Project Management May 2019

THE BREXIT EFFECT What three years of indecision means for project management

A NIGHT AT THE OPERA Life behind the curtain at the Nevill Holt Opera

THE APPLIANCE OF SCIENCE Business Reporter talks to Oatly CEO Toni Petersson on stage at FUTR Europe

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Life at the big Apple PROJECT MANAGEMENT How Tim Cook’s tenure at Apple has created a more detail-oriented approach at the tech giant

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How the Brexit vote is impacting UK projects three years on With parliament still in deadlock over how – or whether – to leave the EU, the strain on projects, and the value of good project management, has never been greater, writes Joanne Frearson

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HREE YEARS have passed since the UK voted to leave the EU, and parliament is still no closer to agreeing on how that should happen. After prime minister Theresa May’s proposed exit deal was voted down numerous times, the deadline was reluctantly extended to October – only for talks between the government and the Labour opposition to break down last week. But what does this seemingly endless stalemate mean for project management?

The effect of all the uncertainty has already been felt by industries.

In March, the IHS Markit/CIPS Construction Purchasing Managers’ Index showed a fall in commercial work and civil engineering because of concern over Brexit and the wider domestic economic outlook.

Companies are already moving their investments outside the UK. A study at the beginning of the year by the Centre of Economic Performance (CEP) at LSE found that UK firms had so far invested £8.3 billion in EU countries because of Brexit.

Political uncertainty is a big concern among project managers.

A study by the Association for Project Management (APM), conducted by PwC, found 56 per cent of businesses thought uncertainties caused by UK government policy such as Brexit to be a challenge in the next three years.

Businesses now need to make additional plans for Brexit’s potential impact on their projects. Indeed, many firms have hired Brexit project managers to help them cope with the risks any new regulations or procedures could pose.

There are many risks managers should be preparing for. Red tape could increase around trade and supply chains could become disrupted by new border regulations.

They also might lose valuable workers from the EU if freedom of movement is replaced with stricter immigration rules.

Companies that see project management as mainly the preserve of the construction and engineering sectors may need to think again. It

“Companies that see project management as mainly the preserve of the construction and engineering sectors may need to think again”

is not only needed to help deal with Brexit, but to implement many different types of change.

The APM and PwC study declared project management to be a “hidden profession” in the UK. According to the research, PM contributes around £156.5bn of annual Gross Value Added (GVA) – the measure of the value of goods and services produced in an area – to the economy.

The study also discovered project managers represent around 7.9 per cent of employment figures in the

UK, with 2.13 million people employed in the profession.

And despite the current political uncertainty, it is predicted the industry is only set to grow, with 40 per cent of respondents forecasting an increase in project sizes and 34 per cent expecting budgets to rise over the next three-years.

Although the current chaos poses many challenges for managers as the UK leaves the EU, it seems the need for good project management – and good project managers – has never been greater.

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Travelodge’s new 400-room hotel on Aldgate’s Middlesex Street was constructed using 3D modelling software

Building bigger through better teamwork

How technology is changing the way project managers work

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Travelodge’s new new 400-bedroom hotel is one of the largest of the group’s new builds. So what goes into constructing such a project?

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ONSTRUCTING A large hotel involves a lot of planning, with numerous contractors and teams that need to collaborate to get everything done on time and to budget.

James Derry, managing director of engineering services group Derry, which was responsible for the mechanical and electrical installation behind Travelodge’s new 400-room hotel in Aldgate, London, explains everything needs to be fitted in different stages.

“The thing that creates the biggest issue is the dry liners, the guy that puts in the internal walls,” Derry tells Business Reporter. “You’ve got to make sure he puts those in in the right sequence.

“They do their first fix and you do your first fix. They come in and do their second fix and we do our second fix. It is a sequence, and if you want a job to finish on time, you have to work it in together.”

Derry is able to plan and oversee the installation using 3D modelling created by the architectural or structural engineer. “You overlay your scheme into that model so it all fits in,” Derry says. “It is quite intricate, but by doing it in 3D you can see what space you have and how to fit it all in. You don’t have a duct coming out of the ceiling because you have not fitted it in the right place.”

According to Derry, the success of a project rests in it planning, and he believes there

are big advantages in using 3D modelling.

He says: “If you do it in 2D you invariably get clashes – a pipe will hit a drain, or cables or something like that. Whereas if you put all the services in 3D, you can actually see how they all fit together.

“By doing it in 3D you can see where everything lies and you don’t get clashes. Clashes cost money as you have to take pipework or ductwork out because it is hitting another thing.”

The biggest challenge for Derry is getting a project completed to budget. “Obviously the chain wants the project finished as quickly as possible to get the revenue in,” he says. “Their programmes are very tight. You are under a lot of pressure as

“You are under a lot of pressure – there are penalty clauses to get things finished within the timescale” – James Derry

there are penalty clauses to get it f inished w it hin t he timescale.

“It is imperative that you hit those, or you are heavily penalised. Rightly so – they have 400 rooms at £100 a night so you can see where they are going to lose a lot of income. [The company] identifies a day it wants it finished, you signed up to that, and you have to work to that.”

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ARTNER PREDICTS 80 per cent of project management (PM) tasks will be eliminated by 2030, as artificial intelligence takes on traditional PM functions such as data collection, tracking and reporting.

“AI is going to revolutionise how programme and portfolio management (PPM) leaders leverage technology to support their business goals,” said Daniel Stang, research vice president at Gartner. “Right now, the tools available to them do not meet the requirements of digital business.”

Currently the PPM software market is behind in creating a fully digital programme management office (PMO), but the research f ir m predicts that AI-enabled PPM technology will start to surface later this year.

“Using conversational AI and chatbots, PPM and PMO leaders can begin to use their voices to query a PPM software system and issue commands, rather than using their keyboard and mouse,” Stang said.

“As AI begins to take root in the PPM software market, those PMOs that choose to embrace the technology will see a reduction in the occurrence of unforeseen project issues and

risks associated with human error.”

Overall, Gartner predicted that by 2021 70 per cent of organisations will assist their employees’ productivity by integrating artificial intelligence into the workplace.

Gartner is also predicting that by 2020 20 per cent of operational bank staff engaged in back-office activities will rely on AI to perform non-routine tasks.

“Non-routine tasks in the back offices of financial institutions are things like financial contract review or deal origination,” said Moutusi Sau, senior research director at Gartner.

