Project Management Trends -PM Role

The PM Role is changing and is changing fast. Project managers need to sharpen their tools and learn new competencies.

PM Role

The need for efficiency and doing more with less is also driving the convergence of Project Management and Business Analyst roles.

For example, who should gather requirements?  The project manager or business analyst?  The answer emerges with Agile & Lean practices overtaking the traditional project management practices.

The emergence Agile project management method is  huge shift in what traditionally was considered the project manager’s job function.

As each company and project determines what is the best fit for them.   Some will require specialists and others will leverage generalists to lead the way.

Just look at Product Managers who have been able to lead the entire System development Life Cycle or SDLC from market research, requirement definition to development onto product launch for years because they have the bigger picture in mind.

The need for Project managers to be more of a Product Owner that owns the definition and delivery of the solution will continue to emerge.

Ryan Martens, founder and CTO of Rally Software, says that in the future will see a  “continued move of Project Management professionals from the role of Project Management to Release, Scrum or Product Management”  and with it the “continued evolution of the Program Management office (PMO) into a Scrum of Scrums office”.

PM’s that can step back to see the bigger picture by

• understanding the business – market and technology needs,
• being the liaison between the customer/business and the development team, and
• leading (not managing) the project team from concept/initiation to launch/close,

…they will be in great demand.

We are not saying that PMs or BAs are being replaced – these are just titles.  What will continue to happen is the redefinition of their roles on the team as Agile and Lean practices overtake the traditional ways of doing projects like waterfall methods.

Leaders are needed – not more managers.

For first article in this series click on project manager

For second article this series click on Virtual teams

For third article in this series click on social media

Credit goes to Donna Reed in CM Crossroads who originally covered this topic