Voices on Project Management

by Cyndee Miller

Now I love a good futurism piece as much as the next person. The illustrious and insightful folks at Forbes, take a decent stab at predicting 2017. But the reality is that no one can predict what’s really going to happen. (It’s a heck of a lot easier to look back. Hence, my last post on the good, the bad and the ugly in project management 2016.)

Still, there are some pretty safe bets. Project managers can certainly expect some of the bleeding-edge innovations—machine learning, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, predictive analytics—to leave the theory room and enter the profession in a much more meaningful way. Even now, we’re seeing project managers combining IT and infrastructure to build smarter cities that not only deliver benefits to citizens, but also help urban areas address climate change and massive population growth.

And project management left 2016 with a massive win: In the United States, for example, President Barack Obama signed a law aimed at improving program management practices and bolstering workforce development through a formal career path for federal program managers.

What’s next? Well, that’s where the art of making predictions gets a little sticky, thanks to a little thing called disruption. Yes it’s an over-hyped, borderline ridiculous word. But it’s also a pretty succinct way of summing up the stuff that happens that no one saw coming—and changes everything.

One survey found nearly three-quarters of CFOs cite uncertain economic conditions as the top risk to their companies in the coming year. Even a small twitch in the geopolitical landscape can fundamentally alter the project landscape—for better or worse. Will Colombia’s bold commitment to peace translate to a boom in project investment or not? How will U.S. president elect Donald Trump’s wildly ambitious infrastructure vision play out? And then there’s Brexit, which one think tank predicts will result in a decade of disruption for the United Kingdom. Uncertainty continues to swirl and the repercussions are real. Yet at least one PMO director spotted an opportunity to showcase the value of project management.

Indeed, in such a volatile environment, companies, NGOs and governments around the world increasingly recognize the power of project management—if it’s done right.

The new program management law sparked some serious celebration. But the big question for 2017: Will it inspire similar action in other governments and corporations? Over at A Girl’s Guide to Project Management, Elizabeth Harrin put a focus on professionalism as one of her list of top trends to watch in 2017. “Project-related work and jobs are growing too quickly for our approaches to professionalism to keep up. I think we’ll quickly see companies that don’t have professional methods for project management in place wanting to shift away from planning on the back of a postcard to taking more robust approaches to doing projects,” she writes.

The PM Network 2017 Jobs Report shows strong demand for top project talent, especially in growing economies like India, Germany and the United Arab Emirates, not to mention upstarts with rocketing GDPs like Vietnam and Botswana. Organizations want people with strong strategic thinking, leadership, change management and communications skills. But what they really need are forward-thinking project, program and portfolio managers who understand that things aren’t always black or white. (Gray should be their favorite color.) In an age of ambiguity, organizations will seek out the project professionals who don’t just deliver on time and on budget, but have the agility to adjust on the fly.

No matter their sector or level of experience, project professionals must actively anticipate future needs. That requires far more than integrating the latest and greatest trends into project plans. It means finding creative ways to juxtapose long-term strategic thinking and day-to-day execution.

Project, program, portfolio and PMO managers have the power to change the world. What have you got planned for this year? Dare to share what you see on the horizon and how you’re future-proofing for 2017—and beyond?

by Dave Wakeman

As we prepare to head into a new year, I’m getting on board with the host of resolution posts that are sure to inundate social media over the coming weeks.

I have two reasons for wanting to tackle this post. First, resolutions are fun! And second, I think we can use the turn of the year to challenge ourselves as leaders and professionals.

In that spirit, I offer up these three resolutions that I hope all project managers can make for 2017.

Resolution #1: Act more strategically

I’ve touched on this topic over and over in the last year, but I think it should be at the top of every project manager’s list of resolutions. It can be a huge accelerant to your career.

Why?

Because strategic thinking is the secret sauce of any organization—and too often it’s in short supply.

As a strategic project manager, you can help shape the direction of your organization and influence which projects are taken on. That should be good for you and your organization.

Resolution #2: Up your communications game

I had lunch with a project manager working in construction today and we talked about the biggest challenge he was dealing with.

You want to take a guess at what it was? You got it! Communication.

We can never be good enough at communicating up and down in our project teams. To drive your communication skills to the next level, focus more on consistency. Commit to setting schedules for when and how you will communicate. And don’t hesitate to reach out first when you think something needs to be said.

Let’s face it, the old saying that 90 percent of being a project manager is communication is still true—and that’s not likely to change any time soon.

Resolution #3: Build new skills

As our workplace becomes more diverse and remote, as project requirements change in the face of everything from disruptive technology to a shifting political climate, the challenges we face will require us to learn new skills in order to be effective.

Therefore, self-improvement and professional development should be an on-going and natural resolution.

What are your resolutions for becoming a better project manager in 2017? Let me know in the comments below!

Good luck out there and Happy New Year!  

by Cyndee Miller

Ahhh, late December—my time for curling up with some holiday bonbons, a nice bourbon and obsessively reading every year-end recap article, deep analysis, listicle and infographic out there. There’s loads of stuff on music, politics, books, technology, business and just, well, 2016 life in general. (The Economist even has a country of the year. Spoiler alert: It’s Colombia.)

