Welcome everyone, thanks for watching! We are starting now the presentation entitled “A Technological Future for Project Mgt.” My name is Jose Barato I’m a passionate of project management I have a long-time volunteering at PMI Madrid, in Spain I’ve written some books on project management and I’m the founder of PMPeople PMPeople stands for people collaborating on project management We enhance professional collaboration on project management providing PMO services consulting, and training PMPeople is also the name of a freemium PPM tool I have a background in software engineering I’ve written some articles about blockchain artificial intelligence and how technology can be applied to projects In this presentation I’m going to develop some ideas about the future of technology in project management Not so far in the future we will see three main improvements in PM supported by technology First one is PROFESSIONALIZATION Organizations will involve more and more people on every project Top managers, project professionals change makers and many project stakeholders will collaborate as an extended team Second one is SOCIALIZATION we will see individuals using digital collaboration tools extensively Individuals will not need to be on the same room follow strict processes or use a lot of paperwork to make a project succeed Digital tools will save a lot of time so that that we have more time to do what really matters at every project: expectation management, leadership, risk management, implementing corrective actions, etc. And last, but not least, we will see improvements to PM related to TECHNOLOGY itself: Artificial Intelligence and blockchain will enter PPM tools AI will not replace project professionals We will use AI to talk to a bot that will help us on initiating, planning, and controlling projects We will use big data to get advice at decision making, forecasting more precisely, prioritizing some projects over others, evaluating project and team performance, etc. Let’s start by talking about a very big project is about to end these days. Next December the 18th is the date for the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope After more than 30 years in space the Hubble Space Telescope is coming to the end of its lifecycle James Webb is the successor of the Hubble This is a great scientific advance in astronomy The mission is to place the telescope 1.5 million kilometers away to get data on galaxy formation the atmosphere composition of faraway planets, etc.
Let’s see this video introducing JWST Everybody can download this video at the NASA website Excellent project! Nobody would question the scientific and engineering advance coming along with this project This project, however has been criticized by poor management It was about to be cancelled in 2011 by the USA Congress and finally NASA has ended up with 8 billion dollars over cost and 12 years of delay In this chart you can see the successive re baselines since year 2001 when the project was authorized on a budget of 1.6 billion dollars and a duration of 8 years You can see the last re baseline in 2018 to be completed with a budget of 9.6 billion dollars and a duration of 20 years What are the main causes explaining this bad project performance? We can assume there has been a lot of technological issues, for sure, but this alone does not explain the big variances My guess is this project, properly a program with many projects related to each other has not been managed by project professionals I mean project management professionals program management professionals and also portfolio management professionals I guess scientists have managed science and engineers have managed engineering but I can guess they has also managed portfolios, programs, and projects My other guess has to do with socialization This program has a lot of team members working at the same time more than 1000 at peak from 17 countries Have they used collaborative tools to interact horizontally? Or maybe they have followed strict vertical processes, instead? And last, but not least What about the PPM tools? Have they used one single PPM tool to manage all the governance? This is greatly needed here due to the high level of procurement You can visit this web page here to see all the project partners apart from the NASA leading and the Canadian Space Agency and the European Space Agency You can see there are more than 300 partners collaborating many of them at the same time! Is there a better way of managing projects? James Webb will only be active for 7 years Another project has been approved to replace it with a new telescope The successor of the James Webb is called the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) aka The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope or simply “The Roman” This new telescope will allow new research on dark matter in the universe This project is authorized under a budget of 3 billion dollars and it is supposed to be finished in 2027 We need to do better this time! So, let's talk about solutions From the perspective of the PMI we can see a new trend here PMI is changing a lot during the last years from traditional PM to value driven PM They are entitling this new way of doing projects with PMI 4.0 We can see a new definition of projects they are not just temporary endeavors to finish with a product The idea is to transform ideas into reality Project professionals and other changemakers can do this in collaboration You maybe recall this other term: the project economy They used a lot in the 50th anniversary in 2019 I think this is another strong idea about making ideas a reality enhancing horizontal teams, not vertical teams for collaborating and deliver something value driven Wich are the main trends here? First thing is SOCIALIZATION We need to engage many people in projects A PM is not only a reactive guy that follows orders They need to be very aware of the opinions and changes suggested by the project stakeholders and everything is more and more participative Socialization is a key enabler and technology is supporting socialization with many good collaborative tools The other thing is PROFESSIONALISM We PMPs know how to do projects PgMPs know how to manage programs and PfMs are the ones who should manage portfolios These roles can be proactive with technology Technology itself can help project management.
