Journal of Competitiveness  THE CHANGE IN MANAGEMENT STYLE DURING THE COURSE OF A PROJECT FROM THE CLASSICAL TO THE AGILE APPROACH Branislav Gablas, Eugen Ruzicky, Martina Ondrouchova Abstract Changing managing style in the middle of a project cycle has become a highly discussed topic. Most business enterprises consider it a risky process and therefore resist doing it. In our research, we aim to test the possibility of changing management style in the course of a project from a theoretical point of view. Normally, the classic waterfall is considered as an obvious project management style, while a change would mean a shift to the agile management style. Switching between the classic and agile management style during one project is an area which needs deeper consideration. Since there is a lack of documented samples, a questionnaire was prepared to de- termine if this switch is possible. The data were collected through an anonymous online survey and controlled by the 4 level scale to avoid concentration in a medium answer (5 Likert scheme). Taken mainly from SMEs, the survey results show that there is a positive overall sign that a tran- sition between classic and agile management style over the project life cycle is possible, but only in the areas suitable for agile management. By analyzing the 119 responses of project managers and using the Fisher’s exact test, we have shown that it is possible to change management style during a project. The change increases the competitiveness of SMEs in order to determine how to proceed in the implementation of projects. The research should continue with the monitoring of a real project which is undertaking the switch from the classic to the agile approach. Keywords: waterfall management style, agile management style, changes in the course of the project life cycle, busi- ness environment, PRINCE2, PMI, Scrum, classic, project, manager, SME businesses JEL Classification: M11, M12, M14 Received: July, 2018 1st Revision: October, 2018 Accepted: October, 2018 1. INTRODUCTION In the past twenty years, substantial changes have come about in project management. From classical project management styles such as PRINCE2 and PMI, new agile methods have been launched for project management such as PRINCE2 Agile and SCRUM (see book Chin, 2004; Kaliprasad, 2005). Over the past five years, we have sought to determine risks and actions that may arise as an all agile software development team moves toward agile methods (Thiemich, 2013; Orlowski et al., 2017; Meding, 2017; Saito et al., 2018). Gradually, the experience of soft- ▪ Gablas, B., Ruzicky, E., Ondrouchova, M. (2018). The Change in Management Style during then Course of a Project from the Classical to the Agile Approach. Journal of Competitiveness, 10(4), 38–53. https://doi. org/10.7441/joc.2018.04.03