Every year brings a lot of changes in project management that lead to new trends. These changes lead to efficient changes in the overall planning and execution of business goals and product strategies.
So far tech-innovation, market demands, mobile first approach and on-demand service fulfillment have been the key drivers forcing us to re look the way projects are delivered.
2020 added the COVID-19 pandemic to this list which is most certainly beyond human control.
Yes, there was widespread panic because none of us was prepared for the unthinkable.
And at the same time there were organizations who were in-sync with the technological advancements and used it to their advantage.
COVID -19 forced us to make radical changes in the way businesses are run and the way we live.
Remote team management is just the tip of the iceberg rather a mere outcome although with significant impact.
But then look at the innovation that continues to take place in all aspects of our businesses and lives.
Now all of these mini optimizations throughout the value chain has led to the overall project management and delivery process. Let us take a look at these emerging trends and the benefits they offer.
The first impact of COVID-19 was to restore services on top priority which led to rise of remote work management and virtual teams.
Some businesses had robust remote work management processes and technology in place and were able to shift gears with minimum friction. While the laggards had a tough time. Also not all industries can sustain with virtual teams and could not do much about it.
But as 2020 progressed more and more companies had remote teams in place to keep the lights –on and maintain consistent customer support and delivery.
As a result they were able to benefit from:
Remote task and project management tool market is valued at $4.3billion by 2023 and is expected to grow between 11%-14% (CAGR).
Collaboration tools have been around for over a decade now, and the market continues to be flooded with new tools.
MS Teams, Zoom, GoogleMeet, Orangescrum, Slack, Mattermost and a host of others are leading the remote collaboration industry.
These tools bring a host of benefits for remote teams:
Most importantly, remote collaboration tools act as self-service portals reducing dependencies between teams, eliminating manual reporting or data massaging and making the teams self-sufficient while being remote.
“Our teams are now more adept in remote project management with the use of Orangescrum collaboration tool throughout the COVID-19 work from home situation. We actually saved around 7-9hours per resource per week because of Orangescrum, says Muhammad Syahmeer, Head PMO, Resonant Networks, Singapore.”
Agile Methodology has been gaining wide acceptance across industries. Scrum, Kanban, Pair-Programming, Scrumban have seen rapid adoption among product, engineering and services teams globally.
Agile is no longer limited to software development. Crucial business functions such as Digital Marketing, HR, Sales & Marketing, Customer Services, and Quality Assurance etc. have also started relying on agile practices to be more effective and efficient.
As a result the overall organization benefits from
Remote work culture has also led us to think more in terms of automation to reduce human dependency. Specifically to cater to situations like the current COVID-19 pandemic.
Take a look at the impact on the manufacturing, travel and hospitality sectors. They just had no way around it.
Automation is not only seen as a labour- and time-saving mechanism, but also from the point of view of corporate sustainability.
The rise of chatbots, self-service customer support portals are excellent examples of automation and zero touch service and contact less sales.
You tend to save money, save time and make money!
The most obvious yet significant benefits of this trend are:
Most importantly, automated reports and analytics help pave the right way forward. You can identify probable risks, learn from the past mistakes & avoid them.
Projects have a defined goal to be met within a per-defined timeline. True!
But, how many times have we seen the mismatch between what the customer wanted and what we delivered? Yeah!!!
Why does that happen? A long debate, really looooonngg debate
However, the main reason is the discrepancy between the project team’s understanding of the goal and the stakeholders’ expectations.
How to bridge this gap? One sure shot way is to implement an online centralized project management tool that offers the following benefits:
The fact is when you breakdown the overarching goal into granular activities there is more clarity during execution. Anomalies are identified and resolved promptly.
Thus, bringing project execution as close to the core objective and possibly nailing it a 100%!
The key thing to learn from these emerging trends is business leaders and project managers need to deploy a range of skills to ensure project success.
Secondly, having the right tools, processes and technology to execute the strategic vision is crucial.
The days of silos, “I’ll do it on my own” or sequential execution are long gone. We are serving an ever demanding, on-click result and highly digital customer base.
Thus as a project leader you must
And by implementing these practices, you pave the way for the right changes in the workplace, the way projects are done, and ensure greater opportunities for achieving the organization’s goals.
The last nugget, try Orangescrum and find out a powerful ally to crushing your 2023 project management goals.