Projects have limited resources (people, money and time) and major risks (due to uncertainty) and you need an approach to deal with all of it. A projects methodology is never purely Waterfall or Agile or some other methodology but normally a mix to suit the organisation. That is OK - as long as you know the background and limitations of method used. Example:
Traditional waterfall => Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) (11), PMBOK or PRINCE2
Agile, example Scrum => Ability to adjust project quickly based on changing environment
Lean-agile, water-scrum-fall or some other hybrid => The reality (7),(10)
Shortlist of absolute minimum knowledge required by a Project/Team Lead (which can be acquired in a weekend):
Know basics of Lean enterprise practices (1),(9)
Be aware of key points of agile frameworks such as Scrum
Be aware of key components of popular project management methods such as PRINCE2 (5) and PMBOK (6)
Understand why you are not following recommended practices from Scrum, PRINCE2 and/or PMBOK
Like a story, every project has a Beginning, Middle and End.
The basic project stages and some of the key deliverables (loosely based on PMBOK and PRINCE2) are:
Pre-project (Feasibility)
Project mandate (could even be a 1 pager or just an email)
Agreement on people required to initiate a project
Define product description/scope (see Working Backwards (3)
Approve budget / Business case (even if at very high level)
Project Roadmap / Plan (keep high level and identify uncertainties and how to cope with it)
Clarify work practices, project communication, governance, tools to use
Delivery: Design and Build (Execution)
Track work packages, Daily Scrum
Stage/Sprint - planning, review, product demos
Unit testing and User Acceptance testing (UAT)
Final delivery (Closing)
Post go-live support (PGLS) or Hyper-care
Handover to support organisation
Continuous improvement
What rarely works
Excessive planning (if major uncertainties exists)
Start the project without key resources
More than one person responsible for same task
Microsoft Project
What mostly works
Most projects consist of multiple sub-projects or streams - dentify them early on
Have business/product owner or more than one if multiple products in the project
Daily standup/scrum with relevant product owner and delivery team
Have an up-to-date single list of tasks / issues / product backlog
Everyone must be aware at all times of high-level project roadmap/plan and their key deliverables
Every project stage/sprint must not be longer than 4 weeks
Have regular product demos (e.g. end of every stage/sprint)
If in doubt, reduce scope (8)
References
(1) Lean Enterprise: How High-Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale
Jez Humble, Joanne Molesky, Barry O’Reilly
This book is a must read! A 110p excerpt is available from publisher website. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1449368425/