Nowadays, with remote projects everywhere PMs are supposed to have a high Technology Quotient Now they are considered poor practitioners if they communicate through long emails paper documents, or presentations if they attach documents or even worse, videos instead of sending links to files. These are examples of bad TQ Organizations in the project economy can start using good freemium tools today with no investment required up front If the free features are enough they can continue free forever focusing on value rather than on technology Nowadays, there is no need for ad hoc tools or digital transformation projects to improve the technology on PM 5 categories cover basic needs of most projects 1) TEAM COMMUNICATION Effective PMs use email in formal comm, only They use more productive tools than email when communicating about the day-to-day work This category includes file sharing tools office tools to write and share docs and polls instant messaging, video conferencing and tools to share screenshots and videos 2) TASK MANAGEMENT This category includes tools to getting things done individually and helping teams collaborate on task lists to control who is doing what by when 3) PROJECT SCHEDULING These are tools to produce schedule models Gantt charts, timelines, etc. to track dates, durations, milestones, costs, resource usage, etc. 4) PROJECT REPORTING These tools allow us to display large volumes of data coming from projects to facilitate the business analysis by top managers 5) PROJECT GOVERNANCE These tools are normally called PPM tools they can help OPM for individual projects, programs, and portfolios Notice there are freemium tools examples at each category Organizations in the project economy can use freemium tools as long as they are needed They can pay for premium features only if they really need them Another interesting trend enhancing project management collaboration is what is called “citizen development” A citizen developer is a user without coding knowledge who creates new business applications for consumption by others using LCNC Development Platforms.
All types of organizations and companies be them big or small, mature, or new ones need more and more software to perform their day-to-day operations with customers, providers, employees, etc. IT departments need more software developers on payroll or outsourced but there is a global shortage of SW developers Fortunately, there is a variety of cloud platforms that make possible for anyone to be a developer Without coding knowledge they can produce high quality code delivering web and mobile applications simply by reusing components hiding all the technical complexity so that they can focus on the business value PMI proposes a framework and a methodology based on roles, techniques, a maturity model The main goal is that organizations can take advantage of citizen development avoiding some typical problems such as the Shadow IT Citizen development does not mean software projects work on their own apart from the IT area It is rather the opposite Project team members use LCNC tools provided by IT who is always accountable for meeting the nonfunctional requirements, etc. Citizen developers make IT move from “working for the business” to “working with the business” SW projects can use a hyper-agile development lifecycle They follow agile cycles to build prototypes and MVPs to deliver value to business users ASAP always under IT technical oversight Those trends I’ve just mentioned before collaborative tools and citizen development can enhance effective collaboration between project professionals change makers and project stakeholders In the project economy projects are getting more and more social Let’s move on to another driver to enhance project success in the project economy This is PROFESSIONALISM If we see an organization from the helicopter view we see a variety of projects some of them predictive, others pure agile and many of them hybrid When we focus on OPM we need to consider all kind of dev. lifecycles and project grouping Organizations can organize projects by grouping them into BUs programs, or portfolios Project steering committees can control projects using many good practices commonly accepted For instance they can track the current lifecycle phase the project is in They normally distinguish 4 mgt. phases: initiating phase meaning the project is not yet approved planning phase means the PM team is elaborating the project plan executing phase means the project is using resources and costing money and closing means that all the technical work is done and accepted but some final management steps are to be completed to formalize that everything is finished for instance: documentation, audits, etc.
