Top 5 Most Influential Changes in Project Management in the Last 10 years

Guest post by Addie Monson, PMP
Director, Enterprise Project Office, Chase Paymentech

We know Addie Monson as a veteran and leader in PM practice and collaboration. She has several years of experience implementing Daptiv solutions in her practice with Chase Paymentech and she generously agreed to share her insight on the evolution of project management with us. We hope to have her contribute more lessons and tips in the future. Thanks Addie!

1. PMBOK – Not just for the big boys anymore
2. PMPs for everyone
3. PMOs outside of IT
4. Collaboration via the Web
5. Results – The proof is in the project

1: The PMBOK – Not just for the big boys anymore
It used to be that the world of project management was an exclusive club of engineers and systems analysts who designed 747s, military contracts or rolled new Cadillacs off the assembly line. Sure, those project managers are the veterans – they have been in the industry for 30 plus years, who learned supply-chain automation at Ford and Lockheed, then applied the principles of managing projects on time and to budget before the term “best practice” was even a whisper in every conference room in America. Today, mid-level managers in mid-size companies know what a “phase” is, understand what lag and dependencies are and can build a complicated work breakdown structure without even really knowing that they are. The PMBOK isn’t a dust collector on the shelf.

2: PMPs for everybody!
In the 90’s, every help desk analyst had their MCSD and took online courses in UML and Rational Rose. Today, PMP (synonymous with pulling all of the pieces together and executing a plan) succeeds the signature line of nearly  360,000  working professionals age 25-45 (yours truly included). Being a certified Project Management Professional by the Project Management Institute does hold a certain weight in our arena. Can you effectively manage projects without having your PMP?  Sure. Does it help you speak intelligently about the science behind the practice? Absolutely.

3: PMOs outside of IT
Traditionally, project management has been associated with complex product launches. Pharmaceutical companies, manufacturing, and of course, software development.  Waterfall development schedules to Agile methodology, all of it applied the concept of planning something, building something, testing something and introducing it to users. It made sense that the “shop” where that something was built (often Information Technology) would run its own project office.  Recent shifts to operate PMOs outside of IT – PMOs that service the entire company including technology, marketing, product development and operations – have broadened our scope of influence. It has de-mystified the inner-workings of how projects are governed and executed. It has made us more accessible to the business which we serve.

4: Collaboration via the Web
Collaboration. We learned it in kindergarten when we had to all bring something from home to contribute to the Thanksgiving dinner just like the pilgrims. We tried to practice it during college, planning our sorority formals and serving on faculty/student committees. Knowledge sharing has come a long way from the listserve days on Compuserv and discussion forums or bulletin boards on specialized topics. The Internet and its tools, from Wikipedia to Twitter, have brought the concept of asking questions, sharing information and document version into the hands and every day use of corporate America. As project managers, we don’t have to constantly pull information out of one team member and push it back to other team members. The ability and the responsibility lie with the project members themselves. I think the one thing project managers need to do more of is encourage and incent our business partners to leverage these collaborative tools. It will only make our jobs easier.

5: Results – the proof is in the project!
The single most influential aspect of project management today is, truthfully, the project managers. You can throw the PMBOK and processes at anyone, you can send someone through PMP boot camp, you can teach them how to use process modeling software – you can’t make someone a leader. If project managers weren’t effective and didn’t achieve results, there wouldn’t be value in what we do. Businesses today need project managers to get it done. We facilitate progress. We remove “show stoppers.” If we don’t apply the best practices, promote the collaboration and practice the science of managing the litany of work that needs to get done, companies won’t see the results they need. What they need is to stay viable, be bleeding edge technologists, improve hospital management practices and continue to bring the next “have to have it” product to the market. We get results, and that has made the biggest impact on project management today.

Addie Monson is the director of the Enterprise Project Office at Chase Paymentech Solutions. Chase Paymentech, a subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase, is a global leader in payment processing and merchant acquiring, capable of authorizing transactions in more than 130 currencies. Addie’s work with Chase Paymentech has been recognized by industry awards such as Computerworld’s Best Practices in Business Intelligence and she has presented at various industry events on the topic of the evolution of work and project management, including Gartner’s 2009 Project & Portfolio Management Summit.