. Project transformation
Projects are changing. More stakeholders are increasingly influencing or being influenced and becoming more demanding. Scope is becoming more complex to define and project team need to carry it out with less resources, in less time and create more value to boost competitive advantage. Organizations have to develop, reinforce and rethink their value system creation. Organization-wide transformations is becoming the norm. Project are reflecting these great transformations and being transformed.
- Project Management transformation
Program management, business analysis, and project management overlap is becoming the norm. Project, starts at the chart signature but a lot of work is done before to clarify outcome, benefit and value. Business analyst role is to connect liverables with benefits and strategic objectives. During the project , Project management and the business analys need to ensure that all these connections are still relevant. Before the project closure, Project management needs also to supress any action that may geoperdize benefit sustainability. Project manager needs to have a wholistic view of benefit realization, before during and after the project. This is usually done by Program managers. “No longer creatures of scope, schedule, and budget alone, they are now— enabled by new technology—focusing on influencing outcomes, building relationships, and achieving the strategic goals of their organizations.” (Narrowing the Talent Gap. How to be a front-runner in the race for talent, source PMI.org)
“Operationalisation” of some projects and complexity of many others. In a world of digitization, internet of things and AI, any structured activity will have the potential of “operationalization”. be Operationalization will cover many areas in the future. Many other Projects are more and more complexes. The scope will cover many areas depending on its specific context. The most important question then is: what are the critical conditions to create value instead of what are the knowledge areas to master? Project manager needs to position himself at high conceptual level. Optmise the effort and address the critical areas. To be domains oriented instead of process or knowledge oriented. The Narrowing the Talent Gap. How to be a front-runner in the race for talent, source PMI.org ) report shows that strategic thinking as the third important skills/capabilities, more important than creative problem solving which is process oriented.
Profusion of project management methods, tools and techniques. PMI collects and synthetizes best practices, tools, techniques and artefacts. Yet, challenges are growing every moment, new tools and techniques spread every day. This creates an important challenge: how to adapt the tools with the issue. It needs more systemic approach and result oriented mindset. Choose the right tool for the right issue at the right time to meet the right stakeholder expectation. Project management is no longer a science but an art at the crossroads of several sciences.
- Project Manager for success
Project manager needs to focus on value and be flexible on the means. Project manager must have the necessary perspective to address different areas. Use the appropriate approach, tools, knowledge and skills. Engage stakeholders. Go beyond intellectual understanding of their expectations. Discover more visceral sense of their perspective. To have the ability to be in the shoes of the stakeholder and feel what she or he feels, empathize with him. Doing so, needs the ability to limit from time to time, owns believes. It needs also to return back to them when it is necessary. Compare the two perspectives and synthetize them in a synergetic and win-win manner. The report (Narrowing the Talent Gap. How to be a front-runner in the race for talent, source PMI.org) shows that the top two of five skills/capabilities of project manager are Relationship building and collaborative leadership.
Top 5 Skills/Capabilities of project managers
- Relationship building
- Collaborative leadership
- Strategic thinking
- Creative problem solving
- Commercial and ecosystem awareness
The project manager needs to be flexible. make his decision based on knowledge principles and no on knowledge alone. As we all know, Knowledge does not reside in the content; it resides in the method by which that content is created. In case of any change challenge, change, risk or issue, we could return back to principles. We could recreate the knowledge and tailor it to the new conditions.
- PMBOK 7, the Fundamentals changes
No one can deny that the PMBOK 7 marks a clear discontinuity with previous versions. PMI has done a great effort to allow the project manager whole mindset, including values, principles, performance domains and process.
The 12 principles of project management are presented randomly in PMBO7. I tried to categorize them in three areas: People, process/value and business environment, to help the reader memorizing them. (Fig.1)
Fig1: Project management principles
From knowledge to performance domains
Performance domain is critical area where you measure your performance toward value creation. It is not mastering knowledge or a specific discipline, it is action oriented. Managing performance domains allows you to measure you progress toward value creation and tailor your way of work in order to adapt to change in uncertainty environment. (Fig.2)
Fig. 2 Project management performance domains
It is written in the PMBOK 7, “A performance domain is a group of related activities that are critical for the effective delivery of project outcomes. Collectively, the performance domains represent a project management system of interactive, interrelated, and interdependent management capabilities that work in unison to achieve desired project outcomes. As the performance domains interact and react to each other, change occurs. Project teams continuously review, discuss, adapt, and respond to such changes with the whole system in mind”
Fig.3: Project management mindset
- From Project manager to Project influencer/leader
Skilled in the fundamentals, such as scheduling, managing scope, controlling budget, and reporting will be a basic competency. With the value creation in mind, Projects Managers need to adopt an agile mindset to leverage technology, measure the progress toward value creation and proactively forecast to manage risk and complexity in a systemic way. These abilities will be the most prerequisite for future project managers. Adopting a project management mindset (Fig.3) will help a lot. I think this mindset will guide several new PMBOK editions in the future.
They will need most to influence than to manage. They will need to possess acumen, use strategic thinking, creativity and act as Project Influencers within their organizations. Top of all, they will need human sensitivity, emotional intelligence to build relationships, capitalize on them to create value. Positively influence. In order to positively influence, you need to enlarge you influence area. (Fig.4)
Fig .4 : Project leader influence area
It will allow you to cover what said by stakeholders, what is done by them, and to feel what the stakeholder feel. It will be easy for you to empathize with them.
Abderrazak HAMZAOUI