“While those tasks are complex and require manual intervention by human staff, AI technology can assist and augment the work of the staff by reducing errors and providing recommendation on the next best step.

“The outlook for artificial intelligence in banking is in favour of proactively controlling AI tools as helpers, and those can be used for reviewing documents or inter preting commercial-loan agreements,” Said continued. “Digital workplace leaders and CIOs should also reassure workers that IT and business leaders will deploy AI for good.”

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Harnessing the power of disruptive technologies D

ISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES are reshaping industries and markets in unprecedented ways and at extraordinary speed. The organisations that will succeed in this environment are those that can adapt rapidly to new opportunities and challenges. Rather than seeing only threats, they recognise that disruption creates an opening that can give them a competitive advantage.

We are clearly in a period of profound change – change that is delivered through projects and programmes. Project management holds enormous value in helping organisations integrate emerging technologies to drive needed change, increase flexibility and improve speed. For example, artificial intelligence has the potential to automate more routine aspects of work and lend project leaders more capacity to play greater strategic roles in organisations.

Yet the full business value of strategic initiatives isn’t being realised. PMI’s Pulse of the Profession® 2019 report reveals that organisations waste almost 12 per cent of their investment in project spend due to poor performance – a number that’s barely moved over the past five years.

A recent Brightline Initiative study, conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, shows 59 per cent of senior executives admitted their organisations struggle to bridge the strategy implementation gap.

The result? Only one in 10 organisations successfully hit their strategic targets.

So what can organisations do to better take advantage of emerging technologies to turn their ideas into reality? Our research points to a few recommendations.

Increasing your ‘PMTQ’ PMI is calling on project leaders to evaluate and bolster their project management technology quotient, or PMTQ. PMI developed PMTQ by drawing on insights from innovative companies that put a high priority on digital skills acquisition and knowledge, coupled with a commitment to a strong culture of project delivery.

PMTQ embraces the fundamental shift in how work is done. In the jobs of the future, workers’ time will more often be structured around a flexible portfolio of projects that will be increasingly tied to technology.

Having strong PMTQ will be essential for anyone charged with implementing strategic initiatives in a world constantly being remodeled by technology.

Leveraging digital-age skills Forward-thinking organisations are successfully leveraging disruptive technologies and managing their impact. In a recent

car by 2020. Furniture manufacturer IKEA veered into the tech realm, developing software for a series of connected lighting products and launching a new augmentedreality shopping app. These innovators understand that navigating new business terrain requires them to expand their ranks of talent rapidly and recruit new types of expertise.

59% Percentage of organisations that struggled to bridge the strategy implementation gap

Invest in formal project management approaches

Source: PMI, Pulse of the Profession 2019 report

Pulse of the Profession In-Depth Report, Developing Digital-Age Project Management Skills to Thrive in Disruptive Times, we discovered that the successful management of disruptive technologies requires a specific digital skillset that overlays other essential skills.

What kinds of skills make the difference?

Innovative organisations – those that rate themselves as effective in managing the impact of disruptive technology – have identified the critical digital-era skills that rise to the top of the list for prospective project leaders.

The top six include: • Data science skills (data management, analytics, big data) • A n innovative mindset • Security and privacy knowledge • L egal and regulatory compliance knowledge

• T he abilit y to make data-driven decisions • Collaborative leadership Innovative organisations understand that project professionals must continually develop their skills as technology continues to evolve. That’s why they’re also investing in formal processes to help their project leaders develop competencies in these areas.

Nurture a culture of agility Organisations with cultures that embrace change move quickly, decisively and effectively to anticipate, initiate, and take advantage of opportunities, yet they remain robust enough to absorb any setbacks.

For some, it’s about embracing a start-up mindset as they expand and launch projects in new sectors. For example, household appliance innovator Dyson announced a project investment to develop an electric

It is also essential that organisations continue to rely on proven practices in project management, such as effectively engaging executive sponsors. PMI research consistently points to the involvement of actively, appropr iately engaged exec ut ive sponsors as the most important factor contributing to success with projects and programmes.

Effective executive sponsors bring thorough knowledge of a project or programme and how it connects to strategy.

They also have the necessary skills and authority to clear roadblocks, the confidence to make quick and effective decisions, and the influence to champion the project with senior management.

In addition to the best practices that have been demonstrated to work in the past, leading organisations also look ahead to the “next practices” of tomorrow. They understand that success begins with identifying the right project approach for every initiative. That’s why they embrace the value delivery landscape – the full spectrum of competencies needed to deliver their projects and programmes in a digital environment. These include a variety of practices such as DevOps, design thinking, cognitive computing and more.

The only certainty today is change. As virtually every leader needs to meet the challenge of increasing market and customer demands, the organisations that thrive will stand out by their ability to adapt rapidly to new opportunities, and by their ability to recruit and develop talent with the right skills and mindset.

To learn more about PMI’s latest thinking on the future of the profession and what can be learned from organisations that have embraced technology as an opportunity, check out PMI’s Pulse of the Profession report.

INDUSTRY VIEW

Cindy W Anderson (inset, left) is vice president, brand management, Project Management Institute @pminstitute tinyurl.com/UKPMI

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Joanne Frearson talks to the Nevill Holt Opera’s Rosenna East to find out exactly what it takes for the curtains to go up smoothly at opening night…

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ITH 400 people attending each performance, a lot goes on behind the scenes to make sure opening night – not to mention the subsequent ones – run smoothly at the Nevill Holt Opera. Planning starts a year in advance and there are a lot of moving parts that need to fit together accurately to make the event work.

Founded by Carphone Warehouse entrepreneur David Ross in 2013, the event – which takes place between June and July each year at Nevill Holt hall in Leicestershire – was developed in part to enrich the lives of young people through music and arts.

“There is a challenge in putting on an opera,” Rosenna East, general manager of the Nevill Holt Opera, tells Business Reporter in her office in St James Place in London. “You have the orchestra in the pit. You have the singers on stage. You have the creative team that has designed and made the set, the costumes… the lighting, the choreographers and the technicians.

“It is 10 times more complicated than other art forms. There are a lot of human beings, a lot of artistic temperaments and everybody has got skin in the game. Everyone is hugely invested in it being a success.”

It is a big balancing act Stakeholders play as much of a part in making the festival a success as tenors and violinists.

