Integrating Traditional and Agile Project Management Approaches: An Exploration into Hybrid Approaches

The need for flexibility contributes to rising use of agile project management approaches. Despite the aspiration to become agile, in practice, most organizations end up using hybrid approaches, a mix of traditional and agile project management. We conduct a qualitative exploratory analysis into the visual effects (VFX) industry, an exemplary case representative of a hybrid, non-software creative development environment. We identified an extensive set of aspects relevant to hybrid project management from existing literature. We then evaluated the presence of these aspects in the VFX industry. The findings suggest 36 aspects relevant in the context of hybrid project management, of which six emerged through our analysis. The presence of eight aspects remained inconclusive, opening future research possibilities. Our findings help project managers and researchers to better understand which project management aspects enable and inhibit organizations when moving from a traditional project management approach towards a more agile approach.