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.

Without sounding too…something, I can’t stress the importance of teamwork. Not only in the sense of your coworkers helping you achieve the goals you need to achieve and vice versa, but in bringing together ideas and perspectives that, when combined (again, sorry to use this word, which I’m sure you’ve all heard plenty of times just in the past few weeks alone) create synergy. It’s what makes projects succesful, initiatives succesful, and, to go a little further, it’s what makes communities, country, and the world succesful.

But with teamwork comes personalities, egos, opinions, and every other factor you can imagine that has the potential to throw teamwork off track and away from the goals you’ve set for that team to begin with. Though not always the case, gathering groups of people, especially in business, means that you’ll often have to deal with adversity, often have to defer when you think your points may be valid, and, the true test of your understanding of situations and benefitting from teamwork–you’ll have to be able to open your eyes and be receptive to points other than yours, right or wrong.

It’s through that process that the best ideas will emerge–be it for a direct mail piece, a larger marketing strategy, creative, or even what type of venue to have for company outings. Let me stress that again: open your eyes and be receptive to points other than yours. You’re not going to be right all of the time, and I’m not going to be right all of the time. I learn from you, and you learn from me. It’s what makes the wheels turn, and what brings the good ideas to better ideas.

Rarely will you encounter that genius who’s ideas and insight and execution are perfection incarnate; rarely will you have anyone single-handedly, at least in a company of any size, be the end all be all for whatever product or service you’re hawking.

Knowing how to be a teamplayer doesn’t mean giving up your place in the food chain–it means securing it through smart decisions, an open mind, and the realization that we’re all consumers of good ideas and bad, and we’re all producers of them as well. It’s the end result we’re after by participating in a team of any size or structure–so don’t sabotage it, because you’re the beneficiary.

When you’re out there in the middle of techville, managing website builds and SEM campaigns and thinking about Search Engine Optimization, and writing copy (that, obviously, needs to be keyword rich), and you’re thinking about CTRs and PPC and maybe viewing your client’s business from the actual business perspective rather than from your point of view, and you’re google-ing things to help you cram in the minor bits and pieces of technology and the latest trends, you often for get the best resource of all (in my opinion): Books!

Below are a few books I find helpful when managing interactive media projects, some better than others–but I’ll stay hushed on which ones, as you may find some more interesting than others and I don’t want to skew your opinion in any way.

1. Managing Interactive Media: Project Management for Web and Digital Media by Elaine England and Andy Finney
2. Managing Interactive Media Projects by Tim Frick
3. Fundamentals of Technology Project Management by Colleen Garton and Erika McCulloch
4. Lean Project Management: Eight Principles For Success by Lawrence P. Leach
5. The Project Management Memory Jogger: A Pocket Guide for Project Teams (Growth Opportunity Alliance of Lawrence) by Paula Martin and Karen Tate
6. Web Project Management: Delivering Successful Commercial Web Sites by Ashley Friedlein
7. IT Project Management: On Track from Start to Finish, Second Edition (Certification Press) by Joseph Phillips

If you’re an experienced project management professional, or a newbie, the above books are good. I didn’t include the Project Management for Dummies book, but I’ve actually read it and it’s a good resource to keep at home–but don’t bring it to the office if you have a copy or buy one–not that you should be ashamed of it, because it’s a good resource, but you want to look your best, especially in front of clients–and Dummies books aren’t always the best way to project professionalism to the PM craft (or, likely any other professional position).

One of the great things about software is that it opens up a world of ease to those who learn and use it to achieve, more often than not, completion of tasks that would otherwise take a much longer time to complete. That said, sorry if I am not making complete sense–I’ve been reading software manuals all day. Yes, this is where you laugh. Or chuckle. Or, at worse, give a silent nod of acknowledgement.

Actually, it’s not so bad. But it got me thinking. While we do use a variety of software programs to get done the things we need to get done, such as everything Microsoft ever puts out (excel, word, powerpoint, project, access, etc.) (no, I’m not going to mention Vista), we also ocassionally end up using new software that we’ve either never heard of, heard of and had no contact with, or heard of and tried to avoid. It’s times like these that I don’t look to the future to solve but the past. It’s sort of like financial planning–we know we need it but no one ever really teaches us it as we grow up (I know, I can hear you yelling either a) When we were growing up certain software didn’t exist, or b) Many of the software programs extant today ARE being taught to kids in school. Well, good. Good for those kids, I suppose. But in the land of Me, I want more of a quick fix than anything else. Maybe a quick IT doctor visit where I’m injected with the knowledge to not have to read printouts and dictionary-length software manuals that are standard issue in the brains of kids today. But I’m probably asking for too much. Well, at least I can blog about it. That’s something my folks probably think is a space creature from some far away Sci-Fi flic.