As we get into the Teens (if that what this decade is called), what will long term hold for project management professionals? Take a look at what history must reveal to us to try and predict the trends for the future and then vote inside our poll.
50’s Conception
The 1950’s were the start of project management with the use of Taylor’s scientific management. Based on the marriage of the Henry Gantt moment based chart and Fayol’s five rules of management planning organising, commanding, coordinating and controlling. These principles still form the inspiration of our modern bodies of knowledge.
60’s Learning to be able to Walk
The value of project management had been demonstrated on main projects. Many of these types of projects have attained mythical status such as the Polaris missile programme, the DuPont Company and Remington Rand Corporation development of the critical path (I bet they wish they’d patented that!)#) The actual decade finished using the formation of the International Project Management Organization (IPMA) in 1967, the PMI in 1969, forerunner of the particular APM, called Internet (one more good name) within 1972.
70’s Slow Growth of Early Adopters.
Project Management saw slow growth in recognition during the 1970’s, along with the birth from it systems, Apollo space programme and the application to the development of chilly war defence methods. The membership from the APM reached 1000 through the end of the particular decade.
80’s Gantt chart for your masses and 10 years of unconscious incompetence.
The development of microcomputers within the 1980 saw the explosion of the project management for all, with its everywhere symbol – the Gantt chart. Some adventurous folks even implemented earned value management. During the 80’s each and every organisation and federal government department had a unique approach with the associated unsurprising chaos.
90’s Codification as well as certification
1989 saw the actual launch of PRINCE (accompanied by PRINCE2 in 1996) following PMI PMP certification launched in 1984. The 1990’s started to be the decade associated with codification, standardisation and along with growing acceptance a common approach has been beneficial.
‘Noughties’ the ten years of embedment, globalisation and information overload (as well as the credit crunch).
For project management the actual Noughties were ten years of globalisation using the connectivity of the net leading to teams outsourced around the world, increasing recognition with regard to project management certification throughout the world be it PRINCE2 or even the PMI’s PMP. Towards the end from the decade management in general including project management found the Blackberry and out of the blue we struggled with information overload. What had already been manageable communication channels became frenetic along with ongoing 24 hour activity to match the new global projects.
What will be the trends in the particular teens? They say days gone by is no predictor into the future but what will be the up and coming trends for that teens. Will
1) The fallout from the credit crunch and also severely reduced public spending result in a severe lowering of the demand regarding project management along with a decade of expense cutting and cancelled projects?
2) May the increasing stress for change lead to an increasing need for truly professional project administrators, maybe (or maybe not) connected to chartered status?
3) May pressure for consistency continue with consolidation between the different methodologies (PRINCE2, APM, PMP)?
4) Will new social media tools such as Google Wave aid us organise the actual mass of details generated by projects using meta tags as well as search tool in the same manner Google Search Engine made sense of the web. Or (5) all the above?
Pass your PMP Certification The First Time! Prepare for the Project Management Training Here!
