Project management is the backbone of successful delivery, no matter the industry or project size. From constructing a building to launching a software product, teams need clear frameworks to plan, execute, and adapt along the way. That's where different types of project management come into play. Each style, whether traditional like Waterfall or modern like Agile, offers unique strengths and approaches.
Understanding these styles is not just academic; it helps teams choose the proper methodology for their project's complexity, team structure, and goals. In this guide, we'll explore what project management is, why styles matter, break down the most common categories, highlight tools that support them, and uncover best practices while avoiding common mistakes. By the end, you'll know how to select the right project management approach with confidence. And with modern collaboration platforms like Lark, implementing these methodologies has never been easier.
What is project management, and why do styles matter?
Project management is the discipline of applying knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to deliver projects within defined constraints of scope, time, cost, and quality. In practice, it means breaking down complex work into manageable phases, assigning responsibilities, monitoring progress, and ensuring the final result meets stakeholder expectations.
The type of project management style you use directly influences how work is structured and delivered. For example, a sequential style like Waterfall ensures predictability and compliance in industries such as construction, while iterative approaches like Agile provide flexibility for software development teams to adapt quickly to customer feedback. Traditional styles emphasize structure, documentation, and control, while modern approaches lean toward adaptability, collaboration, and speed. Neither is inherently "better"; the key lies in aligning the method with your project's needs.
Start using Lark Base to manage projects with ease. Its customizable workflows adapt to Waterfall, Agile, Hybrid, or any other methodology, helping teams collaborate seamlessly while keeping everything organized in one place.
Overview of project management methodologies
Various categories of project management methodologies
Project management isn't one-size-fits-all; different methods suit different industries, team dynamics, and project goals. Below, we break down the most widely used categories of project management, their key features, and how tools like Lark enhance each approach.
Waterfall
The Waterfall methodology is the most traditional and widely recognized project management style. It follows a linear, sequential process where each phase must be fully completed before moving on to the next. This makes it highly structured and predictable, making it a reliable choice for projects with well-defined requirements and little room for change.
Key features of Waterfall:
Clear stages: Projects progress through fixed steps—requirements, design, implementation, testing, and maintenance.
Strong documentation: Every stage produces detailed records, ensuring traceability and compliance throughout the process.
Easy to replicate: Once a process is established, it can be reused across similar projects.
Predictable timelines: Since the whole plan is set up front, teams can track deadlines with confidence.
Structured decision-making: Stakeholder approvals are built into each stage, reducing ambiguity.
Best for: Construction, manufacturing, and compliance-driven industries where requirements are stable and precision is critical.
With Lark, Waterfall projects become easier to manage, utilizing Lark Base Gantt-style timelines and Calendar milestones to ensure every stage is aligned, tracked, and communicated clearly to all stakeholders.
Agile
Agile project management thrives on flexibility, adaptability, and customer collaboration. Unlike traditional linear methods, Agile breaks work into small, iterative cycles that allow teams to deliver value continuously while adapting to change along the way. This makes Agile especially powerful for fast-paced industries where requirements change rapidly and innovation is crucial.
Key features of Agile:
Short iterations (sprints): Work is delivered in time-boxed cycles, usually 1–4 weeks long, allowing for frequent releases and feedback.
Customer collaboration: Stakeholders are engaged throughout the project, shaping priorities and refining deliverables.
Responding to change quickly: Agile teams embrace changing requirements, even late in the process, to maximize customer value.
Continuous improvement: Regular reviews and retrospectives ensure processes evolve for greater efficiency and quality.
Transparency in progress: Backlogs, task boards, and open communication keep everyone aligned on status and priorities.
Best suited for IT, software development, and product-focused teams that operate in dynamic environments where speed and adaptability are essential.
With Lark, Agile becomes seamless. Teams can run real-time sprints in Lark Messenger to keep communication flowing, track and prioritize backlogs in Lark Base, and hold daily standups in Lark Meetings to quickly resolve blockers. Together, these features create an integrated ecosystem that supports Agile practices from planning to delivery..
