Project Management in the Age of Acceleration
Like most things in the technology industry, the speed of change in project management is rapidly accelerating. What started as a role driven by rigorous methodology grounded in manual tracking and reporting has become a discipline based in communication, collaboration and data-driven decision making. There are several key areas that have contributed to this evolution and continue to propel it forward.
Evolution of Methodologies
Project management methodology started from Waterfall – a linear approach that dictated that you must know everything about everything before you assembled a team of programmers and began to develop an application. As technology evolved, and companies’ use of it exploded, Waterfall became too slow and cumbersome for most software initiatives; through the advent of Iterative and Agile methodologies, teams come together earlier in the project lifecycle, allowing for stronger collaboration and more nimble responses to business demands. Many businesses now use a highly modified form of Agile that aligns to their business structure and processes.
Changes in Change Management
As long as there have been technology projects, there has been change management. Early practices started with documented change orders and determining if the change was critical enough to extend the project timeline and increase cost or table it as a future enhancement to be addressed post-implementation. Through Agile, changes to scope have become part of the normal cadence of sprint planning; project managers lead the negotiations between stakeholders and team members to define the scope of each sprint, with formal change management more focused on the impact of the overall project to the people and processes of the organization.
Expansion of Soft Skills
As methodologies (and the teams that follow them) have evolved, the skills required in project management have, too. The once administration-heavy role (think spreadsheets, Gantt charts and status reports) is now steeped in all forms of communication, collaboration and team building. Managing scope and stakeholder expectations in the dynamic world of Agile requires strong negotiation skills. For a project manager, soft skills are every bit as critical as technical acumen.
Diverse, Remote Teams
Gone are the days when all members of a team worked together in a physical office – if they needed input from the stakeholders, they were typically not too far away, either. Remote teams came into play as organizations started offshoring work and exploded as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, with hybrid structures being the next step in the evolution. Collaboration and alignment in remote settings – sometimes involving multiple cultures and time zones – has added a new level of complexity to project management.
Increased Use of Technology
As the level of complexity in project management increased, a host of tools have been introduced that have been game-changers for project managers and their teams. Whether the target is traditional project planning and tracking, collaboration and automation, or analytics, project management software tools create greater efficiency throughout the project lifecycle.
Demand for Data
Data has always been one of the inputs for project management decision-making. The amount and quality of data made available by today’s tools gives project managers the ability to track performance and predict results with greater accuracy than ever before. As data becomes increasingly important organization-wide through the implementation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), project managers will become even more embedded in data-driven delivery.
Rapidly Advancing Technology
It’s astonishing to think that OpenAI first launched a preview version of ChatGPT in December 2022. In that short period of time, AI use cases and implementations have become the most talked about technology trends in the business world. Add to that the emphasis on data (foundational work for AI as well as business intelligence and data analytics), the potential of quantum computing and the continued migration to cloud computing – the level of complexity in technology projects skyrockets.
To Recap
While project management has been around for decades, the rate of change in the discipline is accelerating rapidly. Project managers must combine traditional project management principles with newer techniques, tools and skills while keeping up with advancing technologies such as AI in order to be most effective in this dynamic field.