When to Go Agile & When to Apply a Staged Methodology

There are zillions of material out there on agile vs traditional. So, I don't want to bore my readers by writing yet another one. One point of frequent debate is how would one judge when agile is good over traditional.

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First off, I am not sure if it still a good idea to use the term 'traditional' any longer when referring to staged project management. Agile methodologies have been around for quite a while now, so they are not necessarily something very new any longer. So, I don't think that we could label agile methodologies as very modern ones hence the staged methodologies stay 'traditional'. They both exist and are still being used for very good reasons; they went through certain evolution along the years hence I would argue that they are as modern as each other.

The main point to understand really is on which cases the staged project management or the agile methodology would suit our needs better.

I promised that I will not really dive into the comparison of agile vs staged in this article. A quick check on the most basic differences however will really help me lay the foundation for my further arguments.

The following table really encapsulates the main differences between the two at a very high level.