Scrum
Scrum is one of the most popular Agile frameworks, designed to manage complex projects by breaking them down into manageable, iterative cycles called sprints. It provides teams with clear roles, defined responsibilities, and structured ceremonies to ensure consistent progress and accountability. By promoting collaboration, transparency, and adaptability, Scrum empowers teams to deliver working solutions in short timeframes.
Key features of Scrum:
Defined roles: Scrum Master (facilitates process), Product Owner (manages backlog), and Development Team (executes work).
Sprint cycles (1–4 weeks): Time-boxed iterations keep projects moving steadily forward.
Product backlog: A prioritized list of tasks and features ensures clarity of focus.
Daily standups: Short team meetings identify progress, blockers, and next steps.
Sprint reviews and retrospectives: End-of-sprint sessions showcase results and refine future work.
Best for: Software and product development teams that need to deliver value incrementally and adapt quickly.
With Lark: Scrum thrives with Lark Meetings for daily standups, Base sprint boards to track work, and Messenger for ongoing team collaboration—keeping everyone aligned and accountable.
👉 Read more about How to Create a Scrum Board here
Kanban
Kanban is a visual workflow management method that helps teams maximize efficiency by making work visible and limiting overload. It focuses on continuous delivery rather than fixed-length iterations, making it highly adaptable for teams with ongoing or variable workloads. By providing a clear picture of task progress, Kanban ensures that bottlenecks and inefficiencies can be identified and resolved quickly.
Key features of Kanban:
Visualized workflow: Tasks are displayed on boards with columns like "To Do," "In Progress," and "Done."
WIP (Work in Progress) limits: Restricts the number of tasks being handled simultaneously, preventing overload.
Continuous delivery: Work flows smoothly without waiting for predefined cycles.
Bottleneck detection: Visual boards make delays or resource constraints easy to spot.
Clear prioritization: Tasks are organized by urgency and importance for smoother execution.
Best for: Marketing, operations, and creative teams managing dynamic workflows or recurring tasks.
With Lark: Base Kanban boards enable teams to drag and drop tasks in real-time, while automatic updates in Messenger ensure visibility for all stakeholders.
Lean
Lean project management is rooted in the principles of waste reduction and value maximization. Initially developed in manufacturing, Lean is now applied across industries to streamline processes, empower teams, and deliver precisely what the customer needs—no more, no less. It emphasizes efficiency, simplicity, and continuous improvement, making it ideal for organizations focused on operational excellence.
Key features of Lean:
Focus on customer value: Every activity must directly contribute to customer outcomes.
Waste elimination: Non-value-adding steps are systematically removed.
Empowered teams: Teams are encouraged to suggest process improvements.
Continuous improvement: Small, consistent changes build long-term efficiency.
Value stream mapping: Visualizes how value flows from start to finish, highlighting delays or inefficiencies.
Best suited for: Manufacturing, operations, and small to medium-sized enterprises seeking efficiency.
With Lark, automation reduces repetitive administrative work, while Base workflows track streamlined processes, ensuring Lean principles are applied seamlessly.
Six Sigma
Six Sigma is a data-driven methodology that aims to improve process quality by reducing variability and defects. It provides organizations with statistical tools and frameworks to identify inefficiencies, measure performance, and implement corrective actions. Six Sigma emphasizes precision and consistency, making it highly valuable for large-scale operations where even minor errors can have significant impacts.
Key features of Six Sigma:
Data-driven approach: Decisions are based on measurable data, not assumptions.
DMAIC process: Define, measure, analyze, improve, and control structured problem-solving.
Root cause analysis: Identifies and eliminates sources of defects or inefficiencies.
Focus on continuous improvement: Encourages ongoing refinement of processes.
Statistical methods: Utilize tools such as regression analysis and process mapping to ensure accuracy and reliability.
