Top 10 Trends in Project Management

ESI International, one of the world’s leading project management training companies, recently announced the release of its Top 10 trends in project management for 2014. The 2014 trends reveal that project managers are in increasingly high demand and are being asked to lead rather than simply manage their teams. Further, the trends highlight the changing nature of project management, as organizations strive for competitive advantage.

“This year’s trends highlight the growing unease with the status quo of current project management practices,” said J. LeRoy Ward, PMP, PgMP, CSM and executive vice president of ESI International. “Past failures to improve project efficiencies force the need to ‘pull out all of the stops’ to deal with project complexity, implement new project management approaches and adopt alternative leadership styles to improve project success for greater competitive advantage. In-demand project managers and leaders seem ready to face the challenge.”

ESI’s Top 10 trends for project management include:
1. Agile-style project management expands in Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong.
2. Portfolio management continues to take center stage with Project Management Institute’s new credential.
3. Whether they like it or not, project managers are learning to learn through virtual learning.
4. EPC companies (engineering, procurement and construction contractors) admit they didn’t invent project management and seek professional help.
5. Think implementing one project portfolio management tool was hard? Companies now need two!
6. Servant leadership makes a comeback, and not just in Agile.
7. Benchmarking takes on greater urgency as competition heats up.
8. Organizations, dissatisfied with their project management performance, will radically change their approaches to get back on track.
9. Even with high unemployment globally, key project management jobs will remain hard to fill.
10. Project and program managers will be asked to spend more time “leading” rather than “managing” their teams.

“We see the difficulty in filling key, strategic project-focused roles, and what is expected of them once they’re hired,” said Ward. “Organizations are weary of projects that are over budget and late. So, they’re looking to their project leaders to make the changes needed to repeatedly meet project milestones and achieve expected outcomes.”

ESI’s Top 10 trends in project management are put together annually by ESI senior executives and subject matter experts. In conjunction with the release of the trends, ESI has released a Top 10 trends in project management video (watch it on the iPad app version of Compact Equipment). This video offers a discussion of the trends, including original insight and information about the trends and their impact on projects.