No Methodologies

While on some other project, we just do everything without any plan at all. We ,

• just take a non clear specification,
• forget everything about quality/testing/bugs.
• deploy a very minimal development version on production
• freak out whenever there are some bugs.

We end up with a bad quality product and spend countless hours fixing those bugs.

This is where methodologies shine.

Waterfall

So when we work on fixed priced projects and give estimates:

• we usually spend 2-6 hours on research, call and writing clear specification with complete project details, to avoid working on things outside scope during project.
• The deadline is always tight and very specific.
• The budget is very specific.

The risk is that,

• the quality will suffer if specification changes during the project or unknown variable happens and - the deliverable might be completely different than how the customer assumed (if the project/budget/time is not much flexible or there is less client communication).

However this is best suited for large projects or where the risk of changing requirements is relatively low.

Agile

On some project, we care about quality, but do not care about the estimated time/money. The budget and time is usually fixed, it goes like, "Let us see what we can do in 2 weeks deadline".

This post from Swarmonline explained it clearly,

• An agile method is a ‘change driven approach’ which creates feature estimates.
• The risk decreases as the project progresses
• We typically spend less time on up-front requirements, specification and cost estimations.

The risk is that,

• it is less predictable what will be delivered at the end.
• high level of collaboration is needed

Most hourly projects are similar to this, right?

Us

As far as I know, we at vanila use a subset of Agile, which is called Kanban for ourselves. Sometimes waterfall for clients and agile for really flexible projects.

One team should follow a methodology to achieve something. Quality over quantity. If no methodology is followed, Quality and Team members suffers because of bad management. I wonder what kind of team we are and what kind of team we can be.

What kind of team and methodology you have?