A long list of sponsors includes Citi Private Bank, Credit Suisse

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and Aberdeen Standard Investments, all heavily invested in the project’s outcome, as East points out.

The opera does not receive any government money, she explains, and the festival operates on a mixed business model.

Around 55 per cent of the cash raised is through commercial income, with the other 45 per cent from fundraising through charitable trusts and individual donors.

“We have a wonderful network of very engaged members who support our work financially,” East says. “They feel a huge sense of ownership. It is so easy when you are in a [management position] to think this is your project. It’s not, it belongs to everyone else. You are sort of a custodian.

“Balancing all those things is an ongoing challenge. You are spinning a lot of plates all the time. A big part of managing it is juggling all of those different needs.”

It is about nurturing others The best way to do this, East points out, is to develop good relationships with stakeholders and hire a great team.

“You have got to have great people you can rely on,” she says.

“It takes great casting – I’m not talking about on stage, you have to cast people into the right roles behind the scenes.

“You must be able to give them freedom to do what they do best and how do you make sure it is all going to happen. I mean work hard, work early and start before anyone else thinks you can possibly be worrying about the summer.”

East does a lot of planning with her site manager during the winter, handing the process over when spring approaches.

A similar process takes place with the production manager.

It is important to start planning early, East explains. The opera is already talking about what it will be performing in 2020/21.

Guests enjoy a sunny evening at the 14th century Nevill Holt Hall

Opera operations: managing the chaos behind the curtain

Below: Rosenna East, general manager of the Nevill Holt Opera; left: the opera’s new theatre, a former stable refurbished in 2018

East sees her job as a hub that connects the different parts connect together, as her position commands a 360-degree view of the entire festival. “Someone who is running a particular department isn’t going to be worrying so much about what is happening in finance, or what the corporate sponsors are doing,” she says. “They might, at times, have completely opposing priorities.”

The ability to keep in touch with life on the ground and read between the lines to find out what’s really happening is a crucial part of the job. “It is not just about talking to each other, it is also about listening. Certainly, in my position it is important to listen underneath what people are saying,” East says. “What do they really care about? What are they really worrying about? What is really driv ing these par ticular concerns?”

East ascribes her street-smart skills to her previous stint working at the sharp end of the trade as a violinist. “It means I understand [the] business from the

inside-out, really,” she says.

“That makes a difference to the artists I work with, and I think it means that I can speak to the non-artistic stakeholders with passion from the heart.”

Prepare for the unexpected Measures also need to be put in place for when things don’t go to plan. “You have to plan on things going wrong, otherwise you are in for a horrible shock,” says East.

She learned the hard way – on her first night of her first festival, the Toreador in Carmen swept in for a big moment, only for him to have to leave the stage after his foot went through the chair he was standing on. East calmed the anxious audience by taking to the stage to announce that the

“It’s not just about talking to each other, it’s about listening. It’s important to listen underneath what people are saying” – Rosenna East, Nevill Holt Opera

performer had torn his trousers, which brought the house down.

The accident still caused a delay to the show, however, and a knock-on effect when catering and the people were late for the trains home. “It is a real ecosystem, everything is connected,” she says, quoting an old British Rail tenet of putting in contingencies even if people can’t see them. “You need to get yourself a few escape routes, so if one thing goes wrong there is a bit of slack that can take it up somewhere else.”

“Be brave, find your courage and find your calm. It is really not the faint hearted, but it is glorious,” is her advice for anyone wanting to embark on a career in the precarious world of opera management.

“There is so much going on you are going to be pulled in a lot of different directions, and you really need to want to do it. It is not for the fainthearted. Opera is wild. It is courage, grit and serious determination, a big smile and believing in the product. You have got to have total integrity.”

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Projecting success – how hitting goals starts with great planning Business Reporter talks to SME finance company Esme about how its own project planning is helping it help other small firms to succeed

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S MOST small businesses will know, the traditional ways of borrowing money can often be cumbersome and restrictive.

It can take weeks for an SME to get funding, in the wake of a labourious process of bank appointments, paperwork and waiting for decisions to be made. It’s not the most fertile environment in which to get potentially time-sensitive projects to take root.

It’s what convinced Esme CEO and co-founder Richard Kerton to set up the business loan company two years ago. “It’s not great for small businesses that are time poor and looking to make agile decisions to make their businesses grow,” he says when Business Reporter asks him about the challenges small start-ups can face.

At Esme, SMEs can apply online at any time.

The application process takes 10 minutes and, if approved, funds can be available within the hour. “It is what [start-ups] are really after – those quick decisions, so they can keep moving forward with their business,” Kerton says. “They can use it for working capital. They can use it to buy stock. They can use it to buy machinery – lots of different things which might enable them to move forward.”

“The key for us is regular communication, so people feel comfortable to quickly escalate any issues they have to get a quick turnaround” – Richard Kerton, Esme

Recent satisfied customers include Piglets Pantry, which Esme provided with funding to help recruit staff and purchase a glass chiller for the business, and communications firm Notion PR, where Esme helped solve a cash-flow problem in two days, enabling the agency to develop a new website and hire needed staff.

Elsewhere, Pressure Drop Brewing was able to adapt to increasing consumer demand by purchasing a canning machine.

Life is one big project The business world revolves around projects, says Kerton – and by SMEs getting access to funding quickly, it puts them in a good place to deliver these projects.

So how do Esme’s own projects take shape?

Kerton explains that the company’s aims are dictated by customer demand, or new technologies coming into the market that can make the customer journey better and less frictionless.

How the company manages its own projects, Kerton says, is by “starting with a clear vision and breaking that down into a concise business plan. That plan is broken down into a series of sprints [a set period of time during which a certain task or activity is completed and then reviewed]. Normally they have one or two weeks to complete the sprint to deliver each milestone.”

Between two to five people are placed on a project, Kerton points out. There are daily scrums – a method of managing projects in a small team that involves quick development and testing – that come together to discuss achievements or issues that need to be resolved.

Kerton says: “The sprints have a very clear and concise plan. We escalate any issues and

identify problems quickly and deal with them rapidly. We make quick decisions around them.

“The key for us is regular and open communication, so people feel comfortable to quickly escalate any issues they have and raise it to senior management to get a quick turnaround.”

The team tests and learns as they go along, explains Kerton, by building prototypes of products, which are refined following customer or broker feedback.

Kerton points to a new broker portal the firm is developing by way of example. “We have gone out to customers and brokers and identified what has worked well around that broker portal, but also what doesn’t work quite so well,” he explains.

