How to Succeed with Hybrid and Blended Agile Approaches

Blending agile and waterfall/predictive approaches to gain some form of hybrid agile is misguided and may lead to worse results than using either alone.

In my related article on Hybrid Agile, I pointed out the misuse of the term hybrid agile and teased apart what people meant or intended to mean when they used hybrid agile.

Most people who are using or pursuing hybrid agile are actually seeking a mix of traditional/waterfall/predictive and adaptive/agile approaches. Examples of this include Water-Scrum-Fall and ScrummerFall.

As noted in my article, these would best be called blended approaches of predictive and adaptive. They are not strictly hybrid agile.

In fact, based on PMI’s 2018 Pulse of the Profession, 23% of organizations are using a hybrid of agile and predictive. Not surprisingly, 47% still use predictive or waterfall approaches which means that 70% of organizations are still firmly grounded in predictive approaches.