Marketing is a varied and nuanced field, and often what works for one client or project won’t be the same fit for another, even in the same field. So, when trying to choose the right kind of methodology for marketing project management, you should consider a number of factors. And with such a wide range of project management methodologies out there, it can become even more difficult when trying to weigh the pros and cons of which methodology to use for which kind of project.
Strengths and Weaknesses in Marketing Project Management
To make that decision-making process a bit easier, we’ve decided to stack up some of the most common project management methodologies and see where their strengths and weaknesses lie.
Project Management Methodologies – Strengths & Weaknesses
Agile
Agile business project management started out in the world of software development and has gradually spread into the wider business world to become one of the most popular project management methodologies. It uses decentralized decision making and iteration to increase flexibility and improve processes.
Strengths: Online marketing and inbound marketing.
These marketing projects are run on a continuous basis, which suits Agile’s iterative process, constantly filtering knowledge back into marketing operations while allowing teams to be flexible in their responses to situations as they change.
Weaknesses: Event marketing and seasonal marketing.
Because Agile emphasizes incremental improvement over time, the methodology does not necessarily excel at projects confined to a short timespan or hinging on one big “moment.” These types of marketing projects require everything to be perfect-at-launch and do not have space built in for testing and improvement.
Scrum
Focusing on delivering high-priority deliverables in a set space of time, Scrum is all about ensuring intense focus and adopting personal responsibility for task completion.
Strengths: Product marketing and B2B marketing.
Scrum lends itself well to types of marketing that require the completion of the most important deliverables first. For both product and B2B marketing, the highest priority assets and actions are the most important, and secondary ones can be held back for later sprints.
Weaknesses: Direct marketing and high-level corporate marketing.
Scrum loses the advantage it has over other marketing project management techniques where a team will definitely have time to complete everything or where all tasks run simultaneously and have the same completion date.
Waterfall
One of the original project management methodologies, Waterfall uses a sequential process to plan and execute the tasks, with one flowing into the next, all moving towards project completion.
Strengths: Alliance marketing and brick and mortar marketing.
Waterfall is great for planning an all-at-once delivery of a marketing project, using Gantt charts and project plans to achieve precise objectives geared towards specific and often distant deadlines.
Weaknesses: Personalized marketing and social media marketing.
Waterfall is not built to deal with circumstances that can change daily or hourly. In these situations, long-term planning is outperformed by skills-based reactions and on-the-fly decision-making.
Hybrid
For marketing firms which are either transitioning to a particular methodology or recognize that a mixed approach suits their situation better, a hybrid methodology is a situation-based approach which strives to use the best processes for the task at hand.
Strengths: Content marketing and brand marketing.
By using a mixture of set-piece and iterative processes, marketing teams following a hybrid approach can create the cornerstone elements of a project and then use more Agile processes to fine-tune them.
Weaknesses: Test-driven marketing or building a new app.
While a hybrid marketing project management approach won’t be a total failure, in these situations either sticking to one approach or another might be best, as it reduces confusion and makes objectives clearer and easier to achieve.
As one of the world’s leading creators of project management software for marketing teams, we are acutely aware of how different approaches lend themselves to the various situations that marketing teams face. To find out more about how Planview AdaptiveWork lets your teams achieve more while working exactly how they want, get in touch with our team here for a live demonstration.
