The art of project management has never been an easy one for most companies to master. Most research into the area reveals that only a small fraction of projects actually come in on time and on budget.
And if the major trends in this area pointed out by University of Waterloo professor Peter Carr hold true, the need for more effective project management will only become more imperative in the years ahead. Carr, director for management of technology for Waterloo’s online Masters of Management Science program, sees three key trends developing in the project management field.
First, the projects themselves are getting bigger and bigger, in terms of their scale, the amount they cost and the time they take to complete. “The success (of them) is becoming more strategically important to organizations, who put a lot of money into an [enterprise resource planning] implementation, for example. If that fails, it can have serious implications and can take the whole organization down.”
The second trend, Carr asserts, is the emergence of new project management models. He is particularly intrigued by the models in which collaboration is occurring as the project proceeds between different parties, and which is occurring simultaneously. He points to the example set by many Japanese outfits in achieving a lean, efficient process.
“[They] can much more quickly get a new model of car into production than an American or Canadian manufacturer,” he says. “That’s partly because the way they manage the project of designing and then getting ready for the production of a new car is much faster.
They do that by overlapping on project stages by things happening simultaneously, and by good communication among the groups involved.” Finally, the trend of internationalization is taking place in the project management sphere, Carr says, as operations increasingly take on a global nature. The implications for those looking to carry out projects are many, Carr points out.
“Things like where the elements are going to be done offshore…to India and elsewhere is becoming more common. I think that’s leading to the need for projects to be more formally and strictly controlled,” he says. “When you are working with someone who is that far away and from another culture, [project managers] need to make sure the specifications are well laid down, and that they are identifying problems as they occur, rather (than) when the whole project is finished.”
This new, global reality means that project managers must work more closely with their widely distributed staff, and using technology, the professor says, will allow them to do that.
The soft side With such new realities affecting the art of project management, IT managers are having to adjust their own place within that picture. One of the most notable ways in which this is happening is the management of not just the project, but of the many stakeholders that are a part of it. This is one element that makes the management of projects more of a challenge today, Carr says.
“Both the internal development and the relationships with all the stakeholders (are contributing factors),” Carr says. “IT managers aren’t always quite so good at doing that. We hear the traditional criticism that things are built because they are what the IT people want to build, as opposed to things being developed in line with strategic business needs. The scale of these projects is causing (people management skills) to have more focus today.” Carr adds that the education curricula around project management does not always reflect the need for soft skills. “It’s quite normal for project management to be taught purely about the project management processes or techniques as opposed to the people side of it, how you manage change effectively and handle the relationships with the rest of the organization,” he says.
A project manager can take a hard approach but it’s all about soft skills, he says, and quite frequently project managers aren’t taught that when they’re initially trained. “I think that’s a common criticism, but in the work I’m doing here at Waterloo, I’m trying to bring these together and teach it effectively.”
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