Exploring the Adoption of Hybrid Project Management: a Case Study of a Grocery retailer

Hybrid project management is an approach that combines traditional and agile project management techniques. The goal is to benefit from the strengths of each approach, and, at the same time avoid the weaknesses. However, due to the variety of hybrid methodologies that have been presented in the meantime, it is not easy to understand the differences or similarities of the methodologies, as well as, the advantages or disadvantages of the hybrid approach in general. Additionally, there is only fragmented knowledge about prerequisites and success factors for successfully implementing hybrid project management in organizations. Hence, the aim of this study is to provide a structured overview of the current state of research regarding the topic. To address this aim, we have conducted a systematic literature review focusing on a set of specific research questions. As a result, four different hybrid methodologies are discussed, as well as, the definition, benefits, challenges, suitability and prerequisites of hybrid project management. Our study contributes to knowledge by synthesizing and structuring prior work in this growing area of research, which serves as a basis for purposeful and targeted research in the future.

Project Management Practices for Collaborative University-Industry R&D: A Hybrid Approach

What happens when an IT Program Manager returns to academia? They bring their project management toolkit and begin teaching, research, and service activities with a hybrid project management mindset. We initiated a Gaming Community of Practice at Bond University, Australia, to explore serious games and gamification techniques and their relationship to student learning and engagement. Lean principles were applied to reduce research barriers. This paper is about how hybrid project management was used to initiate and manage the Gaming Community of Practice and their interdisciplinary research program. One of the early benefits of this hybrid project management approach is that the institutional research approval process was transformed and made lean by setting up a five-year research agreement for the Gaming Community of Practice with the university’s Research Ethics Committee. In addition, a quality control process was initiated that reduced administrative burden yet addressed risks related to research. This autoethnographic research illustrates how a hybrid project management approach combined with emerging best practices like Agile values and principles are used in a Gaming Community of Practice. Early and significant benefits were realised by pursuing lean thinking and implementing lean optimization techniques. These same techniques and tools form the core of leading-edge innovation projects that might interest others in post-secondary education.KeywordsAutoethnographic researchEthics approvalHybrid project managementLean thinkingOpportunity managementQuality managementRisk management

PurposeThe paper aims to provide methodological support for hybrid project management, in which the discipline of predictive methodologies combines with the flexibility of adaptive ones. Specifically, the paper explores the extent complexity and volatility dimensions of organisational problems inform choices of PM methodologies both theoretically and in current practice, as a first step towards better methodological support for hybridisation.Design/methodology/approachThe paper takes a mixed method approach, including both secondary research and primary research with practitioners. Primary research consists of a small scale survey (n = 31) followed by semi-structured interviews, with findings triangulated against secondary evidence.FindingsThe paper provides empirical insights on how complexity and volatility of organisational problems can inform hybrid project management practices. Specifically, it suggests a mapping between volatility and complexity dimensions and predictive and adaptive risk controls as a first step towards the systematisation of hybrid combinations in projects.Research limitations/implicationsDue to the small participant sample, the research results may lack generalisability.Practical implicationsThe paper includes implications for the development of methodological support for setting up hybrid projects in practice.Originality/valueThe paper addresses a gap acknowledged both in the literature and by practitioners.

Research Context: Project Management (PM) is essential in Software Engineering (SE) education, requiring technical and collaborative skills. Effective tools must incorporate modern PM methodologies to address evolving educational needs. Practical Problem: Existing tools lack features such as real-time collaboration, integration of updated PM principles, and adaptability, limiting their ability to develop comprehensive PM skills among students. Proposed Solution: This study enhances a collaborative web-based IS for PM education, integrating the 6th and 7th editions of the PMBOK®. New features, including a real-time collaborative editor and hybrid project management approaches, were implemented to improve learning outcomes. Related IS Theory: Using the 3C model (Communication, Coordination, Cooperation), the tool was designed to facilitate effective collaboration and align with established collaborative frameworks in IS research. Research Method: We employed an user-centered development, with surveys and iterative testing guiding enhancements. Modern technologies, such as React and Yjs, enabled real-time functionalities. The tool’s usability and functionality were evaluated through user feedback. Summary of Results: The enhanced tool supports real-time collaboration, advanced document editing, and hybrid PM practices, addressing previous limitations. It serves as a practical example of applying IS frameworks to PM education. Contributions and Impact to IS Area: This study demonstrates how IS can transform PM education through collaborative systems and agile methodologies, aligning tools with both academic and industry needs. Future work includes case studies to further validate the tool’s impact.