But there’s not a whole lot of ink devoted to what went down in project management over the past year. So consider this a not-so-super-scientific look at the year that was in Project Management Land.

Not every project went precisely to plan. The Rio Olympics, for example, got mixed reviews: some good, some less so. And there were some straight-up flameouts: the GalaxyNote project, for example.

But on a grand scale, things were looking pretty good. The global economy continued to regain its footing (although not quite everywhere.) And project, program and portfolio managers remained in high demand across sectors and around the world. With good reason, they’re getting stuff done even amidst mind-boggling change.

No shocker here, much of that change revolved around tech, with industries like aviation and healthcare going in for major upgrades and overhauls. The Internet of Things entered the buzzword lexicon a few years back, but in 2016 we started to see what it might mean for project pros in everything from mobile to the once-staid auto industry. And as more and more devices get connected, project managers entered the front lines of the battle against cybersecurity threats. Then there are the drones, coming soon to a project site near you.

Even in such a tech-drenched year, there is no doubt that it still comes down to people. Robots will not take over the profession any time soon. For one thing, their leadership skills are just not where they need to be. Plus, they stink at managing teams.

2016 was a powerful reminder that project, program and portfolio managers are at heart change agents. Sitting at the intersection of strategy and the status quo, they’re the ones who figure out how to make change happen—and stick. And process-fueled technical knowledge alone isn’t enough. Strategic leadership skills are a must-have—and that message came through again and again and again.

Strategy is all about the pursuit of advantage—which means achieving the right goals at the right time. There’s a reason PMI’s Thought Leadership Series and Pulse of the Profession In-Depth reports focused on benefits realization. In 2016, it wasn’t just knowing how to deliver the goods, but why the goods matter.

Those are my highlights. What’s your big takeaway from the year? Is the great debate over agile approaches actually still a debate 15 years after the manifesto was published? How are PMOs faring? And what happens when there’s a PMO agile smashup?

Agile, connected cars, change management, whatever—what are you thinking about as 2016 closes?

by Peter Tarhanidis

I’ve served in various leadership roles throughout my career. In one role, I worked with engineers to build and deliver a technical roadmap of solutions. In another, I was charged with coordinating team efforts to ensure a post-merger integration would be successful.

All of my leadership roles ultimately taught me there’s no-one-size-fits-all style for how to head up a team. Instead, the situation and structure of the team determines the right approach.

Traditional teams are comprised of a sole leader in charge of several team members with set job descriptions and specialized skills, each with individual tasks and accountability. The leader in this environment serves as the chief motivator, the coach and mentor, and the culture enforcer. He or she is also the primary role model—and therefore expected to set a strong example.

But, this traditional team setup is not always the norm.

Take self-managed teams, for example. On these teams, the roles are interchangeable, the team is accountable as one unit, the work is interdependent, the job roles are flexible and the team is multi-skilled, according to Leadership: Theory, Application, & Skill Development, written by Robert M. Lussier, a professor of business management at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA.

On a self-managed team, each person’s capabilities support the team’s overall effectiveness. While these teams do need to have their efforts coordinated, they spread leadership accountability across the group.

Members each initiate and coordinate team efforts without relying on an individual leader’s direction, according to Expertise Coordination over Distance: Shared Leadership in Dispersed New Product Development Teams by Miriam Muethel and Martin Hoegl.

Effective leaders adjust their style to the needs of varied situations and the capability of their followers. Their styles are not automatic. Instead, they get to know their team members and ensure their teams are set up to succeed.

How do you pick the right leadership style to use with your teams?

By Wanda L. Curlee

Could neuroscience be the next big thing for the project management profession?

Today, there are many theories about leadership, management, and psychology, yet, no one is quite certain how the brain works in concert with these theories—or even if it does.

In the pursuit of more information, neuroscience—including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) —is being used to study what the brain activity of business-minded individual’s looks like during thought and during motion. (This technology can map new neural pathways as they are created—pathways that can be created until death.)

Already this scientific field is creating new fields of study across the business landscape. Neuroeconomics, for example, is “the application of neuroscientific methods to analyze and understand economically relevant behavior such as evaluating decisions, categorizing risks and rewards, and interactions among economic agents,” according to Dr. Zainal Ariffin Ahmad, a professor in the Business Research for Applied Innovations in Neurosciences (BRAIN) Lab at the Universiti Sains Malaysia’s Graduate School of Business.

There’s also neuroaccounting, neuroethics, neuroleadership and neurogoernance.

With portfolio management still in its infancy, neuroleadership and neurogovernance could potentially assist portfolio managers. By extracting knowledge from the sciences of neuroleadership and neurogovernance, PMI could differentiate itself and its body of knowledge from the various other project management associations and standards.

By using cutting-edge knowledge about how the human brain works to help create standards, PMI could move project management closer to a profession such as medicine. When the standards of the profession are based on empirical scientific knowledge, rather than good practices done on most projects most of the time, project management could become even more science than art.

What do you think? Can and should neuroscience be part of the future of project management?