A methodology is purely a toolset to enable one to deliver the required results fast, accurately, with precision and with a guarantee of success, and to enable the elimination of risk. There are a large number of methodologies available in the market that share domains in what they can be applied for.
There are also a large number of ‘methodologies’, or components relative to more complete frameworks to problem solving, that can provide valid business benefit, provided that they are not utilized in isolation. Often brilliant components relative to larger frameworks are published. It often happens that ill-informed sales forces position these methodology components incorrectly and often sell them to customers and do not ensure that they are not utilized in isolation.
Virtually all businesses have at this stage adopted methodologies of some sort, to some degrees of success, and to different levels of maturity of utilization and readiness of the business.
When one embarks on projects with these customers it would be fatal to attempt to roll out what is there, in the format of existing methodologies, and replace that with yet another ’World Class and Complete methodology’. Organizations already utilize their potentially incomplete and potentially fragmented methodologies with varying degrees of success, but more importantly, they have already spent vast amounts of money to embrace them and have grown emotionally attached to them. These ‘methodologies’ have also already delivered solutions to certain measures of success.
What needs to happen is that one has to integrate existing methodology components that a customer utilized into a more complete methodology framework to ensure that the desired value is derived.
We do not sell a methodology; we provide a philosophy and a framework to methodologies. Our point of departure was the establishment of a meta-model to provide solutions to business problems. This meta-model was then objectised into true object oriented methodology objects. For all of these methodology objects we have developed methodology techniques of which some are already strung together in hundreds of methodology recipes, tailor made to specific problems.
Some of these recipes have also been re-applied on other projects where they were applicable.
We are of the opinion that there does not exist a single methodology that can be applied to solve all kinds of problems, for all sorts of businesses, across diverse industries. What we do believe is that a methodology potentially has to be created for each instance of a project within each organization. So, methodologies are not only organization specific but are also project specific within each individual organization. We also believe that a methodology for a project has to evolve over time to accommodate changes in what a project has to deliver, as a result of pressure exerted on the project from its External and Target Environments. Thus a project specific methodology must also be time dependent.
The fact that our methodology philosophy is reflected in an object oriented methodology meta-model enables us to incorporate different methodology components that are existent within customers, or that are at that time better than our existing components. This is accommodated without obscuring the larger methodology framework and encompassing philosophy.
As a result of an object oriented methodology meta-model we can also string methodology objects together to represent new recipes as they are required for unique individual projects, again without obscuring the larger methodology framework and encompassing philosophy.