Goal: The path to implement Digital Transformation (DT) in modern industries is far from clear, particularly in Brazil. From the point of view of operations management, authors developed a Conceptual Framework (CF) to support DT implementation in Discrete Manufacturing Industries (DMI). The CF applies knowledge management, hybrid project management (HPM) and Sociotechnical values to implement DT, using New Product Development (NPD) as a ground. The work aims to depict the HPM approach of this CF.
 Design / Methodology / Approach: this is a qualitative research based on a systematic literature review carried out over a period of five years. It was performed in the Web of Science database, applying PRISMA flowchart, to evaluate which project management models, addressed in the literature, are more suitable for DT implementation projects in light of sociotechnical and innovation-shared-values approach.
 Results: A Hybrid “Stage-Gate – Agile - Design Thinking” project management model to support DT implementation in DMI. This is a preliminary proposal that can be explored in future empirical research.
 Limitations of the investigation: Some quality papers may have been left out due to the research methodology.
 Practical implications: The CF can be applied by professionals to support Digital Transformation while incorporating sociotechnical values and reducing the excessive technological bias in NPD projects.
 Originality/Value: The authors propose a new Digital Transformation (DT) approach, named Sociotechnical Digital Transformation (SDT) and an HPM to support DT in light of a Sociotechnical approach.

This study aims to demonstrate that a hybrid project management framework, which integrates Total Quality Management (TQM), Six Sigma, and Agile methodologies, is more effective than traditional project management approaches in improving project outcomes related to quality, efficiency, and stakeholder satisfaction. In this regard, the research presents a hypothetical project within an organization, simulating two defined groups: control (traditional methods) and experimental (integrating TQM, Six Sigma, and Agile). The proposed case study provides a structured approach to highlight that a hybrid project management approach improves efficiency and performance at both the project implementation and organizational levels, compared to the traditional project management methodology. Research is based on generated data and statistical analyzes, with criteria defined to assess improvements in quality, efficiency, and stakeholder satisfaction. A key strength of the research is that the analysis includes User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and two statistical tests: ttests and p-value tests, to identify statistically significant differences between the traditional and hybrid groups. The findings indicate that the integrated methodology significantly improves the project results in all measured criteria. Specifically, it improves deliverable quality, reduces project completion time and costs, increases stakeholder satisfaction, and suggests that the integration of proposed methodologies redefines best practices in project management, offering a more effective alternative to traditional approaches. In general, the results highlight the potential of the combined approach to improve project management practices and deliver better results, contributing to a deeper understanding of how the integration of modern methodologies redefines success in project management.

The authors of this study want to analyze organizational purpose while focusing on the adoption of hybrid project management (HPM) methodology in FinTech system development. It is critical to identify the internal and external elements that influence organizational decision-makers intentions for HPM adoption. This study intends to use a theoretical approach that combines the Technology Organization Environment (TOE), which investigates the factors that influence FinTech organizations' decisions to incorporate HPM into their software development projects, with the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), which investigates behavioral intention. It tackles the elements that influence organizational decision-makers preparation for HPM deployment and their willingness to employ it. When the independent, dependent, and moderating variables are combined, the results show that relative advantage, top management support, and industry pressure all have a positive impact on an individual's attitude towards HPM adoption in FinTech and sustainability in Quality 4.0. The authors also examined the impact of attitudes and perceived behavioral control factors on the long-term intention to use HPM in the FinTech business. The stated hypotheses were verified using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), except for the direct effect of top management support or attitude on intention to adopt.