Best for: Large enterprises and quality control projects in industries like manufacturing, logistics, and healthcare.
With Lark: Dashboards in Base track KPIs and performance metrics, while Docs enable collaborative root cause analysis, making Six Sigma improvements more transparent and actionable.
PRINCE2
PRINCE2 (Projects IN Controlled Environments) is a structured, process-based methodology widely adopted in government and regulated industries. It emphasizes governance, accountability, and strong documentation. By dividing projects into manageable stages, PRINCE2 ensures each phase is justified, monitored, and controlled, making it especially useful for high-stakes projects where compliance and oversight are critical.
Key features of PRINCE2:
Business case justification: Every project must demonstrate continued business value.
Defined roles and responsibilities: Clear accountability for every team member.
Product-based planning: Focuses on deliverables rather than just tasks.
Stage boundaries: Projects are divided into stages with checkpoints for evaluation.
Risk management: Proactive identification and mitigation of risks.
Best suited for Government, finance, and regulated sectors that require structured governance.
With Lark: Lark Docs and Wiki provide centralized storage for detailed documentation, while Base supports approvals and compliance workflows, ensuring projects stay audit-ready.
Critical Path Method (CPM)
The Critical Path Method is a scheduling technique that identifies the sequence of dependent tasks, determining a project's finish date. By mapping out activities, durations, and dependencies, CPM helps project managers prioritize critical tasks and allocate resources effectively. It provides clarity on which tasks have scheduling flexibility (float) and which do not.
Key features of CPM:
Dependency mapping: Defines relationships between tasks.
Task duration analysis: Estimates how long each activity will take.
Schedule optimization: Adjusts timelines to improve efficiency.
Resource allocation ensures that critical resources are available when needed.
Bottleneck identification: Highlights areas where delays could impact delivery.
Best for: Engineering, event planning, and construction projects with complex dependencies.
With Lark, base task dependencies and Calendar syncing enable managers to track timelines visually, identify bottlenecks early, and optimize schedules with ease.
Hybrid
Hybrid project management combines the structure of Waterfall with the flexibility of Agile, enabling teams to leverage the benefits of both approaches. While the initial stages, such as planning and requirements gathering, follow a Waterfall structured approach, execution and delivery are managed in an Agile-style iterative approach. Hybrid is becoming increasingly popular for organizations with diverse project needs and cross-functional teams.
Key features of Hybrid:
Detailed upfront planning (Waterfall): Ensures clarity on goals and resources.
Agile execution cycles: Enable adaptability during development or delivery.
Custom workflows: Teams can design processes combining both approaches.
Balanced risk and adaptability: Combines predictability with flexibility.
Scalable across large teams: Works well for multi-department or enterprise-level projects.
Best for: Cross-functional, large organizations with complex requirements.
With Lark: Base, teams can combine Gantt timelines for planning with Kanban boards for execution, ensuring structured yet flexible workflows.
Adaptive Project Framework (APF)
The Adaptive Project Framework (APF) is designed for projects with high uncertainty, where the scope and requirements are subject to change. Unlike rigid methods, APF embraces change, focusing on delivering business value through iterative cycles guided by stakeholder input. Each cycle allows for evaluation and adjustments, making it ideal for projects that need flexibility and customer involvement.
Key features of APF:
Requirements breakdown structure (RBS): Defines goals and functions at a strategic level.
Iterative cycles: Work is delivered in manageable phases.
Stakeholder-driven scope changes: Scope is adjusted as needs evolve.
Continuous evaluation: Regular feedback drives improvement.
Business value delivery: Focuses on maximizing outcomes for stakeholders.
Best for: Research, development, and client-facing projects with evolving needs.
With Lark: Docs support real-time edits for requirements, while Base task adjustments allow instant updates, enabling teams to adapt quickly as feedback comes in.
