Let us start our descent down the funnel starting with broadest term and disentangling them one from another. Among all stated above, approach would be the broadest term. The Oxford Dictionary definition of approach would be “a way of dealing with somebody/something; a way of doing or thinking about something such as a problem or a task”. Thus, an approach would be the most all-encompassing description of how one treats a problem, which hat one puts on to structure the problem and the reality around it. Different approaches can yield fundamentally different answers to the same question. Now, taking things closer to home, your approach within project management will be the whole philosophy of how you decide to think about the project, which will in the next step bring you to the methodology you choose to tackle it with. Your chosen approach is also the manifestation for what set of principles you will be guided by. Probably the most common approaches are the traditional and agile approaches. Having said that, there different types of logic are applied when it comes to grouping approaches under the umbrella term of “traditional” ones – sometimes it includes waterfall and six sigma, sometimes they are treated as totally different animals. This would be a topic for a dedicated entry and we shall talk about this at some point.

However, now that we have visited approach as the broadest available term, our next step is methodology. A methodology will be a whole set of principles and practices that fits within the selected approach. It is more narrow and so specific than the approach, but still broader than the remaining terms. A good example would be SCRUM as an Agile methodology or PRINCE2 as a methodology heavily leaning on the classical approach.

Method, our next stop, is “a particular way of doing something”. As an old saying goes, “there is a method to our madness” (implying that madness could also be our approach).  This means that we are getting one step more concrete in the way we how we structure the reality and tackle the issue as a method implies there is a systematic component in it. A method will be used to achieve a concrete task within the scope of a project. Several examples come to mind from different approaches – Critical Path Method, SCRUM Sprint or KANBAN Method (as in a specific practice to use a KANBAN board to manage workflow). While method is more concrete on the one hand, at this level we meet also quite a few amazing methods that are completely agnostic from the approach perspective – such as brainstorming, stakeholder analysis, or SWOT analysis.

Our final stop would be a tool, the most specific of all stated terms. A tool is a concrete device used to carry out a particular function. Within the project management universe, it will be a particular application, software solution or technique, which will be used to implement methods that pertain to a particular methodology and nest within a particular approach. A Gantt chart to organize your project, a SCRUM Board to visualize your workflow and manage your tasks as well as the whole set of approach-agnostic tools such as various 2x2 matrices, survey tools or mind maps are waiting here for you to solve tasks and master challenges, so that by the end of the project you can say with a deep satisfaction “ What a journey!”