Project Management Trends in 2019 and Beyond
Project management affects the success of a modern business. Business strategies can be improved but without quality project management they will be unfocused, fragmented, and incomplete. Thus, any team should keep abreast of all recent project management trends to react timely to market changes and adapt strategies to real circumstances.
In this post, you will learn about the key trends of project management for this year and beyond.
Trend 1 – The growth of managers influence
The organizational structure of companies is now becoming less hierarchical that’s why project managers are required to demonstrate more strategic thinking. There is simply no need for a large number of middle managers. Thus, project managers take on part of their responsibilities. Now, among their tasks, there is a need to think in general about the company. In fact, these people now responsible not only for financial results but also for some kind of project philosophy.
Trend 2 – The growth of project complexity
Projects become more complex for those who carry them out, however, they should be simply explained to the target audience. Thus, effective strategies can be built only by those specialists who are able to present complex things simply. The target audience should just meet their needs without going deeper.
Trend 3 – The ability to manage changes
Modern business requires flexible thinking. Any project can change the company’s activity.
Effective project management lays in the ability to work in changing conditions and accumulate the results of these changes. However, it is very difficult to find the right people who have experience working in changing conditions.
Knowledge and trends become more flexible. Trends are changing rapidly. Therefore, project managers have to accumulate new experience already in the process of project development.
Trend 4 – Investing in employee skills
Today, it’s not enough just to focus on customer needs. The need for professional self-development of employees should also be met. Inviting industry experts, paying for additional training and organizing professional conferences is now a top priority of companies of all sizes. Long-term relationships with one team are much more effective than seeking the services of third-party specialists.
Trend 5 – Remote control
According to statistics, by 2020 almost half of the workforce in the world will consist of millennials. It is known that most members of Generation Y prefer remote work, and most employers simply have to accept it. Young developers who seek comfort in the balance between work and personal life, love to travel and value freedom.
The term “remote project management” is becoming more and more popular nowadays and means new tasks for a manager, such as organizing communications and control. Fortunately, collective management tools can be applied even to remote workers. Working as an intermediary between an employer and a remote team, a project manager can always benefit from one thing: remote developers are usually more experienced and, as a result, work faster and more efficiently.
Trend 6 – Design thinking
Design thinking will help you in developing solutions that use integrated approaches. They can be borrowed from engineering practices in conjunction with ideas from the arts, business, social science. For those professionals who lead projects, design thinking is very important because it is a tool for solving the following issues:
- Understanding the main goals of the project
- Defining requirements
- Finding unique solutions
Trend 7 – New approach to customer relations
The company-client relationship is no longer what it used to be. Today, customers are turning into full partners. Ordinary people who are not PR managers or journalists are actively involved in creating content that is called user-generated content.
People are more likely to trust information from other people than from a company. This year, one of the objectives of project management is a development of the methods that encourage the active and loyal audience that produces content about the brand. This will encourage customers to share feedback and opinions.
Trend 8 – The increased value of project results
The increased value of project results ensures risk minimization, cost control, and increased project benefits. The growth of the final result of the project is provided by:
- Detailed customer requirements and expectations
- Reducing the analysis of feedback data
- Monitoring progress in achieving project results
Projects create business value. Business value is defined as the benefit derived from the implementation of projects. However, the benefit can be not only material, but also intangible, or both. In business analysis, the business value is considered to be a return in the form of time, money, goods, or intangible assets.
Trend 9 – Agile methodology
It is currently difficult to find an IT company that is not familiar with Agile methodology.
Today Scrum and Kanban boards are the most popular project management platforms. Scrum provides a fairly easy and clear process structure, including iterative and incremental methods. It is based on sprints, allowing you to launch releases faster.
If you want to avoid multitasking, a Kanban board can be another good solution. It allows managing and assigning tasks and helps to apply a specific workflow in a specific situation. What is more interesting is the integration of project management software with data analysis tools and dashboards. As a result, communication between customers, managers, and developers becomes easier and more convenient.
Trend 10 – Cloud technologies
Project and process management migrate steadily into the clouds. New players will appear on the market of cloud solutions, old players will rethink their solutions and offer something new. The competition promises to be very high. Your future success will depend on the right choice of cloud services.
The future of project management is predicted to be one that focuses on the skills needed to motivate, direct and lead the people that make up the project team to achieve mutual goals.
The competent project manager should configure the project management systems to provide as much early warning as possible of impending changes so as to give the maximum possible time to optimize outcomes.
Tools such as the project schedule will need to be predictive and help make data-driven decisions rather than reactive, reporting on what has already gone wrong after the event. The key skill set of a project manager is identifying and managing stakeholder expectations using the right project management tools.
