How to develop waterfall management skills in just a few days?

A project manager needs to put in a lot of hard work to effectively manage a project and ensure smooth deliveries. Innumerable responsibilities rest on the project manager to make a project successful. Some of the responsibilities of a project manager are documentation of the requirements, management of resources, tracking and maintaining budget, adherence to timelines, etc. The various project management methodologies and techniques come to the rescue of the project managers and act as a support system. One of the most used project management technique which is widely accepted is the waterfall methodology.

Waterfall project management technique and its phases:

Water project management is a liner approach to project management. The technique derives its name from the fact that every preceding step cascade into the next step, flowing in a steady fashion just like a waterfall. In this methodology, the project is completed in distinct stages and moves ahead in a step by step manner towards the final release. The waterfall model has stood the test of time and the first reference of the same is found to be cited in 1970 by Winston W. Royce, a computer scientist of American origin.

When you undergo a waterfall project management training, you will see there are multiple phases in this model. The phases are as below:

1. Conception: This is the ideation stage and here the feasibility of the idea, cost-benefit ratio and its impact are discussed.
2. Initiation: Once the project idea is approved by the stakeholders and given a green signal a project team is put together to execute the project. The scope is defined along with the objectives and deliverables.
3. Requirement gathering: In this phase of the project the complete requirements are gathered by meetings with the stakeholders. Interviews and questionnaires are used as tools to gather the requirements. All requirements are properly documented and shared with all relevant stakeholders.
4. Design: Once the requirements are clear, the team designs the workflow. A prototype is created along with the complete blueprint.
5. Implementation: Once the prototype is approved the implementation begins to create a fully functional product. If the development is done in batches by different team members, then the integration is done at the end.
6. Testing: Once the project is ready, it is tested for any bugs.
7. Deployment: In this phase the product is officially launched.
8. Maintenance: This is an ongoing stage where the team ensures smooth performance of the product delivered.

Benefits of creating a project plan:

Undergoing a waterfall project management training will make you aware of the various benefits of using this methodology. Some of them are:

1. Creation of a knowledge repository: The waterfall project management methodology mandates documentation of the entire project. Therefore, there is no loss of knowledge if someone leaves the organization. It also makes onboarding a new joiner much simpler.
2. Easy to train people: As there is extensive documentation through-out the project it becomes much easier to train people and assign them roles. If a new team member joins the project team, then can be given a download easily by sharing a copy of the documents.
3. Easy analysis: Tracking of the project progress becomes very easy as this methodology is sequential in nature. Since, there are no iterations it is easier to know the stage of the project and track the same.
4. Smooth execution: The waterfall project management model is quite rigid and hence requires thorough planning and execution of each phase so that each phase is implemented with accuracy. Better planning ensures that there are lesser hiccups at a later stage.