The process then gets taken back to the office to work out the details. “We had a small workshop to identify some solutions around that feedback, and now have a six-week plan that is put into a series of weekly sprints.

“I have a team of four people working on that at the moment live – at the end of the first two weeks we will have a new broker portal built.

They will take that out to probably three or four brokers to test for a week, bring the lessons back and refine where necessary.

“The following week they will push those refinements through, go back out, test and learn and make sure they are happy with it, and then we will push it out to the market.”

Since Esme started two years ago, the company has grown from a team of five to 38. Kerton puts this rapid success down to the firm’s own rigourous project management and, above all, clear planning, vision and communication. “We have got better and slicker in how we are managing projects,” he says.

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The appliance of science: why projects need to get natural For the opening keynote fireside chat at FUTR Europe, Business Reporter talked to Toni Petersson, CEO of Oatly, about why company projects should be about making the world a better place JOANNE FREARSON

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HAT DO you bring to the world? What do you bring to people and the planet? If you can’t determine that as your core contribution as a company, then why should you exist,” says Oatly’s CEO, Toni Petersson.

Stark words from Petersson, who’s speaking to Business Reporter on stage at FUTR Europe. Making the world a better place is the reason why he gets up and goes to work in the morning.

At Oatly, Petersson insists, they do and say the things that they really believe in. “Our mission is to look at the world

in which we live and leave it better than it can be,” he says.

Making healthy, nutritious products that don’t recklessly tax the planet’s resources is the purpose behind the projects undertaken by the oat drink brand. “Over 40 million children under the age of five are obese,” Petersson says. “You see other diseases like diabetes rising, and that is really due to diet.

“How do we restore balance in society and our diets? That is the big question.

We are so polarised.”

The company was created in the 1990s to promote a healthy alternative to animalbased dairy products, borne out of scientific research from Lund University in Sweden. There, researchers developed technology whereby natural enzymes transform fibre-rich oats into liquid food.

“We try to look at nature and learn from it,” Petersson explains. “When you take the oats and chew and swallow them, what happens in the digestive system is exactly what we replicate.”

Unappetising though that may sound, the result is a product composed of a

well-balanced combination of protein, carbohydrates and fats.

Science, says Petersson, is a part of the DNA at Oatly. It determines what type of projects the company produces, how they make them and how they communicate about them.

An important part of the science behind the projects is sustainability and the reduction of carbon footprints. Oat drinks generate about 80 per cent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than cow’s milk, he explains, while land usage is also cut by 80 per cent. “We just remove the middleman – the cow,” he says.

Petersson thinks most firms want to do the right thing. But, he cautions, people should also look to science to see if what companies and their followers are actually saying is really true.

This is why we should put our trust in science, not popular opinion, Petersson believes. “We need to restore science,” he says. “Should you believe in the blogger that has hundreds of thousands of followers, or your personal trainer or scientists?”

Business Reporter’s Joanne Frearson talks to Toni Petersson at FUTR Europe

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Makin at the Measuring up to the brilliant – and famously difficult – Steve Jobs can’t have been easy for him. But the Tim Cook era at Apple has seen a less combative, more detailoriented approach to getting things done take hold.

Joanne Frearson investigates

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N HIS new book Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple To The Next Level, best-selling author Leander Kahney describes the Apple boss as a master of operations. Since taking over the reins after the death of Steve Jobs in 2011, Cook has introduced a new style of management, leading the tech giant into a whole new era of success.

The Cook and Jobs approach to managing projects are very different, Kahney tells Business Reporter over the phone from his home in San Francisco. Jobs, for example, would often set teams of people within Apple itself against each other, he says.

“He was very much into competition. He had two executives battling to see who would make the first iPhone.

When he was developing the first Macintosh, the team set themselves up in the building with a pirate flag and the rest of the company were called ‘bozos’. Jobs would encourage that.

“But Cook is far more cooperative.

He wants all the teams to work together and not to compete with each other.”

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ng the little details work world’s largest company Getting it together Kahney, who runs The Cult of Mac blog and has written four books on the company including the New York Times bestseller Inside Steve’s Brain, believes Cook has spearheaded a post-Steve cultural revolution within the company.

Instead of employees fighting it out against each other, Kahney points out, Cook has implemented a whole new culture, which emphasises kindness, collaboration and honesty. His mission has been to introduce collaboration between teams at the tech giant. Even the new Apple spaceship campus has been designed with a spirit of collaboration, making it easier for staff to walk around, bump into each other and interact.

Under Jobs, big projects were secretive, Kahney explains. For example, when the iPod was developed, staff working on it were not allowed to tell anyone else in the company what they were doing. Apple was very much a siloed operation, where the hardware teams and software teams wouldn’t know what each other were doing.

A team approach This attitude extends to every aspect of operations at Apple – even outsourcing. When Cook took over as CEO, he decided to outsource manufacturing as Apple’s own factories were expensive to run. But instead of just handing over the plans to manufacturers and leaving them to their own devices, the tech giant is closely involved at every step.

A major product might take two or three years to develop, explains Kahney, and Apple will design the whole manufacturing process for the factory, sending out engineers to help work out in intimate detail how to put everything together. What makes this operation work so smoothly is because the tech giant knows everything about the process down to the very last detail.

“They have people who are responsible for every single component of every single product, even down to the screws,” he says. “They have

someone at Apple who is tracking even the tiniest screw that goes into an iPhone. They know whether the screw suppliers have enough steel to make enough of them.

“They track all of the components really carefully, but also all of the raw materials that go into the products.

They know exactly how much and who has what.”

Apple commentator and author of Inside Steve’s Brain Leander Kahney

It’s all in the detail Apple not only tracks components with an unerring eye for detail, but also the day-to-day operations of the plants themselves – if a labour action is being threatened, or if management can’t hire enough workers, for example, Cupertino HQ will know about it.

Once, Kahney says, there was a shortage of a component because a Japanese manufacturer could not hire enough people to produce it. To solve the problem, Apple sent out a team of specialists to help recruit people for the factory.

“They are very intimately involved,” he elaborates. “They keep on track of everything – they don’t just say, we want an order of 1,000 screws and leave it up to a manufacturer. They are on top of it.

“They make sure the manufacturer has enough raw materials and enough people to deliver on time. They don’t just use one supplier – they have at least two in every single thing they

do. It is often half a dozen, a dozen, or more.”

