Emerging Technologies

New technologies are rapidly evolving. They are beginning to filter into the global market place and their impact is being felt. There are trillions of market $$$ dollars out there. To support the acceptance and market growth of these technologies, the world needs to become educated on them and their capabilities. That requires new curriculum and courseware. Without proper training, the overall value of emerging technologies will be slowed and limited. If you are not aware of these emerging technologies or a very quick follower – you will likely be pushed aside. This blog is devoted to giving professionals an introduction to the emerging technologies with the greatest potential. Each month the posting on this blog will introduce one of those technologies. There is no time to waste. It’s time to get ready now! The next blog posting will be October 31^st and look at Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Are imaginations are being stretched. Stretching them are the introduction of new, advanced technologies that are emerging at a pace not seen before. We have entered a period where what was unthinkable a few short years ago is not only achievable, but becoming commercially available. Sometimes, even implemented and put into use!

The rapid rate of technological advancement is indisputable. The three biggest remaining questions are:

1. What industry or industries will these capabilities impact the most?
2. How will it affect the program and project management profession?
3. What should we as professionals do to respond to what is here today and coming tomorrow?

The answers to these questions are quite difficult to articulate. To do this, I am going to use an example. First let’s look at combining three rapidly advancing technologies - artificial intelligence, drones and advanced image processing. Believe it or not, there is a term that describes what appears to be in-front of us. It is called Singularity. One of the multiple meanings of the term ‘Singularity’ deals with a hypothetical point in time when artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies combine (in this case its drones and image collection and processing) and achieve a level of advancement that multiple factors undergo a significant and irreversible change.

Going back, as I mentioned in the opening, “Sometimes, even implemented and in use,” this is the case today. In the EU, where construction sites are collecting images (in some cases via drones and even palm sized drones for smaller size/indoor projects, those images are uploaded and use AI software that performs image recognition and assesses the progress and flags up delays or errors automatically. Remember my ‘Board Meeting” blog, how about showing the video and the system assesses the status, evaluates the progress, graphically highlights issues on the video and reports the results. Is this at the door-step of becoming an expectation, a requirement and part of project management?

As for question #2 - Are we entering the point where singularity is about to happen and the implications on program and project management will impact all of us? It certainly appears that way give the technology example. Finally, for question #3, we as professionals had better understand the new capabilities of multiple technologies that are emerging and combining to change operational models that have been in place for years and in some cases decades. In addition, we had better prepare for resistance to these changes.

Given this recent, high-impact technology offering, perhaps you might want to consider viewing a couple of past webinars 1) Cognition and Artificial Intelligence: A Growing Component in Multiple Projects and 2) Talent & Technology Symposium 2018: Drones – Coming to a Project Near You! – I have provided the links below. However, don’t stop there! Go on and evaluate emerging technologies on an on-going basis and adapt to this rapidly changing world of technology.

LINKS

1. Cognition and Artificial Intelligence: A Growing Component in Multiple Projects
https://www.projectmanagement.com/videos/513907/Cognition-and-Artificial-Intelligence--A-Growing-Component-in-Multiple-Projects

2. Talent & Technology Symposium 2018: Drones – Coming to a Project Near You!
https://www.projectmanagement.com/videos/497519/Talent---Technology-Symposium-2018--Drones---Coming-to-a-Project-Near-You-

Autonomous systems (AS) are another accelerating segment of the emerging technology marketplace in the next few years. The majority of the information under this heading relates to vehicles, but has expanded beyond that! Estimates of the autonomous vehicle (sometimes referred to as self-driving vehicle) market is projected to grow to between 30% and 35% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2019 to 2025.  This would put the 2025 global market value of between $10 and $13 billion USD.

The overall autonomous vehicle market takes advantage of multiple emerging technologies and heavily relies on GPS, artificial intelligence, 3D imaging, LIDAR and RADAR, and advanced sensor technology to properly operate and guide the vehicles. Consider the increased complexity of programs and projects that have to integrate all those technologies and has life and safety at risk!

It should also be considered that this subject matter also includes an interesting development around digital communications networks. Autonomous Networks is considered by many as the ‘Future of Networking.’ It is the combination and integration of software-defined networks and automated network management capabilities. These capabilities completely integrate and automate self-operating digital communications networks.  Autonomous Networks (AN) is a group of networks under mutual administration that share/coordinate the same routing methodologies, techniques and other functional aspects to produce a seamless operating environment.  AN uses an internal gateway protocol and common metrics to properly and efficiently route packets within the AN and typically uses an external gateway protocol to interoperate with and route packets to other networks and or systems.

