Project Management Circa 2025

The book is a collection of 29 articles, written by different authors, addressing a single topic - the shape of project management in 2025 - though through different angles: geographic & industry specific, government projects, areas of growth, system and organisational applications.

The immediate effect of Circa 2025's structure - 29 articles - together with the absence of a chapter attempting to bring all those articles together, is that the reader will have to draw their own conclusion as to what will be the overall shape of things to come for the project management profession. I reckon this is a shortcoming of the book, as there would have been value in summarizing the various authors' findings.

So as a mean of a book review, here is my take out from the book, summarised in three points...

1. Project management does not shape the future.
A common finding is that the project management profession will not shape the environment in which it operates but instead will largely adapt to external forces such as technology progress, market conditions, environmental issues, education levels and the evolution of organisation structures. So, although the number of certified project managers will grow (chapter 1) and the maturity of the profession will increase (chapter 4), those won't be the main forces steering the future of the profession. For example, project management in India is strongly driven by geo-politics, macro-economics evolutions and market opportunity (outsourcing, manufacturing). A pinch of salt here: evolutions are often driven by "unforeseen" events - or Black Swans - so we should take predictions carefully.

2. Technology innovation impacts internal and external aspects of project management.
Technology evolution will impact project management in many ways. Firstly, new industries will appear and some will have tremendous growth, creating new areas where project management will have to be applied (chapter 24-25 on nano-technology and new energies). Secondly, IT tools will be used more and more (yet not be pervasive - chapter 9, on the PM software industry), and help support the project manager's decisions in what-if analysis and more broadly by enabling more and more analytics to be used instead of opinions.

3. Agility becomes mainstream.
The role of the project manager is discussed in most chapters. Chapter 7, addressing the future of Project management research, mentions four different types project manager in the future, from PMs being part of an overall manager's role to technicians also being project managers. Over the chapters there is a broad consensus that project managers will have less direct authority on his teams and more accountability on the product delivered, making his role more challenging. This leads to a broader finding not specifically referenced in the book: business agility.

The rise of business agility strikes me as being a common theme in the book. From chapter 19 on Department of Defence product development lifecycle to chapter 22 on Team leadership future, from chapter 12 on Project portfolio management to chapter 7 on the future of PM research, I found that authors recognise that interactions between the end customers and the project team will increase, that organisations will be more focused on the outside (customers, partners) than the inside (structure), that project processes will be more flexible, less directive and that decisions will be shifted from the project manager to the team itself (self-organised teams). Consequently the role of the project manager will become more "outward" focused than today. All these findings are pretty much aligned with the agile manifesto.

You should read this book if you are at the start of your career and want to find out if project management is for you, or if you are a project manager with a particular interest in understanding where your profession is heading to.

Lastly: If I was to single out the best chapter in the book, it would have to be chapter 22, "Future of Team leadership in complex project environment". The author, Hans J. Thamhain, describes the paradigm shift in our business environment (new technology, constant changes, social innovation, closely-linked world) that affects the way we work. Perhaps this is the chapter that sums it all up?

- Reviewed by Vincent Birlouez, PMP, CSM

Vincent Birlouez, PMP and CSM, is a freelance project manager with over 10 years experience in managing IT systems integration across Europe. You can read more of Vincent's writings on his blog, PM in Focus.