This management phases: initiating, planning executing and closing are applicable in predictive and in agile projects The difference in agile is that planning and executing are overlapping When organizations are running hundreds of projects, top managers appreciate project lifecycle state project lifecycle state to focus on projects in the executing phase to focus on projects in the executing phase Project management professionalism starts with accountability: FMs should be accountable for those projects inside their BUs PMs should be accountable for projects PgMs should be accountable for programs PfMs should be accountable for portfolios Project professionals, that is, PMs, PgMs, PfMS are proficient on the corresponding standards like the PMBOK for projects the program management standard and the portfolio management standard for programs and portfolios, respectively In 2027 employers will need 90M individuals in project management-oriented roles Now, there are over 1 million professionals certified by the PMI but PMI is not the only PM association There are +300K certified by IPMA based in Switzerland Almost 1 million PRINCE2 certified the credential by the OGC, at the UK EU is enhancing their free std. PM2 to unify the methodology of the projects they fund but also to promote a PM standard for free to public or private organizations inside the EU Project Professionals are no longer effective if projects are managed in isolation or just by meetings or reporting Stakeholders' continuous collab. is needed to achieve the PM goals, that is: delivering value on time, under budget with the right quality, etc. In this hyper connected world individuals and interactions are better than processes and tools This sentence taken from the Agile Manifesto is needed also in projects Orgs. don’t need documentation red tape status meetings or any other kind of bureaucracy Projects succeed when people follow principles and are focused on getting results The current edition of the PMI's PMBOK Guide is not based on knowledge areas anymore but on 8 performance domains describing the most important activities to achieve effective results in the project PMI has also changed the ANSI std. for PM
from 49 processes to 12 principles guiding the behavior of the professional PM Professional project managers are proficient on predictive and agile PM methodologies They have practical knowledge on tools and techniques to get any kind of project to meet the PM goals mainly to finish on time and on budget For those projects in which requirements can be agreed early on such as engineering and construction projects the correct way to manage consists of following a plan driven lifecycle agreeing on requirements in the first place and, based on that, elaborating a scope baseline Later we estimate schedule and cost baselines to finally get a project management plan including the rest of PM knowledge areas quality, resources, communications, risks, procurement, and stakeholder management When project requirements cannot be agreed upon initially given the huge uncertainty at the beginning quite usual in software projects it is considered a methodological flaw to follow a plan driven lifecycle In this case, the correct way is to follow an agile lifecycle we decide how long the project is going to take and also the cost of a stable team this time then we divide the project into seq. releases to be closed in about 2-3 months Inside each release, we follow seq. iterations taking the same duration (1-2 weeks long) ending up with a demo to stakeholders of the new product increment Stakeholders’ feedback allows us to validate known requirements and estimate the new ones The scope is progressively elaborated Agile projects must also be controlled Managers have the right to ask for progress and forecasts Somebody should be there to answer about the project status properly, to manage potential problems before it is too late to prioritize feature to help team building to manage stakeholder engagement, etc. Big organizations have more and more projects with unclear requirements Management is more complex when these projects need to be managed under programs or portfolios There is no silver bullet, but when finding solutions to problems related to projects professional PMs should play a key role In predictive projects we follow a seq. plan until
the final product is transitioned to operations In agile projects, since reqs. are not clear continuous interaction with SH is needed to progressively discover value The execution phase is divided into time boxes called releases which usually last about 2-3 months At the end of each release a product that will be actually used is delivered Features included in a release are progressively elaborated Each release is broken down into other time boxes, called iterations usually taking 1-2 weeks At the end of each iteration in a face-to-face meeting the development team demonstrates the features to stakeholders who provide immediate feedback Normally, a release has about 4-6 iterations The last iteration, called “hardening”, is not aimed to produce more features it is aimed to formal closing procedures and technical deployment to production env. Agile PMs must know in depth how to work on agile projects: