I do feel organisations today have lost sight of the good Project Managers and especially those that started Project Management before the breeding of formal methodologies. It is all about the human factor, the approach, making things happen, it is not about whether one knows .NET, Oracle, Digital media, and so on, these are just solutions that form part of the overall Project Management umbrella. The techies are a requirement to Projects and that is all.

Yes, unfortunately the Project Manager is dying of death and by year 2011 my prediction is that the traditional diverse project managers will not exist not as we have known them for the past 10 years.

Things that are projects today willbecome operational in the future (eg minor-medium enahcements to systems)and things that are operational management areas will become projectised (e.g. the new marketing campaign.)

At the same time programme management is developing s a discipline. This is the art of not just managing a series of related projects but of managing the whole sphere of activties that are taking your business from where it is today to where it needs to be in the future.

While the world economy and sociology continue to change there ill be a continuing growth of project management.

Lastly; where is the sociology in all this? You are right; it’s ben lft off the list. Possibly on purpose.

The technical aspects of project management aer there as the toolkit. The people side of project management may just be “management” and for that you need to go to the management theorists and practitioners and see how to best organise, motivate and reward your teams.

Project Mgmt as we know it…will be completely different than in the 1900′s. Each person will become a project manager, but won’t call him/herself that. Technology will be the backend of each and every business, that uses technology. Sociology will be the human interaction through this medium, to not conquer the world, but to embrace the peoples of the world and bring them into fruitful living situations where they can succeed in life by being helped, encouraged, taught, nurtured.

Technology, and the people running it, will have to learn compassion, and we all will have to work together, so we will each be managing ourselves, rather than projects. If I gave you the tools, you would be picking my brain, and quite frankly, you will be developing the tools yourselves through the much less complicated apps that come forward in the next few decades (yes, that long).

Besides, my brain is filled with many ideas, I’m a writer, and prefer to bring together people with ideas.

You will be the backbone of the future, the tools will be ones you create, develop, harness and bring into being, as expressions of function. You are all of you working together, learning, doing, being.

There’s more, but rather than go religious on everyone, study who was most compassionate on the earth, how they accomplished this compassion by being and walking among the people, and study what they said and apply that to technology, your life, and the world. Then dominion becomes not a negative word, and not control, but a working together of all forces and lives to create peace, joy, love, harmony, and more life.

Okay, so this seems like a tangent, where is the Project Management truths you are seeking…well, look to the greatest Project Manager of all, and it will all become clear!

Where will technology be in the next few decades? Will we create Artificial Life (AI) via these computers we use daily? Hmmm….

Seems I am answering a question with a question. Again.

As to ever-increasing complexity in the technological tools we use, I see a trend the opposite way. The tools themselves will become standardized, but there will be several standards, different ops, different back-ends, different front-ends, different apps. Each group of folks working together will have to agree on those apps working together also, so that will be where the complexity comes in managing the people to the apps.

And I really hate to give it away, what I see, but database management and apps that tie into those databases are going to be crucial in the manipulation of technological data in the future. Simplify it, do the databases as spreadsheets if you can and get better software to tie spreadsheets into databases and websites…there has got to be better software for this written (okay, enough of my complaint, uh, suggestion).

Don’t let it overwhelm you (nor I), it’s one line of code at a time, one web page at a time, one website at a time, one person at a time.

Oh, wait, with conference calls that’s not true anymore, but we still have what is known as the “talking stick” approach to communication – only one person can be heard at a time, therefore only one person has the talking stick at a time. But with so many brains thinking about what is being said, it is taking more self-control to formulate ideas into work, into existence.

That is where Project Management is headed, yet that appears to be glorious, as we learn more, do more, and are more, for and with each other.

Ciao,

Suzanne Belle Lowry

Anacortes, WA USA

(New website coming soon, just got married, name change changes everything!)

Copyright 2007 Suzanne Belle Lowry

Yes, in a decade from now project management will look different from what we see now, but it won’t be dead. We’ll adjust the process to the new environment, like we always do.

And to answer your need – I believe you look in the wrong place. I think there’s no project management process which will help us sort the situation out. The answer lays in tools which will help to deal with communication among people spread all over the world. Think, teleconferencing tools are still very poor quality or very expensive (and even then, they aren’t very mobile). Our collaboration still relies on emails which aren’t always the best way of contact. Internet enabled spreading teams geographically but tools which would cover holes brought by the model are yet to appear. In my opinion that is the answer.