Benefits of using Lark for project management
Modern projects often fail not because of poor ideas but because of poor coordination, scattered tools, communication breakdowns, and siloed data, which make it difficult for teams to stay aligned. Lark solves this problem by offering a variety of project management ecosystems that integrate communication, documentation, workflows, and tracking into one seamless platform. Here's how it transforms project delivery:
All-in-one workspace
Instead of juggling separate apps for chat, video calls, docs, tasks tracking, and approvals, Lark brings them all together. Teams can create project documents, assign tasks, schedule meetings, and track milestones all within the platform. This reduces tool fatigue, saves time, and ensures that nothing gets lost in the cracks.
Real-time collaboration
In fast-moving projects, delays caused by switching tools or waiting for updates can be costly. Lark enables real-time collaboration where edits in documents, updates in Base, or new messages in chat are instantly visible to everyone. This ensures that teams can respond quickly to changes and maintain momentum without the need for endless back-and-forth.
Customizable workflows
Every project has its unique needs, and Lark adapts to them effortlessly. Using Lark Base, project managers can design workflows that fit Agile sprints, Scrum boards, Waterfall timelines, or even hybrid models. Automation further streamlines repetitive tasks, ensuring projects move forward efficiently without manual overhead.
Ready-to-use templates
Lark provides pre-built templates tailored to standard methodologies. For example, you can use a project management template for waterfall or hybrid approaches, complete with Gantt-style task breakdowns. Agile teams benefit from Lark's Agile methodology checklist, which simplifies sprint planning and review. These templates reduce setup time, allowing teams to focus on execution rather than administration.
Affordable pricing
Compared to other enterprise project management tools, Lark offers a competitive advantage with its affordable pricing. Teams of all sizes, startups, SMEs, or large enterprises, can access premium features without overspending. This makes Lark a cost-effective choice for organizations seeking robust project management without a significant investment.
Free plan: Includes 11 powerful products, supporting up to 20 users, 100 GB storage, 1,000 automation runs, and unlimited AI translation in chats, docs and email.
Paid plans: Start at $12/user/month, supporting up to 500 users. Includes unlimited message history, 50,000 automated Base workflow executions per month.
Enterprise plan: Custom pricing.
Integrated knowledge hub
Projects often involve complex processes and guidelines that require regular reference. Lark Wiki serves as a central knowledge hub where teams can document best practices, project methodologies, and SOPs. This ensures that knowledge is not lost over time and that new team members can onboard faster with easy access to documentation.
Cross-functional visibility
Project success depends on more than just task completion—it requires leaders and stakeholders to have visibility across dependencies, progress, and KPIs. Lark provides real-time dashboards and Base tracking tools that make it easy to see how projects are advancing, identify bottlenecks, and adjust resources proactively.
Advantages and benefits of understanding PM styles
Every project is unique, and there's no universal method that guarantees success in all scenarios. By understanding the various styles of project management, teams and leaders can make more informed decisions that directly impact outcomes. Here are the key advantages:
Choose the right approach for specific project needs
Not all projects are created equal. A large construction project requires strict sequencing and documentation (Waterfall), while a fast-paced product launch thrives with Agile or Scrum. Knowing the strengths and limitations of each style ensures you apply the best-fit methodology to your project type.
Improve resource allocation and communication
Project styles influence how resources, people, time, and budgets are distributed. Agile, for example, prioritizes flexibility in resource use, while PRINCE2 demands clearly defined roles and approvals. You can ensure smooth communication and efficient resource utilization by aligning the methodology with your team dynamics.
Reduce risks and errors by aligning methodology with project type
Misaligned approaches often result in delays, cost overruns, or unmet expectations. A rigid Waterfall plan for a constantly evolving software project, for instance, invites problems. Selecting the right style mitigates risks by matching project complexity, uncertainty, and stakeholder needs.