roles, ceremonies, artifacts... They must be servant leaders and promote value orientation T&Ts depend on the agile framework used In Scrum, we have 4 roles: PO is responsible for requirement management DT are a small group of generalist specialist covering all technical needs to deliver value at the end of each iteration They break requirements into technical tasks There is no manager here: they self-organize CO is responsible for promoting and supporting agile methods, helping everyone understand theory practices, rules, and values CU are the stakeholders that must provide directions to get the value They are part of the agile team but their level of commitment is lower In the Project Economy, projects need people collaborating as a team from diff. perspectives Let’s see some interactions between project team members as they are implemented in PMPeople: PMs can create projects inside the BUs they work for They can assign project collaborators and invite stakeholders. They can initiate, plan,
control, close and archive the project They can assign TMs to work packages They can read comments, manage changes... TMs can read their assignation details submit time sheets and expenses complete tasks, send comments meet their teammates, etc. RMs can control what projects and tasks their Team Members are assigned to They can control baseline work, planned work and actual work They can also release TMs, if needed PfMs and PgMs: If a project is included in one program or one or many portfolios these managers can provide vision and oversight the project performance Stakeholders can read some project data and check the project performance reviews They can be invited by the project manager but they should also be able to join a project proactively RQs can create project requests inside the business units they work for They can assign the PM and the sponsor They can initiate, monitor, and close projects. Sponsors can create projects inside the BUs they work for. They can assign PM and RQ They can initiate and monitor projects FMs can create projects inside their BUs They can assign PM, RQ, and SP They can initiate and monitor projects The PMO can enter any project and help mgt.
with the same capabilities than PM from the organizational perspective PMOS can enter the project they have been assigned to and assist PMs with the same capabilities And finally, talking about professionals nowadays, with the advent of AI we see new related roles working hand-in-hand with project professionals and change makers Project professionals should know how to work as a team with data scientists, data engineers and data analysts. We have seen socialization and professionalism as 2 key enablers to make projects succeed in the project economy Let’s discuss now a 3rd complementary enabler this is TECHNOLOGY We can think of technology applied to projects in 3 areas: PPM tools, blockchain and AI Project professionals are not replaced by AI AI will help project professionals by means of features to be included inside PPM software Blockchain, the cryptocurrency underlying tech. is starting to change the way we do business and will change the way we manage projects For the last 40 years we’ve had the internet of information: Internet has been an information-centric platform to store and publish information worldwide In order to perform a transaction, some item should be copied from one point to another When I send some information I’m not actually sending the information I’m sending a copy of a spreadsheet, ppt file, or a Word document or an email When I transfer money online Internet is not actually moving the value directly Instead, I'm sending instructions to an intermediary a bank, a credit card company, PayPal... to pass on the value When it comes to assets those are things that are of value to somebody like money, stocks, securities, IP, music... publishing those assets is not a good idea Blockchain will improve the internet from information centric to value centric With blockchain, internet will be a global distributed platform to store assets to communicate them and to do transactions with them on a global basis without any intermediary Talking about blockchain platforms, you need to know that Bitcoin is the most famous but is not the only public blockchain platform Another interesting example is Ethereum which can implement smart contracts Smart contracts can run code inside the blockchain transactions They can define rules, like a regular contract and automatically enforce them via the code Smart contracts cannot be deleted by default and interactions with them are irreversible.
PM Blockchain applications will not be just for paying subcontractors with digital money Chances are PPM tools start with Blockchain by using smart contracts This will make PM more trustworthy by automating transactions related to subcontractors’ T&C registering project work performance data and project status reports. Some interesting use cases are expected regarding blockchain applied to PM Project status reports can be stored in blockchain. This can make SHs trust PM Blockchain will automate certain tasks and payments with contractors And finally, blockchain will store the single version of the truth related to project deliverables or documents.