Project management is a lot about structuring. Challenges in introducing new software especially in the field of digitalization are to address the needs of planning, budget and schedule adherence as well as involving the users in the development process. Classic project management is usually focused on following the plan and keeping the project in schedule and budget. Agile project management puts the user in the center and aims at fulfilling his needs. The University of Applied Sciences Munster has aligned its project management with the PRINCE2 standard. The introduction of an enterprise content management system started in 2017 as a new project. To fulfill the user’s needs and keep the project management standard it has been tailored to achieve the project goals by integrating agile stages. This adaptation is presented in this paper as an example of structured hybrid project management.

Project management (PM) is considered an important competency for improving organizational efficiencies, and its practice is evolving in health care organizations. As a medium-sized health care organization, Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences used a hybrid PM office model and created a PM network to connect the small, centralized PM office to the decentralized project leaders. The key components to create the PM network were (1) skilled leader, (2) organizational support, (3) infrastructure, and (4) session content. Membership grew from 12 to 45 members within the first year. The network continues to evolve to meet member and organizational needs.

In this chapter, the authors Jürg Kuster, Christian Bachmann, Mike Hubmann, Robert Lippmann, and Patrick Schneider provide the reader with a comprehensive introduction to the methodology used for successful project management. Along with the most important project phases, the relevant procedures, methods, and tools are explained for both agile and traditional project management, set in relation to each other, and illustrated with practical examples. In this Project Management Handbook, the traditional and agile approaches are not treated separately. In the sense of hybrid project management, the elements of the traditional and agile approach are explained and deepened on the basis of the phases of traditional project management (project commissioning, initialisation, concept, realisation, and introduction). Hybrid project management leaves open how the elements of the traditional and agile approaches are combined. This chapter deals with this question in depth.

In this paper, the authors aim to analyse organisational intention and focus on hybrid project management (HPM) methodology adoption in FinTech system software development. It is important to ascertain the internal and external factors that affect organisational decision-makers’ intentions towards HPM adoption. This study aims to apply a theoretical approach integrating Technology-Organisation-Environment (TOE), which examines the factors that impact FinTech organisations’ decisions to adopt HPM into their software development projects, together with the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) which examines the behavioural intention. It addresses those factors that form organisational decision-makers’ readiness for HPM implementation and enable their intention to use it. When combining the independent, dependent, and moderating variables, the results show that the effect of relative advantage, top management support, and industry pressure have a positive influence on individual’s attitude towards HPM adoption in FinTech Malaysia and sustainability in Quality 4.0. The authors also considered the influence of attitudes and perceived behavioural control variables having a positive influence on sustainable intention of HPM adoption in the FinTech industry. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to verify the proposed hypotheses, with the exception of the direct influence of top management support or attitude on intention to adopt.

A conceptual hybrid project management model for construction projects

The hybrid approach in project management is now considered as a leading project management approach, that is applied in the majority of projects. However, the hybrid approach, which is defined as the combination of the predictive and adaptive approaches, is also still emerging, with several challenges and issues showing from literature. One of these issues is that the definition of hybrid as a combination of adaptive and predictive approaches leaves room for interpretation and variation. Hybrid is a spectrum of different ways of planning, controlling, organizing, leading and performing a project, that needs to be tailored to the situational circumstances. It is this tailoring process that the study focuses on. Based on the criteria for assessing the fit of an approach, the study identified the following six hybrid approaches, 'Flexible predictive'; ’'Tolerant predictive'; 'Predictable adaptive'; 'Adaptive light'; 'Integrated hybrid' and 'Facilitated adaptive'. By applying a contingency approach to the design of a hybrid approach, the study aims to contribute to the further development of the understanding of hybrid project management.

The purpose of this review is to look at the future sustainability of project management by combining agile methodology and product management. Digital transformation is evolving rapidly, and the question is whether traditional project management is sustainable. To ensure sustainability, a hybrid approach is taken by combining agile methodology to ensure the latest trend in software development approaches are maintained. Agile methodologies were crafted in 2000, but it has only been widely used since 2011 for software development. This paper will focus on the types of agile requirements engineering methods used in the agile framework, used and described in various articles, journals, and studies over the last six years, and how this can be applied together with traditional project management.