What’s Going On in Project Management, August 2020

It is of course the high-summer news "silly season" so there is less happening and/or being reported, but the following have caught my eye over the last few weeks.

Next Steps After School: employability should be top priority

APM

As 2020 ‘A’ level results have been revealed in the UK (let's see if they are to be re-revealed) APM give some great advice on:

• keeping options open, and

• how to choose between a university degree or an apprenticeship.

5 Reasons Why Projects Fail and How to Stop It

CoFounder

Sarah Morris looks at 5 common causes of project failure (and how you might stop them):

1. Lack of clear goals & objectives,

2. Poor resource allocation,

3. Poor project management,

4. Little to no interest from key stakeholders, and

5. Poor communication.

APM Conditions for Project Success is a great report where the research has identified 12 success factors, which it has consolidated into a framework for success, which suggests the 5 factors found to have the strongest relationship with the traditional measures of project success:

1. Project planning & review,

2. Goals & objectives,

3. Effective governance,

4. Competent project teams, and

5. Commitment to success.

TARA - A New AI Tool for Agile Development Projects

TARA has been designed to help remote teams move faster in product development.

It helps teams to:

• Move from idea to plan,

• Import from Trello, Asana & GitHub,

• Plan sprints simply,

• See highlights on a focused dashboard, and

• Sprint to done.

4 hot project management trends — and 4 going cold

CIO

Christina Wood provides 4 hot trends:

1. Remote collaboration tools,

2. Competence,

3. Meaning, and

4. Leadership.

She also provides 4 related cold off-trends:

1. Meetings,

2. The project manager, (controversial!!)

3. Freedom, and

4. Office Hours.

Are You Digitally Savvy?

PMI

Andy Jordan looks at Artificial Intelligence and his view on the 2 reasons that he believes underlying reluctance to employ it:

1. Organisations are not ready for AI, and

2. Project Managers don't want AI.

In my experience he's right on the first point - data is the issue and organisations should be very concerned about kicking the can down the alleyway.

On the second point though I'm not so sure. Good project managers, in my experience, will embrace an opportunity to reduce their administrative workload, allowing them to focus on the real value of their roles as well as gaining early warnings of risks.