TEAM is designed for large-scale enterprises, enabling end-to-end project lifecycle managementwith detailed analysis of budgets, costs and risks. Produce P&L forecasts and smooth financial production monitoring. The structured project breakdown methodology complies with Project Management Institute (PMI) requirements and is compatible with SCRUM, Prince2, Phase-Gate and Pmbok methods .

Manage all project components such as :

phases,
work packages
deliverables
tasks
project requests,
programs,
portfolios with intuitive screens,
large volumes.

monday.com is a project management software particularly suited to group project work . Fun and collaborative, the platform features a number of functions to facilitate your tasks and help you achieve your objectives quickly, including :

managing multiple projects from a single location,
automation of project approvals and tasks,
improved decision-making with a shared platform where your teams can update their progress,
organize project scope and prevent potential delays with a customized dashboard,
use templates to create reproducible project structures.

Sciforma

Sciforma combines project management and PPM in a single tool. Its rich functionality is matched only by its ease of deployment. The software adapts to the most popular project management methods:

Agile,
Critical Chain,
Prince 2,
Phase-gate,
PMBok, etc.

It is also customizable, thanks to the plug-ins available.

Sciforma optimizes :

Gantt chart creation and monitoring,
resource management and allocation,
scheduling problems are a thing of the past,
project reports, available at the click of a button,
communication between stakeholders,
risk management and resolution.

SuiteProG

The strength of SuiteProG's editor, IQar, is that it is also a PPM consultant and has designed the Système de Management du Portefeuille de Projets (SMPP ), a unique project governance reference system certified by Bureau Véritas.
The software has therefore been developed and enhanced by expert project teams, for an optimal user experience, hence the pedagogical approach:

context-sensitive help,
video tutorials,
project methodology, practical sheets,
notification support.

You don't need to be an expert yourself, the software package is intuitive and covers :

project management, from idea to close,
scoping and prioritization of requests (thanks to scoring),
planning of an unlimited number of projects,
monitoring (customized dashboards),
schedule visualization , compared with initial forecasts.

z0 Gravity

z0 Gravity's strong point is its visual mode, providing a 360-degree workspace. This innovative software package provides companies with agile methods and tools to meet their innovation challenges and transformation projects.
Augmented visualization, both global and detailed, empowers the project manager to navigate through all project components thanks to a common thread.

It enables :

manage multiple project portfolios simultaneously,
generate reports that can be customized to your position or sector of activity,
create links between departments, trades and divisions.