We can say AI has reached a mature stage thanks to the huge amounts of data available on the internet to train artificial neural network algorithms. If the right curated data sets are used, then AI overcomes humans by far when it comes to recognizing patterns out of nonstructured complex too large amount of data Artificial neural network algorithms follow a machine learning model inspired on the biological neural networks in animal brains The network can learn relationships between input and output data Once it has been trained, the data learned and stored as parameters in the hidden layers make it possible to generalize further knowledge beyond the examples given Thanks to the maturity reached by neural network algorithms, AI applications for image recognition and NLP are becoming a commodity AI applications can create new images and text NLP is advancing by leaps and bounds on virtual assistants and chatbots Every day there are more and more projects needing quick effective decision making from a big number of decentralized active SHs SHs create, access, share big amounts of data from any device, everywhere, any time We can see a trend in PM "socialization" producing more and more project related data getting to the levels required by AI Project stakeholders share TECHNICAL data: T&C, resources, job descriptions, SoW, specifications, documents, blueprints, test cases, releases, defects, etc. and MANAGEMENT data: procurements, payments, financing, milestone dates, activity start/finish dates, baseline/planned/actual dates, activity dependencies, budgets, cost estimates, actual costs, team member assignations, time sheets, expense sheets, corrective actions, defects, audit nonconformance issues, change requests, comments, feedbacks, questionnaires, dashboard indicators, status reports, forecasts, project scope statemt, requirements, deliverables, project charter, stakeholders, risks, issues, assumptions, lessons learned, etc. Now let’s travel to the future. Year 2030
Imagine the next megaproject is authorized NASA leading ESA and CSA to put into orbit a new telescope Estimated launch in 2035, budget of $1bn First decision is that all management teams use one single PPM tool, enhanced by AI Let’s imagine how top managers would be using a tool like this: 1) Thousands of projects are distributed on 3 business units: NASA, ESA, CSA Most projects are predictive, but some of them follows adaptive and hybrid development life cycles most projects are grouped into Programs and portfolios. Programs and portfolios are shared between the 3 business units 2) Contractors can also use the same PPM information system to manage their projects, programs, and portfolios 3) Each project is managed by a value driven project manager professional Each program is managed by a PgM Each portfolio is managed by a PfM 4) Throughout the 5 years, over 10,000 people access as team members, about 100K use the role of stakeholder: NASA/ESA/CSA managers subcontractors, astronomers, journalists, congressmen, citizens, etc. 5) TMs submit time sheets and expense sheets They use phones to send comments, risks, etc.
They use collaborative tools to manage tasks and communications 6) Stakeholders can access status reports They can use their phones to send comments, change requests, project/people feedback, etc. Now let’s imagine how the same PPM tool could be used to manage a single project: 1) A conversational bot helps initiate new projects, pending to be approved It asks questions to set initial data, dependencies with other projects, access levels AI calculates the relative project priority inside the BU, inside the program, or the portfolio 2) PgMs and PfMs use AI recommendations to approve the most value project set 3) AI recommends the available fittest PM to manage the project. PM's planning tasks are very effective: AI proactively proposes requirements, WPs, deliverables, dates, TMs, activity resources, costs, etc. tasks From data of similar projects in the past, AI initiates SH register, risk reg., assumption log... AI sets up software tools for the project team with the right security levels 4) AI makes easy for the PM team to annotate project performance data in real time It also updates lessons learned and other relevant knowledge management information while the project is running 5) Project performance assessment is still evaluated by the project management team AI optimizes elaboration of status reports Project managers talk with a bot to get aid on performance assessment and decide corrective and preventive action 6) SHs are aware of project status real time They can use their phone to send comments project/people feedback and change requests AI optimizes communications to stakeholders AI ensures critical communications are timely received. AI prevents unnecessary comm. to SH 7) AI continually measures SH satisfaction expectations fulfillment, etc.
8) AI assesses stakeholder engagement level and proposes improvement alternatives 9) AI helps monitoring and controlling risks changes, resource planning, etc. 10) AI coaches PMs. Performance background is analyzed to help project managers achieve professional development results 11) And finally, AI helps assuring contract terms are fulfilled by the incumbent parts Finally, let’s imagine some features to manage business units, programs and portfolios: 1) AI can classify thousands of projects. 2) AI can save a lot of time generating reports, assuring quality standards, etc.
3) AI can answer questions like: What are the odds this project finish on time? What is the value of this deliverable? What is the value of this deliverable? What projects should be re-baselined? What teams should be restructured? What contracts should be canceled? Thank you
2021-12-07