This unerring micromanagement when it comes to component supply ties directly into Apple’s own equally exacting stock management systems.

“If a store in New York is selling a lot of iPhones, they could track it from end-to-end,” Kahney explains. “It goes all the way down into their suppliers and even the raw material suppliers.

The materials that they are using track with their system all the way through it.”

Keeping the pace with product development This shared approach to working has helped Cook develop and innovate new products such as the Apple Watch – for which the company has big plans, Kahney says, particularly in its potential as a medical device. “They have a lot of doctors on the payroll – they are trying to figure out how to do things like add a glucose monitor the Apple Watch so it can monitor your blood sugar levels.”

Meanwhile, Apple’s shift into every other aspect of our lives continues apace – other projects in the pipeline

“They have people who are responsible for every single component of every single product, down to the screws.

They know whether the suppliers have enough steel to make enough of them” – Leander Kahney, author and Apple expert

will see them enter new markets such as transport and healthcare.

“The biggest one is Project Titan, which is a self-driving car,” Kahney says. He dismisses rumours of the company shelving the project and laying off staff, and believes Titan has entered the latter stages of progress.

“From what I can tell it is a big project, involving several thousand engineers,” he says. “It is fairly advanced – they are looking into how they can manufacturer the car, which means it has gone beyond the prototype stage.

“They are seriously ramping it up as a product – it could potentially be

a really big deal. Transportation is one of the world’s biggest industries, and a self-driving vehicle would have a profound effect on all sorts of stuff not just travel but commuting, real estate, urban planning, retail.”

The other big projects at Apple, explains Kahney, are in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).

A launch is rumoured for next year, and Apple is already laying the groundwork for this with new iPhone and iPad developments that are designed to incorporate the technology.

Kahney expects it will be an immersive experience similar to the Magic Leap headset or Google Glass.

“You will have this overlay of visual information of things you are seeing in the real world,” he says.

“You could walk down the high street and look at all these buildings and it would tell you what offices are in there, what restaurants… You’ll be able to call up the menu and see what specials they have – maybe they will advertise when you walk by. Maybe you will be able look at someone and it will do face recognition and tell you their name. You can imagine for a lot of workers this would be useful.”

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Work smarter and make a stepchange in your PPM maturity E

VERYONE WILL be a project manager at some point in their career, as work continues to become more projectcentric and organisations more team-based.

I spend much of my time with subject matter experts (SMEs) tasked with running a project.

They bring technical knowledge and buckets of enthusiasm, but a limited grasp of bestpractice project management. From my experience, the two standout SME weaknesses are not being able to plan and work to that plan, and not being able to lead a team with clear roles and responsibilities.

According to The State of Project Management 2018 Report, 42 per cent of projects are run by “professional” project managers, leaving a higher portion to SMEs. Organisations need to equip their teams and these SMEs to run effective projects. And this year’s report tells us 53 per cent of respondents are somewhat or very dissatisfied with the current level of PPM maturity in their organisation and that the number one challenge for organisations is “poorly trained project managers”. The data certainly has room for improvement, with 32 per cent of respondents admitting projects are never or sometimes completed on time, 30 per cent that they are never or sometimes completed on budget, and 33 per cent stating benefits are never or sometimes achieved.

We need to train our project managers, even the SME ones, and improve our project management maturity. Organisations need a champion for best-practice project management, and in the ever-expanding world of superheroes, it’s time to welcome the PMO, complete with cape and badly positioned pants. Of organisations engaged in project management, 83 per cent have one or more PMO. The largest growth area in terms of responsibilities of PMOs in the last couple of years has been project manager training and mentoring.

Looking to the future, two-thirds of PMOs believe their scope and responsibilities will increase, but in terms of FTEs they will not rise in proportion. This suggests PMOs need to increase productivity – do more with no more people. How can we achieve these goals of improved project management maturity, driven by the PMO, who themselves need to increase productivity? We need some very good tools. A project and portfolio management (PPM solution) is that tool.

A PPM tool should enable us to focus on high-value activities, letting us automate where possible. A shocking 24 per cent of respondents for The State of Project Management 2019 Report said they spent more than two days per month manually collating project status information! The business case for deploying a PPM tool probably does

30% The percentage of organisations without a PPM solution that plan to deploy one in the next 12 months

“It’s time to work smarter by eliminating manual reporting, enabling collaboration and informed decision making, and catering for SME project managers”

not need to look any further than that. Forget the added and significant benefits of consistency in ways of working, data-driven resource management, improved collaboration and transparency on project status.

It’s time to work smarter by eliminating manual reporting, enabling collaboration and informed decision making and catering for those SME project managers. Microsoft Project Online is a tool of choice for organisations looking to deploy an enterprise PPM solution. “Professional” project managers can continue to work using the power of Microsoft Project, while decision makers, line managers and team members are able to access project information with easy-touse browser-based interfaces. Dashboards come alive with Microsoft PowerBI, surfacing the latest project information, providing one version of the truth rather than manipulated PowerPoint slide decks.

Microsoft is rising to the challenge of the SME project manager with additional tools such as Planner (part of Office365), a simple Kanban board task-management solution.

Microsoft also recognises that projects might be tracked and managed using other solutions. If only we could see a consolidated view of projects across these different data sources. Microsoft Roadmap provides a simple summary view of projects and their key milestones, enabling a mini portfolio or programme owner to maintain track, wherever the project is managed.

But do organisations see any benefit in deploying a PPM solution? The State of Project Management 2019 Report tells us

that a third of respondents who don’t have one are likely to invest within the next 12 months. So what can they hope to achieve?

It’s worth hearing from some organisations that have recently deployed Microsoft Project Online with our assistance…

“The real value is having one version of the truth with accurate data and a consistent approach to project delivery,” Melanie Wood, Head of Programme Management, added.

“We can trust the data, which gives me confidence to deliver our vision and goals.”

Charter Court Financial Service

JD Sport

Improved visibility made an immediate impact on the business. The granular portfolio-level views ensure every member of the team, as well as other parts of the business, know exactly what is happening with every project in the pipeline against reportable milestones.

Everyone in the project management and leadership teams now access consistent information, fundamentally changing how they make decisions and the actions they take actions both now and in the future.

According to Simon Drinkwater, associate director of change delivery, “we needed a more structured, dynamic and proactive project and portfolio management function befitting a FTSE 250 business.”

