What's in store for the project manager in 2014?

What’s in store for the project manager in 2014?

As I recover from a Christmas hangover and contemplate my New Year plans, I can’t help but to wonder what’s in store for the project manager in 2014.  With this being a site dedicated to all things project management, I can’t help but to indulge in a bit of trend forecasting for the upcoming year.  Fortunately as is common in this industry, you don’t need to look far to find a report done by some industry expert who has already done such evaluations.  With that being said, I serendipitously ran into this Gartner presentation on slideshare:

Unfortunately, this presentation suffers from the common problem by the author of cramming a lot of information into the slides which would have been better articulated in a document.  Nevertheless, below is a summary of main points from the slides in which I took the liberty of highlighting the points I believe are most relevant:

  • Need for management of project-based work will change.  Start changing now.  Develop a thoughtful and logical plan to get to 2014 which creates dynamic tension and stretches your capabilities, but does not break your company.
  • Economic conditions will create need for a series of small success projects which promote agile and flexible IT working with business. This dynamic will be reflected in the evolving or new governance and portfolio management structures.
  • Process and tools are not as important as results and accountability.
  • Don‘t start a PMO unless it focuses on demonstrable results and business value, vs. process and administrative burden.
  • The PMO software marketplace is still emerging.  Don‘t confuse software with a solution.  Use tools on a project-by-project basis, avoid standardization for now.
  • Project manager 2014 ultimately will be judged and maybe bonused on business value result against the delivery business objective….vs. not knowing tools, processes and a project plan.

What all the highlighted points boil down to is the fact that a project will need to be managed like a business and that the project manager will need to really incorporate  a customer-centric focus wherein bottom line results and value can be directly attributable to project success.

In my current consulting engagements, I can vouch for the fact that senior executives are emphasizing these points big time.  I have no doubt that the rise of the projectpreneur is a reality!  Do you agree?  What trends do you think will be hot in 2014?

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