The standard for project management

Agile life cycle.

 An approach that is both iterative and incremental 

to refine work items and deliver frequently.

WHAT TO CALL NON-AGILE 

APPROACHES?

There is no single term that is 

universally used to describe non-agile 

approaches. Initially, the practice 

guide used the term 

plan-driven

 to 

describe the emphasis on an upfront 

plan and then execution of that 

plan. Some people prefer the terms 

waterfall

 or 

serial

 to describe this 

life cycle. In the end, we settled on 

the term 

predictive

 since it is used in  

A Guide to the Project Management 

Body of Knowledge (PMBOK

®

 Guide)

 

[3] and the 

Software Extension to the 

PMBOK

®

 Guide Fifth Edition

 [4].

Many organizations do not 

experience either of these extremes 

and instead occupy some middle 

ground. That is natural, but we still 

need a way to talk about both ends 

of the spectrum. If 

agile

 is at one end, 

we call the other end 

predictive

. 

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18 

  

Section 3