 It is also worth mentioning that another AS segment exists.  It is autonomous buildings sometimes referred to as SMART buildings.  This specific segment is expected to grow with a CAGR of between 30% and 35% and top $20 billion by 2025. There are some estimates that put this market value over $100 billion by that year. One has to wonder where we will get all the construction workers and technical staff for this much activity. This will likely create more projects with a shortage of properly skilled resources!

Once again, another emerging technology, Autonomous Systems (et-all), has a huge potential that is now dawning and rapidly becoming a much larger part of today’s environment with significant impact on nearly all multiple parts of the daily lives of all of us.  Like the other emerging technologies covered under this blog, it deserves regular monitoring from now until it becomes common throughout the world.

The relationship between the topics of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) is highly discussed as of late and for good reason.  If you examine the research, whitepapers and articles, the applications space for these two emerging technology areas seem nearly limitless. Some applications seek to turn silicon into experts while other simply want to eliminate the common mistakes all of us make from time to time. Two years ago, technology analysts at Gartner published a piece titled, “How to build a business case for Artificial Intelligence.”  If you are working on an AI or ML project, the article is well worth reading.

LINK: https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/how-to-build-a-business-case-for-artificial-intelligence/

Recently a rather innocent and quite interesting question was posed to a group of AI/ML practitioners. Or so I thought!  Is ML just a subset of AI or is it a separate and distinct area of technology, all though related? A rather spirited debate ensued and no mutually agreed upon answer was reached. So, at this point since there are separate market research reports, we should probably follow their lead.  A study conducted by multiple industry analysts concluded that the global artificial intelligence market has a projected compound annual growth rate of slightly over 35% to 46% from 2019 to 2025.  That growth rate would create a global market worth over $390 billion USD by 2025 at the high-end.  In a separate estimate, the global machine learning market was projected to have a CAGR between 30% and 43% from 2019 to 2025.  That growth rate would create a ML global market worth around $126 billion USD by their 2025 time-estimate-box.  Once again keeping with the common theme of emerging technologies, those are clearly a robust market growths resulting in a large amount of money.

The value of an intelligent system (IS=ML+AI) that learns on its own and can eliminate even a fraction of common errors would be significant. However, along with all the potential value there is a dark-side.  There seems to be a growing amount of fear circling AI and ML.  So call it the fear of the unknown around machine learning and artificial intelligence.  In my recent PMI webinar on “Addressing the Tech Savvy Board” one slide covered: Protesters demonstrated against dangers in development of artificial intelligence and robots. They chanted ‘HUMANS are the FUTURE’ and had signs that said ‘the future is us – STOP ROBOTS!’  There have been reports of protests around the AI and ML subject matter. There are a number of concerns and risks about the growing capabilities of AI and ML as well as many other emerging technologies that we should all monitor and keep ourselves as professionals up-to-date!

The relationship between the topics of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) is highly discussed as of late and for good reason.  If you examine the research, whitepapers and articles, the applications space for these two emerging technology areas seem nearly limitless. Some applications seek to turn silicon into experts while other simply want to eliminate the common mistakes all of us make from time to time. Two years ago, technology analysts at Gartner published a piece titled, “How to build a business case for Artificial Intelligence.”  If you are working on an AI or ML project, the article is well worth reading.

LINK: https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/how-to-build-a-business-case-for-artificial-intelligence/

Recently a rather innocent and quite interesting question was posed to a group of AI/ML practitioners. Or so I thought!  Is ML just a subset of AI or is it a separate and distinct area of technology, all though related? A rather spirited debate ensued and no mutually agreed upon answer was reached. So, at this point since there are separate market research reports, we should probably follow their lead.  A study conducted by multiple industry analysts concluded that the global artificial intelligence market has a projected compound annual growth rate of slightly over 35% to 46% from 2019 to 2025.  That growth rate would create a global market worth over $390 billion USD by 2025 at the high-end.  In a separate estimate, the global machine learning market was projected to have a CAGR between 30% and 43% from 2019 to 2025.  That growth rate would create a ML global market worth around $126 billion USD by their 2025 time-estimate-box.  Once again keeping with the common theme of emerging technologies, those are clearly a robust market growths resulting in a large amount of money.

The value of an intelligent system (IS=ML+AI) that learns on its own and can eliminate even a fraction of common errors would be significant. However, along with all the potential value there is a dark-side.  There seems to be a growing amount of fear circling AI and ML.  So call it the fear of the unknown around machine learning and artificial intelligence.  In my recent PMI webinar on “Addressing the Tech Savvy Board” one slide covered: Protesters demonstrated against dangers in development of artificial intelligence and robots. They chanted ‘HUMANS are the FUTURE’ and had signs that said ‘the future is us – STOP ROBOTS!’  There have been reports of protests around the AI and ML subject matter. There are a number of concerns and risks about the growing capabilities of AI and ML as well as many other emerging technologies that we should all monitor and keep ourselves as professionals up-to-date!