Level2wo

Baseline just put out a good list of project management trends for ‘08. It’s almost August, but it’s some good insight into the goings on in PM. Of course, for many of us in the biz, much of what’s listed is what we know and face every day, but it’s nice to see it listed in one place. I know I have less and less time each day to actually read anything (besides my day job I also write these blogs), and getting someone else’s take on what you’re doing each day, especially when it comes to project management, is a good thing.

10 Trends in Project Management
By Baselinemag
2008-06-26�
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Keep up to speed on the latest developments in the project management arena.
Here are the top 10 trends in project management for 2008, compiled by the senior management and practitioners of ESI:

1. Investment in project management training to counter effects of a troubled economy. Keeping projects on track and on budget can counter the ill effects of a down economy. Strategic organizations realize that an unsettled economy is the time to invest in project management training and development to optimize performance.

2. Better, faster project decision-making. The pressures for project managers to “get it done yesterday” keep increasing, particularly with today’s tightening budgets. Project managers need to deploy best practices when choosing projects, knowing when to say no to ventures that won’t deliver a solid return on investment (ROI) and when to green-light promising projects.

3. Critical thinking as a key project management competency. Technical competence alone doesn’t create success. Project management has evolved into a robust discipline, and critical thinking is the key soft skill that can make the difference between success and failure.

4. Emerging relevance of the project management office. Project management offices ensure a higher chance for organizations to reach their goals. (Imagine the space shuttle without its command center.) PMOs streamline processes, coordinate projects and enable more efficiency in day-to-day project management. As more companies see the relevance of PMOs, this trend will become increasingly important to overall project management design.

5. Codependency between project management and enterprise analysis. In active knowledge-management transfer, project managers with greater experience levels and an interest in functions such as risk management are taking on traditional business analyst (BA) responsibilities, including enterprise analysis.

6. Project managers taking leadership roles in organizational change. In the face of unrelenting organizational change, project/program managers need to take a leadership role. However, leadership qualities are not program deliverables, so project managers occasionally need direction in fulfilling their organizational change leadership obligations. They need to understand business implications and what they mean for projects, and how they can drive organizational change through effective project/project-portfolio management.

7. Communication challenges of remote team management. As projects are increasingly conducted remotely through outsourcing and global expansion, project communication is often based on e-mails and conference calls. Unfortunately, a very small portion of what should be communicated is transmitted to the recipients through these channels. To manage virtual teams, project managers need to find and use best practices in communications.

8. Earning certification. Certified Program Management Professionals (PgMPSM) will be joining the workforce in 2008. This new certification from the Project Management Institute has project/program management professionals asking what the inherent differences are between their disciplines.

9. Navigating the overlap between PM and BA tasks. Project managers and business analysts now recognize the symbiotic nature of their relationships. They know where to draw the line on their responsibilities and how to work together on areas that overlap.

10. Talent management’s impact on business ROI. During the next several years, thousands of baby boomers will leave the workforce—and thousands of Millennials (born between 1982 and 1997) will enter it. This will create challenges for managers, who will find that their new workers are motivated by a different set of incentives than the previous employees had been. Organizations need to develop a talent management strategy that focuses on recruiting and retaining talent to improve business performance.
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For some other project management steps, check out my previous Level2wo Project Management blog entries.

Less money to throw around and weak consumer demand is forcing companies to cut back on their advertising–in newspapers, radio, television, and just about any other media you can think of. While not completely dead (and for some, this is probably a good time to buy advertising, given that you can probably do a little more bargaining than usual to get the placements you want), retailers, financial companies, airlines, car dealers, and just about any other advertiser marketing products and services affected by the economy, gas prices, and the housing market disaster are cutting back, putting the hurt on media groups.

Conventional media, already on the ropes because of technological advances and advertising budgets shifting towards that technology, is getting the one-two punch from advertisers reigning in budgets or cutting their budgets completely, at least for the time being. And things will only get worse for media companies if the country goes into a recession (although, and I agree, we’re already in a recession).

While digital media has clearly boomed in recent years, the revenues that follow from advertising in that area may not necessarily be as high as if the marketers were sticking to conventional media advertising. Add to that the consumer cinching their wallets and cutting back on the products and services they’d normally be buying (but that are not necessities), and you can see how trouble is brewing for a good many companies. And it isn’t getting better any time soon.

Seems like Facebook is about to crack the whip. When it comes to the applications that make it through to see the light of day, anyway. At a recent programmer’s conference, Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg spoke to a group of programmers about the influence his 4 1/2 year old company has built up, as well as what their role might (or might not) be at Facebook in the future.

And no suprise here, the programmers listened. Turns out (and it’s not a suprise to anyone reading this, I’m sure), Facebook can make an application company. Literally. Some $200 Million in Venture Capital has poured into companies that have been building applications for the social networking site, not to mention the $240 Million Microsoft through at Facebook for a piece of the action. With the deluge of applications on the site, some issues have arisen.

Personally, I’ve sent email to contacts I did not want to send email to. A few careless clicks and away went communication to people I did not intend to send email to. Apparently, I’m not the only one. One of the issues Zuckerberg and Facebook will be trying to tackle is that of applications either maliciously or unfortunately performing actions detrimental to users–either exposing security holes, or anything that would damage user experience. And seems Facebook will now be rating, endorsing, and banning applications moving forward. In my opinion, that’s a great move.

Personally, I don’t particularly want to be invited to slay anyone or throw pie at any of my contacts. But then again, that application is probably not for my age group anyway.

Don’t know if this is a good way to start a blog entry, but just noticed that I had 666 tags on this blog to date. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, don’t worry–it means something in terms of how many tags i’ve posted, but yes, I was thinking of that sinister number that you were. Hopefully the blog doesn’t explode.

I was thinking today about the industry I’m in, and while it’s not a shocking revelation, it did occur to me again how young the industry actually is. Many of the professionals in the industry (myself included), were not in this industry a decade ago. And why would they be, when the industry had really just begun–at least as we know it. But it gives light to the fact that it’s the skill sets that matter–not so much the industry, per se. Although yes, it does help if you come from a related industry. Marketing, advertising, programming, project management, copywriting–these are all areas within interactive media that are crucial to what we do–and if you’re in one of those areas in another industry, you’d probably be able to make the leap.

If you are, my suggestion is that you do a little messing around on your spare time. Figure out what you like to do, and practice it. Build a website. Run a PPC campaign. Write some copy on a blog somewhere, and see if you can use a little SEO magic to make it show up on the first page or second page of google. It’s not easy, but it’s not that difficult. In fact, I landed at the third spot on the first page of google a few weeks back for ‘Project Management Steps’ without even trying to. (No, it’s not there any more, but hey, I did it without trying). Good luck.