
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:
- 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?