Boost stakeholder confidence with the proper structure
Stakeholders want to see that their investment is in safe hands. Using a methodology that aligns with project goals builds confidence. Agile demonstrates responsiveness to customer input, while CPM or PRINCE2 ensures that stakeholders are assured that risks, dependencies, and governance are being actively managed.
Common mistakes in project management planning
Even with the best intentions, project managers sometimes stumble when choosing and applying methodologies. Being aware of these pitfalls can prevent costly setbacks:
Picking a style without analyzing project needs
It's tempting to stick with a familiar method, but unthinkingly applying one style to all projects rarely yields effective results. A thoughtful assessment of the project type, complexity, and risk profile should always be the first step.
Overcomplicating workflows
Adding unnecessary steps, approvals, or layers of documentation can slow progress and frustrate teams. Keep workflows as simple as possible while still maintaining clarity and accountability.
Ignoring team size and capabilities
A small startup team may not have the bandwidth for a governance-heavy style like PRINCE2, while a large enterprise may struggle with a purely ad-hoc Agile approach. Choosing a style that suits the team's capacity ensures sustainable progress.
Failing to update plans regularly
Projects are dynamic, and failing to revisit plans often leads to misalignment between expectations and actual progress. Regardless of the style you choose, regular updates and reviews are essential.
Conclusion
Project management is more than just ticking off tasks.It's about selecting the proper methodology to lead your team to success. Structured approaches, such as Waterfall and the Critical Path Method, bring order and predictability, while adaptive styles, like Agile, Scrum, and Kanban, thrive on flexibility. Process-focused methods such as Lean and Six Sigma drive efficiency and quality, while governance-heavy frameworks like PRINCE2 ensure compliance. Hybrid and adaptive models combine these strengths, striking a balance between control and adaptability. The key is knowing which method best fits your project's goals, complexity, and team dynamics.
That's where tools matter. Lark unifies chat, docs, meetings, tasks, and automation—helping you apply any methodology seamlessly.
FAQ
What are the different types of project management?
The main types of project management include Waterfall, Agile, Scrum, Kanban, Lean, Six Sigma, PRINCE2, Critical Path Method (CPM), Hybrid, and Adaptive Project Framework (APF). Each has unique strengths. For example, Waterfall is best for construction and compliance-heavy industries, while Agile and Scrum excel in software and product development. Tools like Lark make it easier to apply these styles by offering Gantt charts, Kanban boards, sprint tracking, and real-time collaboration in one place.
How do I choose between different types of PM methods?
The right style depends on your project type, complexity, team size, and stakeholder needs. For instance, if your project has fixed requirements and deadlines, Waterfall or CPM may be ideal. If your team requires flexibility and rapid feedback, Agile or Kanban methodologies are better suited. A tool like Lark Base helps by supporting multiple methods, allowing you to switch between Gantt timelines, Kanban boards, or sprint planning without needing to change platforms.
What are the categories of project management most commonly used?
Project management styles are usually grouped into four categories: traditional (Waterfall, CPM), Agile family (Scrum, Kanban, APF), process-based (Lean, Six Sigma), and governance-heavy (PRINCE2). Many teams also adopt Hybrid approaches, combining structure with flexibility. With Lark, you can manage all these categories in one workspace, adapting workflows as projects evolve.
Which different styles of project management are most effective for small teams?
Small teams often benefit most from Agile, Scrum, or Kanban, as these styles emphasize collaboration, transparency, and adaptability without heavy administrative overhead. Daily standups, visual boards, and sprint planning keep everyone aligned. Lark Meetings and Base Kanban boards are ideal for small teams, offering lightweight yet powerful ways to stay organized.
Do all industries use the same styles of project management?
No, different industries rely on various styles of project management. Construction and manufacturing often use Waterfall or CPM, while IT and software teams prefer Agile, Scrum, or Kanban. Government and finance lean on PRINCE2, and operations favor Lean and Six Sigma. R&D uses APF. With Lark, you can adapt workflows, templates, and automation to fit any methodology across industries.
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