Remember the sci-fi movie Edge of Tomorrow? Tom Cruise, fighting off an alien invasion while stuck in a time loop? Oh, and it’s set in the year 2020.
That’s right, folks. In less than five years, a time that was once fuel for a futuristic fantasy will be our reality. And, while it’s unlikely we’ll find ourselves in the midst of an alien invasion, we should expect and prepare for significant changes to disrupt the project management industry.
An important factor in this change, according to senior research analyst Mbula Schoen, is that “the traditional project manager role will be diminished in the face of agile, self-managed teams.” (The full report, “Predicts 2016: PPM Capabilities and Solutions Are Not Keeping Pace With Digital Transformation,” is available to Gartner clients.)
If you’re a traditional project manager, words such as “replaced,” “diminished” and “self-managed” may have you feeling like you’d rather take on aliens than a future in project management. But don’t give up hope yet:
In this guide we’ll explain what this prediction means for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) and outline steps to help traditional project managers adopt agile processes.
These developments will disrupt existing business models across all industries and business size. SMBs and enterprises alike should embrace these changes rather than fearing them.
Leaders who actively take steps to develop digital business skills will find themselves with a competitive advantage come 2020, when the full effects of the digital business transformation are expected to hit.
Leadership Skills SMBs Should Focus on for 2020
To remain competitive amid the ongoing digital transformation, businesses of any size must be able to recognize and quickly respond to changing market conditions.
To do so, analyst Shoen advocates that organizations:
- Develop a change management strategy
- Adopt hybrid or fully agile processes
- Value versatile leaders who can drive cross-departmental initiatives
What this means for your SMB: If you’re an IT project manager, Gartner’s prediction doesn’t mean that you’re out of a job. Instead, look at it Shoen’s recommendations as a road map for the skills you should develop over the next few years.
In fact, as an SMB project manager, you’re in a better position than many enterprise project managers. Due to limited resources, chances are that you already wear many hats and as such, have developed a multifaceted skill set rather than a specialized focus.
Leverage this advantage and seek out opportunities to further develop your competencies. Finally, take steps to increase your knowledge and comfort level with agile project management processes.
- Operations review: Multiple teams gather to share performance data for recent initiatives, communicate big wins and any issues they’re having and participants can collaborate on solutions.
- Retrospective: Teams collaborate on completed initiatives and look for ways to improve delivery for future work efforts.
“All of these are feedback loops that really allow a team to bootstrap itself to always be improving,” says Philip.
4. Make work visible
The visual depiction of work is critical to a successful agile transition, says Philip. This helps create a shared understanding about what is important for an organization, allowing for open conversations about policy, processes and potential for improvement.
This transparency allows teams to manage work in a much more quantifiable way by asking:
- What important initiatives should we be working on first?
- What are our selection policies about initiatives we choose to work on?
- How do we improve toward delivering our work for our stakeholders?
The Project Manager Role vs. Self-Managed Teams
Finally, let’s address Shoen’s observation that in the future, the traditional role of the project manager will diminish in the face of agile, self-managed teams.
This doesn’t mean that project managers cease to exist in agile organizations. Rather that their traditional role as supervisor gives way to something more akin to that of a mentor or facilitator.
Additionally, as organizations adopt agile processes, managers may shift responsibilities and take on the role of another leadership position, such as a product owner or a service request manager.
According to Philip, the goal for any agile leader—whether they’re project managers, scrum masters, service delivery managers or coaches—is to create aligned autonomy. This means giving teams a sense of what’s important in the organization and then giving them the autonomy to make decisions within that.
“In this new world, the manager role isn’t telling people what to do so much as it is making things highly visible, making organizational goals and objectives measurable and giving teams freedom within structure to achieve those objectives.”