“Previously we were using other Office tools, including PowerPoint and Excel, to produce our reports – but of course that was labour intensive and brought a degree of subjectivity into the mix,” explains Mark Yates, PMO Manager for the IT PMO. “We wanted to have more of an objective view of our project status. Now that Project Online is geared up to catch all the data, we’ve been able to consolidate all of our risks, issues, actions, changes, status updates, documentation and milestones into our reporting and to produce those reports quickly and efficiently.

We have real-time visibility over individual projects, as well as how the portfolio is performing overall.”

Go Ahead Group One of the biggest impacts has been in reporting. Instead of cumbersome, manually maintained spreadsheets, the leadership team can now access real-time PowerBI dashboards supported by project status reports. The dashboards allow them to clearly see the entire portfolio status “We will be able to show the real value we’re adding through each individual project,” said Enrique Fernandez-Pino, CIO.

Microsoft Project Online can cater for all types of project managers, from SMEs to the pros. Upgrade your PPM maturity, visibilit y, resource management and collaboration – and get back those two days a month!

INDUSTRY VIEW

Vince Hines is managing director of WellingtonePPM, a Microsoft Gold Partner Read more from our client case studies at www.wellingtone.co.uk/case-studies

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Inspector The Inspector was interested to learn that thousands of UK graduates are to become qualified experts in AI, as part of a new joint governmentindustry package to boost productivity and create highskilled jobs in the sector.

“Artificial intelligence has great potential to drive up productivity and enhance every industry throughout our economy, from more effective disease diagnosis to building smart homes,” said business secretary Greg Clark. “The announcement is our modern industrial strategy in action, investing in skills and talent to drive high-skilled jobs, growth and productivity across the UK.” UK companies are increasingly using AI, in processes that range from manufacturing and construction to fashion and medical imaging.

Upskilling people to develop and maintain the new technology is crucial to its success in boosting productivity.

Project management software provider Mavelink has raised $48 million from Carrick Capital Partners and Goldman Sachs Growth Equity.

Mavenlink’s technology allows organisations to plan and deliver work, manage project financials and resources, and collaborate with distributed teams and clients. Ray Grainger, CEO and co-founder, said: “The

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tide is rising, businesses are growing, competition is heating up and there’s tremendous need for process and technology transformation in order to compete and thrive in the years ahead.”

Mavenlink was recently ranked in Deloitte’s Fast 500, and the company’s growing client base includes progressive companies such as Salesforce, Qualtrics, Vizient, WPP, IPG and Cornerstone OnDemand.

A report by the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) showed that construction can reap major rewards from digital skills and technology, but only if it takes decisive action to use these tools in the next five years.

The research found that embracing digital technology and cutting-edge skills can help address ongoing industry challenges, such as thin profit margins, the need to recruit, upskill and retain employees, and improving health, safety and mental wellbeing. “Construction has lagged behind other industries in harnessing the benefits of digitalisation but is now looking to catch up,” said Stephen Radley, CITB director of strategy and policy. “New technology has enormous potential to make construction greener, safer and smarter, while boosting productivity.

“Skills will be at the heart of these changes and we will work

Dogberry The Girl’s Guide to Project Management

www.girlsguidetopm.com

Elizabeth Harrin, who set up the website, first started blogging about project management in 2006. Her blog provides practical solutions and easy-to-use templates to help industry professionals manage projects. Articles include posts about how to support and inspire a team, and how to work using agile methods.

The headquarters of the European Commission in Brussels with government and industry to agree digital skills goals and a plan to meet them.”

The CITB has committed some £7m in funding to help industry get the skills it needs to modernise through investments in offsite, digital skills and immersive learning.

The European Commission is proposing to invest €421 million in 69 key projects that will improve mobility for citizens and businesses alike.

The projects selected aim to promote digitalisation, making roads safer and fostering multimodal connections that are inline with the Europe on the Move initiatives.

Violeta Bulc, EU commissioner for Transport, said: “We are delivering on the EU’s connectivity objectives.

These projects, on strategic

sections of Europe’s transport network, will help the transition towards safe, smart, inclusive and sustainable mobility. We expect our funding to trigger €1.3 billion in total investment in the EU economy.”

The largest part of the funding will be devoted to supporting multimodal logistics platforms €109 million, which make it possible to shift freight between different transport modes.

The Project Management Podcast

www.project-managementpodcast.com

This podcast and blog is aimed at both beginners and experts, and comprises interviews with project managers around the world.

Hosted by Cornelius Fichtner, it features posts about how to complete projects 50 per cent faster, how to time manage projects and what to do during a disaster.

PM Tips

pmtips.net

This blog gives useful tips to the project manager about risk management, productivity, collaboration, innovation and leadership. Topics for articles include reasons for missed project deadlines, managing expectations of team members and how to stay focus on the end goals. It also covers software managers can use.

Project Management for the Masses pmforthemasses.com

Zoho Cliq (iOS, Android) Zoho helps businesses

plan, track and collaborate with not only employees, but also their clients. Members can chat with other and look at timelines of projects.

Asana (iOS, Android) Asana helps teams stay

focused to the daily tasks and goals of projects. The software allows managers to visualise projects and identify current roadblocks.

Cesar Abeid’s blog talks about his own experiences as a project manager. He provides tips on how to be more productive and manage projects stress-free. Abeid has written books on the subject and his podcast covers topics such as project delivery and emotional intelligence.

How should leaders learn, and what should they read?

“Management thinking, once a dry directive, has now moved to the mainstream”

M

ANY BUSINESS authors have become internet sensations via public speaking, self-publicity and the phenomenal education platform that is TED talks. Simon Sinek, Daniel Pink and Seth Godin have all gathered global followings with inspired ideas about how we should work to best inspire. Whitney Johnson, Terence Mauri and Tiffani Bova each have thousands of followers who not only read their publications but engage with them directly through social media. They speak regularly at conferences worldwide and carry powerful messages with them.

The benefit of such close contact with management thinkers is twofold. Firstly,

there is the real-time learning that comes from instant publication or comment. Secondly, they are all aware of and respect each other, and work in a form of “digital management collaborative”. Ideas breed new ideas and theories support the work of others. The net effect is an ever-expanding ripple of original material, accessible by all.

