Considerations in 2011 for Project Managers to get Ahead
Leadership skills are being seen as one of the key distinguishing factors for project managers looking to set themselves apart from the crowd. Top project management company, ESI International, is advising project managers to focus on leadership skills in a paper outlining their ideas of the project management trends for 2011, authored primarily by ESI Vice President, J Leroy Ward. The key themes in the paper centred around training and staff retention.
“As projects get more complex, virtual and global, finishing a project on time and on budget requires PMs to demonstrate leadership skills such as critical thinking and organizational change management. The challenge for organizations in 2011 will be to clearly define what ‘leadership’ means in the project and program management context,” said Ward.
“We expect to see more Agile implementations in 2011 and a greater emphasis on demonstrating ROI through Agile adoption,” said Ward and then stated that organizations need to realise that the Agile way is not the panacea to our project management problems. Although if done correctly, there are still huge benefits to be achieved from adopting the Agile approach.
Well thought out strategies for retaining project managers and developing their talent will be key to keeping strong members of staff and avoid poaching, which is rife within the profession, the paper outlined. Ward said, “Globally, we see a stronger need for companies to use company-specific competency models to improve the hiring, assigning, promotion and professional development of project managers.”
ESI says that it expects to see more learning through experience and on-the-job training for project mangers. Ward said: “Learning providers will be required to send PMs back to the job from such sessions with the ability to immediately apply what they learned to their current projects.” To support this, ESI expects to see an increase in the experience-related approaches to learning, like communities of practice, use of social media, in addition to coaching and mentoring.
The ESI paper notes that outsourcing is likely to continue to grow in 2011 but organizations will take note of its inherent risks. ESI expects that organizations will reinforce their risk management strategies and will concentrate on adopting best practices in the management of their outsourced contracts.
“In 2011, we will see more organizations developing and assigning change partners (aka, change management experts) to projects to assist in the adoption of products and services created by projects,” Ward suggested.
ESI recognises that the PMP certification is likely to continue to be the most popular project management qualification but that may eventually change over time. “The value of proven experience and demonstrated competency will take on even more relevance beyond having the certification itself,” said Ward.
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