Digital Disruption and Project Management
From the Design Thinking & Project Management Blog
by Bruce Gay
Design Thinking has emerged as a practical methodology for driving innovative outcomes.
This blog aims to explore the intersection between Design Thinking and Project Management and to start a conversation on leveraging Design Thinking for contribution to the Project Management practice.
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I am honored to participate on a panel at the 2017 PMI Global Conference on the topic of "The Digital Future and You: The Project Manager in Times of Disruption"
The chair of the panel, Kirsten Lora, PMP, wants us to explore the role of Project Managers in the current era of "digital disruption". Here are a few of my thoughts going into the conference...
New technologies allow us to innovate at record speed. I would call out three themes that have manifested themselves from this economic disruption:
- Accelerating speed to market
- Personalization of products and services and
- Increased access to data & Too much data.
There was this excellent quote from Marc Andreessen in the WSJ (2011) “…all of the technology required to transform industries through software finally works and can be widely delivered at global scale.” Basically, the resources and infrastructure needed to start a new billion dollar company (i.e. via the Cloud) is widely available to anyone with a credit card and access to the web. Which is practically everyone.
So how do I see the role of Project Managers in this?
For companies to deliver value to their shareholders and customers, they in turn must embrace creative destruction of “digital disruption” rather than wait to become a victim of this unstoppable force. The creation of products and services, the production of something new is the end result of a group of people or disciplines working together to solve a problem. Project Management is the discipline largely responsible for guiding this effort from start to finish in an efficient manner to achieve the best possible outcomes, i.e. via projects. But Project Managers cannot continue to manage projects the way it was done 50 years ago, 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago.
Some have used the analogy of the Formula One race car, with a PM in the driver seat. I see the role of PMs is one who is to build the right working environment for their teams to work effectively and efficiently together. The PM may not be the F1 driver, but they help the entire team succeed on the race track. This requires establishment of a culture, governance and pace to allow more flexible processes, early engagement with the product or services end-users and laser focus on the customer’s/user’s needs. Yes, there will be more chaos and uncertainty, but I expect good PMs to thrive in environments where they come in and “tame” the chaos. (I know that is what gets me revved up about my work in healthcare IT!)
The impact on the PM profession is that we need to become more empathetic to our customers’ needs, our stakeholders’ needs and our teams’ needs. PMs who follow traditional methods that are closer to command & control will not be successful. PMs will need to allow some level of exploration and allow their teams to take risks and have failures.
I have a slide share that captures some of my thinking:
https://www.slideshare.net/brussik3/managing-innovative-teams
I look forward to others' thoughts on the role of Project Managers in the current era of Cloud and "digital disruption".
Connect with me on Linkedin or follow me on Twitter @brucegay
Posted on: September 27, 2017 08:04 PM |
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Comments (13)
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Rami Kaibni
Community Champion
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten Associates
New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Drew Craig
Sr. Agile & Product Coach| Vanguard
Philadelphia, Pa, United States
Thank you, Bruce. There is a paradigm shift in what is required to support the client as the expectations and needs change.
Very good, thanks for sharing
Stéphane Parent
Self Employed / Semi-retired| Leader Maker
Prince Edward Island, Canada
You have "tolerate risk-taking and failure". I would go further and say that we must encourage, not just tolerate.
Chadi Kahwaji
Vice-President Pre-Construction and Project Management| Groupe EMD-BATIMO
Laval, Quebec, Canada
Thank you Bruce. Excellent article!
From my point of view the role of the project manager is to shift to visual management tools (himself first) and get used to communicate in a visual way rather than delivering reports or text documents. A while ago, I discovered that, for construction projects, using Virtual Design and Construction techniques i.e. overlay a Building Information Model with a Gantt chart helps all stakeholders to assess and optimize cost, time and risks way before starting construction. The 3D aspect ensures a better understanding of the project, hence better collaboration and coordination, specially when dealing with virtual teams. That's my insight.
Interesting take on the subject
Intersting topic and thoughts. For me digital disruption is all about data driven decision making. Too much data is an intersting argument it tends to highlight a business fear, not expressed at face value of iterally too much data but rather not enough understanding of business models for making profit on something which is not at scarce resource state in fact its at perpetual abundance levels. The whole economic model based on scarcity of resource and a free market value is simply undermined by removal of scarcity and thats why a lot of organisations and companies are struggling with financial and business models on big data utilisation. As far as the actual crunching of data goes RPA will likely prove to be able to bring capability and capacity to the utlisation but that is nothing if there isnt exchange surplus value in the comodity itself.
Thanks for sharing Bruce.
I am on the path to becoming a Certified PMP. There's lot to know. Thanks, bruce
Priya Patra
Delivery Director| Capgemini India Technology Services Ltd
Mumbai, India
It was an energetic discussion. Glad to be your co-panelist Bruce !
Good luck Muthukrishnan with your PMP certification path.
Wasif Younas
Software Development Project Manager| MaxMind Solution
Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan
A good project manager must have the excellent communications skills to convince the key stakeholder of the every project. If P.M want to get success in his/her carrier then he/she must has the excellent leadership skills as well.
Robert German
Innovation Consultant| Better By Design
Chicago, Il, United States
My findings over the past 12 years align with your thoughts here, Bruce. I would add/clarify the following:
1. Digital is core to all businesses.
2. "Digital disruption" - I'll call it "rapid innovation"- is the not-so-new norm.
3. Technology will continue to exponentially advance.
4. Given 1, 2, and 3 above, *all* project stakeholders need to work (and engage) in non-traditional ways...from the C-suite, to sales, biz dev, to the design and development team. The PM has to make sure there is buy-in and accountability on this front.
5. Using your racing analogy - I would align the PM with a "crew chief"
6. Regarding failure: I would expand on this and say that companies need to institute a culture of learning....that is to say, fail to learn...or, put another way, "fail effectively."
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If you can't convince them, confuse them.
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