Most people categorize projects as being either Agile or Waterfall. Agile in particular is portrayed as a panacea for all projects by consultants and companies who wish to sell training or license frameworks.

What if it were possible to look at a project’s characteristics and choose the approach that fits best?

Diagram from Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme, Hybrid by Robert Wysocki

Projects have clear or unclear goals and solutions. When a project approaches and wags its tail, the project manager must check its goals and solutions to make the correct identification. Calling an extreme project “agile” would be silly, like confusing a golden retriever and a pug.

Traditional (Waterfall)

• Best approach when both the goal and solution are clear
• Example: Cutover from one system to another over the course of a few business days

Agile

• Best approach when the goal is clear but the solution isn’t
• Example: Iteratively add a well-documented feature to an existing software program

Extreme

• Best approach when both the goal and solution are unclear
• Example: Prototyping and testing a software program, making big changes along the way in response to feedback and discoveries about scope

Emertxe

• Emertxe is “extreme” spelled backward, pronounced “ee-mert-zee”
• Best approach when the solution is clear but the goal isn’t
• Example: Discover the possibilities that may exist with existing technology - i.e. “We’ve purchased this cool tech; now what can we do with it?”