In the Professional Development Day (PD Day) conducted by
Project Management Institute Mass Bay chapter on June 19, 2015, there was a great introductory session
with more than 100+ participants representing many industries that broke into
numerous tables. One of the questions that all the attendees worked on was the
top challenges that are facing the field of project managers in the next 10
years.
Synthesizing the various thoughts from these discussions,
the following set of challenges evolved where project managers should equip
themselves with more knowledge.
- Become more business- oriented learning strategic thinking
- Having to work with remote multinational teams learning the cultural nuances
- Become more involved with futuristic technologies on just enough automation, delegating even creative tasks to relieve human capacity, and learning new ways of doing things with mobile, service orientation, and security areas
- Learning to work with multiple tools for both process and analytics bringing focus into application lifecycle management and total cost of ownership
- Understanding agile framework as much as traditional project management framework learning to know when to apply each or a hybrid form
- Learning to manage external and internal stakeholders in the business learning to negotiate better
- Getting better at managing risks in multifaceted areas (PESTLE) besides just SWOT
- Being more accountable for quality to compete with the agile thinking
- Promoting project management in organizations much beyond PMP certification
- Understanding the impact of growing regulatory environments on projects
These thoughts present insightful forecasting of what is to
come both in the project managers that face the clients and the account
managers (Ryals, 2012) that should exhibit project management thinking. So, the
landscapes around the evaluation of project management competency are rising.
For instance, the Project Management Institute is looking at PMI Talent
Triangle (Know the details, n.d.) incorporating technical project management as
integral component to continuing credit requirements.
Similarly, Computerworld
in an independent study (Pratt, 2014) forecasts the growth of project managers as
part of IT skills emphasizing project managers to exhibit both business and
technical acumen to oversee large enterprise projects, growth of security and
compliance skills, demand for skills in the mobile application and device management and increase in the knowledge of big data analysis.
So, competition is rising! How equipped are we in rising to
this challenge stepping out of our comfort zone? One or two years from now if
we come to read the same blog, what new skills by training and experience would
we have gained?
References
Know the details (n.d.) Project Management Institute.
Retrieved from http://www.pmi.org/certification/ccr-updates/know-the-details.aspx
Pratt, M.K. (2014, Nov 18). 10 hottest IT skills. Retrieved from http://www.computerworld.com/article/2844020/it-careers/10-hottest-it-skills-for-2015.html
Ryals, L. (2012, July 13). How to succeed at key account
management. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2012/07/how-to-succeed-at-key-account/#sthash.0YH3ELKn.dpuf
