The more volatile your markets are, the more sense it makes for your organization to adopt the Scrum method of agile project management, which originated in Japan.
Originating in software development, the Scrum method accepts that the development process is unpredictable. Developers or small development teams work together in a self-organized manner to pursue a given goal in an agile manner. Changing conditions are continuously incorporated into the teams’ work via an iterative, incremental process that is transparent to all. Scrum primarily uses the feedback principle. The intensive interaction between developers and development teams uses the implicit knowledge and intuition of the participants. This makes project work much richer and more profound than if only facts and figures are communicated. With Scrum, there are only a few rules. Responsibility for results lies with the highly qualified experts, and results emerge from intensive communicative exchange.
With Scrum, the next development step, the next so-called “sprint”, is planned, then implemented, and the results of the sprints are discussed with everyone. The results influence the next sprint in each case. Long-term planning is “pulled along” as the project goes on. This is a decisive difference to conventional project management, where each step is planned and implemented along a long-term plan.
In practice, one finds hybrid forms of project management that contain conventional and agile elements in different proportions.