The biggest challenge in future project management is cultural change

Author: Hugo Ascacíbar 
Change Manager at Grupo Santander, PMP®

The biggest challenge in future project management is culture change. Culture change of operations and development teams as well as more automation in the delivery tools of the software form part of the new work culture of the digital world like DevOps an idea developed by John Allspaw, senior vice-president of technical operations, and Paul Hammond, engineering director of Flickr at his conference “10 deploys per day Dev & Ops cooperation at Flickr” that took place in 2009 at the O’Reilly Velocity Conference [i].

This philosophy implies that project management will be in real time and the products delivered online. This culture change, of agile tools and processes causes the management of projects is oriented towards the management of the product, the expectations of the users, combined with the processes of engineering.

This new way of working is also making leadership styles change towards more horizontal, open and participatory models, which is maybe one of the biggest challenges.

Many of the functions of the project manager will be shared and agreed on by the team and the support teams will be configured in an orchestration model.

In the combination of these new methods, tools and systems orientated towards the digital world, new models and ways of working are necessary, that harmonise with and integrate this philosophy, like for example Serious LeAP®, by Masa Kevin Maeda[ii], CEO and founder of Valueinnova that integrates:

• a systematic approximation of the business to raise understanding and improve management of the business,
• linked to a new focus of the management of the human resources based on the importance of improving the conditions of the employees, suppliers and clients,
• the dynamics of high collaboration to improve the performance of the work-teams like Serious Games or Canvases, 
• within the framework of the combined use of Lean , Agile and Design Thinking models [iii].

This focus will result in the whole organization will be more effective, from a financial point of view and in the value offered to employees, shareholders and society in general [iv].

In November 2015 the second change management congress [iv], took place in Madrid, focused on digital transformation, whose most important conclusions were:

• The function of digital transformation is in bringing the technology to the service of the user, placing the focus on people, not the technology itself.
• It 's necessary to develop a culture of customer experience, listening to the client first and then innovating.
• Lose the fear of innovation, taking the risk of being more disruptive. 

Finally the PMOs or Project Management Offices, internal structures that bear the function of project management are adapting their models of follow up, control and support to this new paradigm towards agile project management models, including the suppliers that participate in such a project.

By supporting the implementation of strategic programmes the Enterprise PMOs (EPMOs) play a key role in the delivery of value to the organization. Nevertheless, for many organizations important difficulties still exist in the definition of the role of their PMO as a supportive figure for the achieving of strategic objectives.

Organizations that align their EPMO with the strategy of the business achieve 27% more projects successfully completed and 42% fewer projects with “scope creep” following the report by PMI Pulse in 2016 [vi].

Within the EPMOs, the management of programmes is now more important than ever due to the close relationship between IT projects and the strategy of the business forming part of the transformation digital.

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[i] A Short History of DevOps – CA Technologies - http://rewrite.ca.com/us/articles/devops/a-short-history-of-devops.html

[ii] Serious leAP talk at agile 2015 conference - http://www.slideshare.net/masakmaeda/serious-leap-talk-at-agile-2015-conference

[iii]  Lean manufacturing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing

[iv] Serious LeAP™: Bringing prosperity to your organization http://www.valueinnova.com/serious-leap-services/serious-leap-early-draft--.pdf

[v] Ponencias del 2º Congreso Internacional de Gestión del Cambio y Transformación Digital - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDroCA6pApHF5A9FqSuxPC_wEf5wx1yEI

[vi] The High Cost of Low Performance How will you improve business results? – PMI Pulse 2016 - https://www.pmi.org/~/media/PDF/learning/pulse-of-the-profession-2016.ashx