However, the real quality of a business writer or educator is not defined by the financial success brought by these powerful networks. Although writing across a broad range of subjects, they are all similar in one aspect: they are passionate about what they believe in and want to help as many people as possible learn from their ideas. Their

principles are to disrupt the status quo, be innovative and bring a better way of working for all. Management thinking, once a dry directive, has now moved to the mainstream, bringing its own rock stars with it.

Today we have a greater selection of business writing available to us than ever before. Even where 200 pages might seem too time-consuming either to write or read, thousands of articles are published online every day. And where it is still important to seek quality, the change in delivery

mechanism and engagement levels means we are not only fully immersed in the thinking of the individual but inspired to take our own ideas and bring them to the fore.

INDUSTRY VIEW

Dr Ben Laker is a Professor at Henley Business School and a director at the National Centre for Leadership and Management @DrBenLaker www.ncflm.org

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Why freely accessible material data is key for successful and innovative projects

T

HE WAYS in which engineers select materials for projects has, for many years, remained unchanged. The tendency is one of human nature – towards a reliance on prior experience, existing contacts, web searches, or sticking to what they know has worked well before.

This has been further cemented by a need to meet numerous strict standards in materials, particularly around safety. Many engineers respond to this in the same way – they simply rely on previously used materials and may be unaware of equivalent materials standards that permit a range of alternative selections.

Engineers’ reliance on existing ways of working has limited innovation. It has also left enormous scope for them to discover much more interesting and effective solutions for their projects.

Some 84 per cent of engineers still carry out a simple Google search as their first port of call when looking for materials for a project, according to research by online materials platform Matmatch, in conjunction with BCG Digital Ventures. Other key resources include supplier websites, trade shows and scientific journals. In addition, people typically search for the materials, brands and standards they already know, or they use an in-house database, rather than seeking new items. This stymies innovation.

“We’ve found that engineering project managers and material engineers, when they take on a new project, tend to start with their own knowledge and explore limited options from there,” explains Melissa Albeck, CEO of Matmatch. “They

“Matmatch has developed a free-touse online platform which allows anyone in need of materials to search thousands of examples”

think along the lines of materials that have worked well for similar applications in the past. And those materials might well do the job, but there could also be something out there that would really be a much better fit for that product.”

“In effect, many engineers’ reliance on search engines as the primary means through which they look for materials creates a problem common in the consumer world – they start by typing in terms they already know something about,” says Albeck. “The aim for us is to help people break out of that cycle and to give them instant access to information on other viable and potentially more advantageous alternatives.”

Matmatch is creating an easy route to discovering and accessing these other materials. It has developed a free-to-use online platform, which allows anyone in need of materials to search a database of thousands of examples, including metals, polymers, ceramics, glass and composites.

Engineers can assess the particular properties of different materials, compare their viability for specific uses, and discover equivalent standards of the available materials where needed.

“Until now, a lot of people have tended to rely on their own knowledge, or asked people around them, because it has been so hard to find the right data. That’s the issue we are solving,” explains Albeck.

Matmatch’s database gives engineers access to a range of key details about different materials, with all the information having come from reliable sources, and verified by an in-house team of material scientists. The company also uses machine learning to

predict materials data, and sees potential in using technology to automatically match engineers with materials.

Crucially, suppliers of many materials can be contacted directly through the platform, enabling engineers and project managers to get in touch with experts, who can advise and assist with the right materials. Before Matmatch, companies would have had to search, sometimes extensively, to find material information or procure those materials.

The platform, designed to provide users with a much more straightforward route to pertinent information, is used among engineers finding solutions for everything from wind turbines to ship parts to consumer goods and beyond.

A development engineer at a major sports car maker recently found the platform useful as a means of identifying quality materials and suppliers for vehicle interiors. Typically, in the car industry, engineers would search online, visit trade shows and discuss the details with contacts before deciding on materials for a new project. A key benefit of Matmatch proved to be the ability to have an overview of and comparisons between different material suppliers. The engineer explains: “Trade shows contain mainly a closed circle of companies, and to open that circle with a platform will be important in making materials sourcing in the automotive industry more dynamic.”

For smaller firms too, the potential impact of opening up free access to vast swathes of data – on tens of thousands of different materials – is essentially limitless. Materials innovation has tended to be the preserve

of some of the very largest companies – Apple, for example, might roll out a new product using a completely unconventional material, but as Albeck explains, “it has the resources and the in-house expertise to focus on experimenting with multiple unusual materials where others generally would not. Now other companies can more easily try useful alternatives”.

“Historically, smaller companies have tended just to go with the cheapest material that’s out there, or just whatever will be the quickest to market,” she adds. “That restricts innovation because if they’re not looking into the options and asking if there might be better materials available, then it is harder to take things to the next level.”

With the Matmatch platform being free to use, it is expected to democratise information across industries, encouraging innovation from early-stage start-ups to large businesses.

Ultimately, for Matmatch, the goal is to continue opening up and making more easily digestible details on as many different types of materials as possible. There is already information on thousands of distinct materials on the company’s database, but more are being added frequently.

By using the new tools, engineering project managers can move away from less effective ways of working and instantly tap into an online database of materials to transform their product creation.

INDUSTRY VIEW

To find out more about how to find the best innovative materials for your next project, visit www.matmatch.com

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Project management: the ‘hidden profession’ contributing £156bn to the UK economy P

ROJECTS ACCOUNT for a significant share of organisational activity in the workplace, yet in the UK at least, there is relatively little data on the size of project activity, the number of people involved and the economic contribution of projects.

This all changed recently, however, when the Association for Project Management (APM) and PwC published a new study, The Golden Thread, which, for the first time, has benchmarked the contribution of project management to the UK economy and society.

“Project management has for too long been cast as a Cinderella or hidden profession, working hard behind the scenes to ensure others’ success,” said Debbie Dore, chief executive at APM. “But this new report recasts the profession into the role of a ‘golden thread’ – a seam that runs through the fabric of UK plc, helping to develop new services, drive strategic change and sector-wide reform.”

The study tells the story of the value of a profession that far outweighs other established business services such as marketing and law. In people terms, it reveals that the project profession employs one in 12, or 8 per cent of UK FTE, and makes a financial contribution of £156.5 billion of annual Gross Value Added (GVA) to the UK economy each year. By comparison, the marketing sector employs 415,000 or 1.5 per cent of UK FTE and contributes £36.5 billion.

