5 Technology Trends Project Managers Should Know

Elizabeth is a freelance writer and project manager living and working in London. She runs The Otobos Group, a project communications consultancy specializing in project management.

  Communications Management   Healthcare   Strategy  

It wasn’t that long ago that all the cool kids were on MySpace. It wasn’t that long ago that I was managing a healthcare project, and by the time we got to the end of it the technology already needed to be updated. Technology changes at a rapid pace and it affects how we work as project managers, too.

I’ve noticed some evolving technology trends that are going to impact your projects, if they aren’t already. These five technological shifts will soon be coming to a project near you.

1. Inter-company collaboration
Project management software is becoming increasingly open for cross-company working. Previously constrained behind the firewall, project teams working with suppliers and contractors had to rely on email or using their own tool plus whatever the vendor used. That’s changing: Better granularity of security permissions makes it easier to pick out the features and data that you wish to share with people outside your company.

We’ll see more shared systems like wikis and interoperability between tools. What I’d like to see is my team using the tools they are comfortable with and the vendor using the tools they are comfortable with--and full open integration between the two. I think we’re some way off that, but at least you don’t have to learn a new project management system every time you start working …

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