In the last ten years the way we do business has been significantly changed by various tech innovations and social shifts caused by them. Such tech advancements are altering business processes in customer support, sales, marketing and product development. The same change is occuring in project management services. Advances in cloud, mobile, and social technologies have led to the creation of the next-generation of project management solutions with key features that focus on responsiveness, collaboration, intuitiveness, and providing insights.
Let’s review the future of project management as a technology tool and as a human resource with changing roles:
Project Management as Technology
As with most other business processes, the future of project management is driven by the following disruptive technologies:
Cloud
Cloud based solutions will feature more robust tools and higher computing power that will empower line managers to make fast decisions on the ground and take more responsibility to deliver results faster and with less chances of mistakes. Meantime, project leaders can focus on optimizing the project and spend less time on controlling teams.
SaaS project management software allows project and team leaders to share information and collaborate anywhere and anytime there’s an Internet connection. Real time data is shared, annotated, approved, edited, read, translated, documented on the spot, etc. These features are provided by many vendors now; expect the best to come soon.
Mobile
More people will own smartphones and tablets, which means more companies adopting Bring your own device (BYOD) to access company systems including project management software. Using employee’s personal devices looks like cutting on hardware costs, but businesses may have to pay more on software add-ons for complex security and deployment to ensure the integrity of the project plan across different platforms and devices owned by different people and interconnected to different social networks.
It’s a double-sided sword; allowing employees to access sensitive project data to make them mobile and more productive, while exposing confidential information on two fronts:the vendor’s server and employee’s personal device (phone theft is a real issue here). The future of project management software will focus on sophisticated encryption and tighter user access tiers.
Social
We already have vendors integrating social network plugins in their project management software, more so will follow. Social channels like LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, and Facebook have groupware tools that can easily match the most powerful enterprise collaboration solution. Not only will project management software integrate with these platforms, but some will be built on them targeting small businesses with teams in multiple locations. In some cases, we’ll see a reversal in roles: some software will be merely sold or given free as plug-ins to these powerful social channels.
Big data
What to do with the huge, seemingly disparate chunk of information customers are sharing online? From GPS locations to personal data, political leanings to dietary preferences, customers inundate their social networks with data that when taken as a whole can produce business insights and market trends. In the meantime that marketing is scouring big data for leads and campaigns, project leaders and stakeholders will use big data to ensure their goals are aligned to the right trends. As a result, either more project management software will develop a business insight module or a middleware add-on to integrate to a CRM system with a business insights tool.
Project Management as Human Resource
Beyond the technology lies the project leader, the person responsible for its success or failure. Not only does technology help to develop better project leaders, but it’s changing their roles and a few traits. Let’s compare the future of project management roles:
Democratic
Project plan is more than ever shared across team members and collaboration is on high gear, allowing the democratization of data and access to business information. Where before the project leader has the sole influence in decisions, today’s leaders have to lend an ear to credible ideas and suggestions coming from the ground: the team leaders’ inputs. As a result, we’ll see more ideas and shared goals between stakeholders, senior management, project leaders, team leaders, and members.
Socialized
Project leaders (and even team leaders and members) will have more direct communication with stakeholders and senior management through their personal social network. Project leaders have to apply social communication (like small talk), while keeping a strategic mindset when conversing through informal channels like Facebook or Twitter. To put that in perspective, project leaders will be talking golf talk at times, when they’re not talking in the war room.
Expats
Globalization takes project leaders from industrialized countries to emerging markets to manage offshore projects. Project management skills will be more needed to control scope, time, cost, etc. across frontiers, time zones, and cultures, as U.S. companies scope for more business outside the country. There will be more job opportunities for project managers in emerging markets in highly specialized fields as aeronautics, biotechnology, software, and engineering as part of technology transfer programs.
Freelancers
Cloud technology, abundance of offshore talents, and preference for work-life balance will see more project managers providing freelance consultancy. These freelance project leaders will be assigned secondary tasks or specialized but non-core tasks that can be outsourced. We can see small or focused projects in software development leading the charge in hiring freelance project leaders, if they haven’t yet.
Business leaders
Learning from global economic crisis of the past, businesses will demand tighter control, risk-averse, and cost-effective projects; hence, project managers will be at the forefront of business development and expansion using their risk management skills to protect the business from threats and weaknesses. In highly innovative fields like software development, project leaders are expected to assume a C-level position, if not outright, but soon.
Conclusion
When we talk about the future of project management, it’s easy to focus on technological advances churning out more robust and powerful features and tools. But no matter how “cool” these tools are, it’s still the skills and competencies of project leaders that make or unmake projects. At the end of it, it’s often the driver’s racing skills that win races, not the car.
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