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By V. Srinivasa Rao (VSR) on
Each year, there are new trends in project management. I wanted to weigh in with a few of my thoughts on what they might be this decade.
1. Beyond the triple constraint
Organizations have been looking to have a good mix of project, program and portfolio managers. Organizations should re-design and build project management systems thinking beyond the triple constraint.
The combined power of project portfolio, program and project management enables delivering business results not limited to the triple constraint.
For example, if a project was delivered on time, within budget and with required quality, but the project outcome doesn’t provide expected value, then in my opinion, the project should not be considered successful.
As such, it behooves project managers to expand his or her career growth to acquire new skills and experience in the areas of program management and portfolio management.
2. SMAC project management
Due to the emergence of new projects in the social, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC), organizations must make sure their project management approach includes new or refined project lifecycles, templates, checklists, best practices, lessons learned, estimation techniques, risk registers, etc.
Organizations must train project managers to prepare them for managing these SMAC projects by educating them on these trends and how (or if) they will affect them.
3. More projects, different business functions
Projects will start to be identified in different business functions where they might not exist very often, such as sales, marketing, alliances, human resources, etc. Marketing managers, sales managers, HR managers, finance managers and the like have to acquire project management skills to deliver better results in their respective functions.
Organizations should refine their project management strategy to include project lifecycles for all projects and training for all managers. Project Management Centers of Excellence (COE) have to focus on creating special learning assets to train managers on project management in other functions.
4. ‘Project-ized’ education
In academics, course curriculums will be increasingly ‘project-ized.’ An engineering course, for example, could have more than 40 projects in the span of four years. Implementing those projects will enable students to learn through multiple and cross-discipline subjects. Students could look back on all of the projects in those years as a “project portfolio.”
5. Every employee is a project manager
Project management means having a mindset of systematic planning, execution, monitoring, controlling and closure. Every task should be considered as a tiny project.
For example, writing a software code as part of a larger IT project should be considered a tiny project. Project management principles will be applied to successfully deliver the code on time and with high quality.
Creating this mindset across an organization requires cultural change. In many organizations currently, only a few people focus on project management. With the practice of considering every task as a tiny project, the need to have ‘self project management’ becomes prominent.
The best way to train employees to think like project managers is through on-the-job training. Teach employees to create mini-work breakdown structures, mini-schedule, self-reviews and corrective actions.
6. Project entrepreneurship
Project entrepreneurship means project managers must develop an “entrepreneurial” mindset. This enables project managers to take on risks, foster innovation and focus on business value rather just looking at the traditional triple constraints.
7. Program management offices (PMOs) as profit centers
PMOs will be transformed from cost centers to profit centers. PMOs will build very high-end consulting skills and offer services to business units on a profit basis. PMOs will focus on an ‘outside-in’ perspective and move away from an ‘inside-out’ perspective. PMO drivers will be around customers, markets and the economy, and not just limited to internal efficiencies
.
This means that project managers have to understand the outside-in perspective. They have to focus on outcome and the value to be delivered to customers.