Trends in project management are constantly evolving along with the field, shaped by developing business domain, stretching along almost all industries. Surely, the use of formal project management tools and methodologies will never go out of style, but keeping yourself on alert and embracing changing trends is one of the basic characteristics that define a good project manager. Since it is a field that intertwines itself through all the domains across a wide range of diverse industries, polishing and shifting strategies in accordance with the prevailing business environment is crucial for running a successful and sustainable projects.
Those trends are changing rapidly, and the project managers have to be able to identify them and steer their strategies by complying with them.
Let’s take a look at some of the newest project management trends that might give you a different perspective and valuable insights.
Top 4 project management trends that have marked 2019
The current year was full of exciting changes that are improving the management of the project. Due to technological, social, and market evolutions, these trends ate transforming the field of project management.
The newest project management trends that have marked the year of 2019 were:
- Artificial Intelligence
- Hybrid Approach
- Remote Teams
- Emotional Intelligence (EQ)
Surely, it’s not enough just to know the meaning of these terms, but you need to understand how they are impacting your line of work.
We will tackle every last one of them and take them apart to the smallest detail. All to help you be the voice of innovations that can help your teams to meet the needs of customers, stay within budget, and achieve project management milestones.
1. AI (Artificial Intelligence) is making project management much more efficient
Artificial intelligence (AI) sounds so far away and has quite a bad reputation thanks to blockbusters like Terminator and Matrix franchises. Well, the future is here and Al is currently the talk of the town.
However, the use of Al that we mostly hear about is reflecting in consumer-based products. Siri, Google Home, and Amazon Echo line of products are already in our homes, and they have managed to wiggle their way into our daily routine.
With these and similar products gaining huge popularity, it was only the time when Al will find its implementation in other fields. So, it’s not surprising that these days there are multiple Al applications associated with the project management functionality.
They are helping the overall project management workflow with an interactive interface for the available resources. At the same time, that gives you the innate capability to respond to your agenda with suggestions and insights. The Al algorithms are adding an extra boost of efficiency to the overall process of managing the project.
Don’t panic – the robot won’t take your workplace.
While Al algorithms can improve project management strategies immensely, they can’t replace project management tasks crucial for the team to deliver a successful result – empathizing, actively listening, and tactfully negotiating.
How to use Al and refresh your project management strategy?
The first step is to embrace it and learn how it can make your project management process more effective. It’s quite simple – find ways to add automate tasks so that your teams, clients, and projects themselves become more self-sustaining.
Here are some basic steps that will steer you in the right direction:
- Set up automatic filters to sort incoming messages by client, project, priority, etc.
- Make automatic reminders for team meetings, client follow-ups, daily or weekly reports, an alert when a project approaches a budget limit, etc.
Use AI tools for monitoring progress, tracking team morale and time invested on tasks, managing documentation, content migration, and other important insights.
2. Hybrid Approach
Project managers who insist on a one-size-fits-all strategy might won’t be working in this field for long. This approach is a thing of the past, and the industry is aware more than ever that different project needs different solutions.
Of course, the basic methodologies of project management are there to provide the solid ground, but an innovative, personalized approach to projects is now in demand.
The conventional strategies are intertwining with the modern ones, making a hybrid of perfect project management solutions, fit to correspond to the changing market requirements.
Implementation of these hybrid methods is most effective for projects with a larger work base that requires the involvement of multiple project managers.
That is why the present corporate world is demanding a considerably higher number of hybrid project managers. Those who aren’t exclusively experts in one prescriptive methodology but also have knowledge and experience in several multiple methodologies.
3. Remote Teams
It is quite logical while many companies are opting for remote teams. The reason is very simple – much lower monthly costs. When you don’t have to rent an office space, you are cutting your costs significantly. Not to mention that people are gladly opting out to work from home, so the pool of qualified workforce is much bigger.
When managed efficiently and effectively with the apt set of management tools, such teams are even more productive. Remote working teams are gradually becoming standard practice in the world of project management. With so many communication tools and software, the days of going to the office every day may soon become a thing of the past in many companies.
4. Emotional Intelligence has great importance to project management process
This is not a new concept, but it is one of the skills that every project manager has to possess. It is progressing and inspiring trend that is here to stay.
In the field of project management where productivity and efficiency are all that matters, emotional intelligence plays a big role in the decision-making process. Since it is quite easy to lose path amid diverse methodologies, your inner voice and intuition might be your guiding star. It’s that gut feeling that you should listen from time to time. As you should always listen to your team’s concerns and desires of clients. The better you are in managing the people and establishing great communication with them, the higher are the chances that all project tasks will run smoothly.When you have a group of people with various cultural diversities and backgrounds working together, it is a bond that some issues might appear. The more people you have to manage, the more different personalities you have to juggle with. It is up to you to resolve any disputes and create a lucrative communication between team members where every member can express its ideas, concerns, suggestions, and complaints. Managing real people and motivating them to work together towards the same goal is when your emotional intelligence comes into play. With this capability, you will be able to resolve issues quickly, without them impacting the project progress. This is a crucial skill for a project manager to have.
Summing Up
These trends above aren’t just the favor of the season – they are already integrated into the project management. Understanding and acknowledging them will help you to organize and manage projects much better and easier.
Predictions for 2020 are announcing more changes, based on these most important newest project management trends. They might be polished, refined, transformed and modified, but they will certainly won’t be forgotten.