When in the middle of a project (any project), you might hear about greenfield and brownfield terms.
When I heard those terms, I thought about the farming industry. It is something like your harvest and planting a new area.
From the perspective of farming, we can apply both terms in any other project. Let’s see.
By definition, the Brownfield project is the project that has already been made, or some work already made. If we are talking about an infrastructure site, the site is already there and partly developed with some requirements.
In this case, the brownfield project comes to modify/alter/append/revamp the existing project, fr the sake of improvement or future expansion.
on the other hand, the greenfield project is a fresh, from scratch project that is not following a prior work. It means that – if we are talking again about infrastructure – it is not developed yet.
Of course, there are many approaches – and different as well – to manage such two projects. Also, as those terminologies used in different types of projects, so we need to align this process as per each case. For example, the brownfield often indicates that there are some sorts of damage to be fixed, which means that it is more challenging. While a clean greenfield project means some ease of implementation and less efforts as well.
You have to be careful making your decisions while working on brownfield projects, like what to replace, what to demolish, and what to keep. wrong decisions can make you ruin the entire project and may start from scratch. If it is not an option, you are gonna lose it.
Sometimes, there is no clear direction or understanding of a greenfield project, this will consume much time to align and keeping on track, In this case, brownfield project could be much easier as it is an ongoing project.
On the otherhand, using state-of-the-art technology solutions to rebuild a project from scratch could be a good solution to keep up to date with the latest technology and don’t lose any opportunity, otherwise, knowledge transfer and re-engineering are heavily required in an any brownfield project.
Let’s see another point of view: economics. The brownfield projects are normally small-sized and consume less money in an investment, while the greenfield projects are large ones and as starting from scratch, they require higher costs and more resources than the brownfield.
From all upove perspectives, you can decide which approach you can work with if you have the ability to choose. Keeping in mind the other factors affect your decision like cost, resources, and efforts in both projects. Also, both terminologies -as said earlier – can be applied in many industries like software development, realstate, infrastructure projects, oil and gas,…..etc.
Former Nuclear Engineer | University Lecturer | Technology Advisor | Digital Transformation evangelist | FinTech | Blockchain | Podcaster | vExpert ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | VeeamVanguard ⭐️⭐️ | Nutanix SME | MBA | AWS ABW Grant’23
