Last week, the Project Management Institute (PMI) announced its 2019 Most Influential Projects list. This is a first-of-its-kind ranking for PMI that celebrates the most impactful projects from the past 50 years and highlights how project management has helped turn these ideas into reality as well as lessons learned.
The Most Influential Projects list recognizes projects that have transformed their sectors and the entire business landscape—from technology to healthcare, infrastructure to architecture, finance to entertainment. Honorees include iconic projects that have taken us to the moon, created air travel as we know it, enabled innovations in modern medicine and reimagined the world of entertainment.
11 Projects From The Most Influential Projects List
The PMI’s 2019 list of most influential projects includes:
- The World Wide Web
- Apollo 11
- Intel 404
- The Euro
- The Human Genome Project
- Single’s Day
- Prius
- Live Aid
- M-Pesa
- Svalbard Global Seed Vault
- Netflix streaming
…along with 39 more.
3 Insights From The PMI’s Most Influential Projects List
In sifting through the events and outcomes of dozens of projects, the Project Management Institute summed up three insights garnered from The Most Influential Projects List:
1. Collaboration is unexpected.
Collaboration is essential and sometimes it takes unexpected groups to come together to find better and more efficient ways to achieve your goal. Some of the most well-known organizations have been able to coordinate their efforts – tapping into a network of volunteers and experts worldwide, to address some of the world’s most complex issues.
2. Minimum viable projects are powerful.
The concept of a minimum viable product, or MVP, has been embraced throughout the business world, as companies seek to innovate at a faster pace and test ideas with real-world data. When successful, MVPs can be redefined and scaled, with impressive results. Similarly, successful “minimum viable projects” can be harbingers of powerful new trends.
3. Deadlines are powerful motivators and essential planning tools.
So much so that milestone-by-milestone thinking has often dominated organizational behavior. More interactive approaches are increasingly popular, yet they, too, have limitations. So, what happens when the two approaches are integrated? Some of the world’s most impactful innovations have been spawned from this marriage of urgency and iteration.
More News From The PMI
Earlier this year, the project management institute discussed the results of a study on artificial intelligence and project management.
Read more here: Project Management Artificial Intelligence (AI) Is Impacting 81% Of Our Projects