Sector insight The report reveals that the financial and professional services, construction and healthcare sectors make up almost two thirds of the total project management GVA. Sue Millington, programme manager at Network Rail, said that the figures were “impressive”. She added: “There are probably a lot more people who are project managers that are not included in that FTE figure, but it shows how important it is.”

Within the construction sector alone, 20 per cent – or one in five employees – are engaged in project management activities, something Jonathan Stewart, U K m a n ag i ng d i r e c tor at independent property and construction consultancy Gleeds wasn’t surprised about. “Construction is all about project management, so that makes perfect sense to me,” he said.

“The number of projects is also likely to increase – you’ve only got to watch the news to see that we need more schools, hospitals, housing and infrastructure. New forms of energy need to be created, advances in technology, and all this requires project management. It just goes on and on.”

A positive future For the most part, the study revealed that businesses across all sectors were optimistic about the future of project management. Fifty per cent of the survey respondents expected that the number of projects they undertake would remain at a similar level over the next three years and 40 per cent predicted growth in project-based activity.

With regard to budgets, a third of those surveyed expected that the size of project budgets would increase in the coming three years. An increased focus on value over cost, especially in the construction sector, and an expected increase in the number of international projects were predicted to be key drivers of growth, according to the cont r ibutors. Addit iona lly, as awareness of the profession continues to increase, it is expected that a greater proportion of project work will gain more distinct attribution to the profession itself, resulting in greater recognition and appreciation of the role of the project manager.

With the contribution from and demand for the project profession being both more extensive than many commentators

may have predicted, and also set to increase, could we be heading towards the demand for qualified and experienced project personnel starting to outstrip supply – ultimately leading to the failure of increasing numbers of projects? Dore cautioned this could be a very real situation. “Too often companies are jeopardising project successes by relying on accidental project managers – employees who may show the right skills in other roles but don’t have the formal knowledge, experience or training to fully manage a scalable, complex or integral project from start to finish. Understandably it can be a tempting proposition – to task a successful employee to take on a new project, especially when budgets are limited – but having qualified and experienced project professionals at the heart of your organisation increases efficiencies and mitigates losses.

“Project management has for too long been cast as a Cinderella or hidden profession, working hard behind the scenes to ensure others’ success” – Debbie Dore, APM

That’s why this study highlights to business, government and the education sector the importance of training, development and professional standards (such as chartership) as the best way to develop a talent pool that is to scale and fit for purpose in today’s and tomorrow’s world.”

With 32 per cent of The Golden Thread respondents citing a challenge from the past three years as having access to enough people with the right project management skills and capabilities in the UK, it’s clear that there’s a lot of work to be done to train the next generation of talent. Sandie Grimshaw, partner at PwC UK, explained the need for the UK to focus on skills further: “As ‘megaprojects’ increase in size and complexity, project professionals’ skills and attributes will need to change and adapt to handle media and political pressure along with

strategic stakeholders in ways that are akin to professional diplomats,” she said.

It would appear then that having the right project management frameworks, methods and tools, and the right people to use them well, should now be considered a necessity, not a luxury, and be something that runs through the heart of a business.

It’s also now clear that we need to recognise the value of projects and project management to the economy and society. Dore concludes: “As a profession it’s critical that we promote project management, close any skills and talent gaps, and develop appropriate mechanisms to create an effective talent pipeline to fulfil this growing capability requirement.”

INDUSTRY VIEW

@APMProjectMgmt www.apm.org.uk

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E LIVE in uncertain times for businesses across the globe: Brexit, the threat of international trade wars, ongoing digital transformation, the introduction of disruptive technologies, the threat of climate change and the potential for a future economic downturn all mean that organisations need to be prepared to adapt on the fly to deal with changes that put their success at risk.

Companies that are “business agile” are able to rapidly adjust tactics, resourcing, personnel, management, asset deployment, capital investment, or whatever element needs to be corrected to keep projects and all operations on track when business conditions shift dramatically. Building in strong flexibility ensures that teams can stay on course to achieve strategic goals and overall business objectives.

Indeed, ensuring enterprises have the strategy and infrastructure in place to provide the business agility they need has become business critical. When it comes to project management specifically, PMOs and PMs are increasingly having to deal with change management projects that need a high degree of visibility, cooperation and adaptability.

Increasingly, however, we are seeing people at every level and function in the business dealing with change management initiatives that require greater fluidity and collaboration. It has become crucial for people across an enterprise to be able to quickly understand changes in their markets and have the tools to adapt rapidly – from rank-and-file employees to team leaders and project managers, to senior management and directors, up to C-suite executives.

And there are clear ways to make this level of business agility a reality.

In the face of global uncertainty, the future is an agile one need. Employing bold strategies, new ways of working and business tools that offer greater flexibility enable enterprises to develop the agility to meet future challenges.

The evolution of business agility Being “agile” may have started as a specific approach to project management, but it has evolved into a strategy that permeates entire organisations. Being “business agile” encompasses the ability to quickly understand how a marketplace and the needs of its customers can change and be able to respond swiftly. It ensures organisations can move faster than ever in terms of their portfolios, programmes, projects and deliveries.

Enterprises that embrace business agility often find that their work and decisionmaking processes become quicker and more efficient, enabling innovation and out-ofthe-cubicle thinking that may not otherwise have been possible.

Research indicates, however, that many organisations still have far to go when it comes to being truly agile. The Business Agility Institute commissioned its first global survey last year to gauge how companies rate their own performance and how far along they believe they are in integrating business agile principles into their operations: 69 per cent said they need to be more agile. The survey also showed that over 60 per cent said their market was being disrupted or was unpredictable.

The figures are daunting, but there are straightforward steps organisations can take to develop the business agility they

Making a whole team business agile Developing agility across PM teams and other areas calls for collaboration, information sharing and project visibility. It also requires an all-in approach with employee tools that ensure each person is able to communicate in the context of team and organisation-wide objectives, understand where and when adjustments are needed, and see what others are working on and how things are progressing.

Ultimately, business agility depends on teams across organisations being able to make adjustments together. There are three key components that enable this: • A lignment: breaking down silos within an organisation is vital in overcoming poor workplace collaboration, missed opportunities, misaligned goals, duplicated work processes and incompatible systems. Establish and communicate one unified vision. Managers should use this vision as a reference point for improving collaboration within and between their teams, aligning team goals with organisational objectives.

• Speed: being able to move fast to meet customer or market changes is more critical than ever. Companies that embrace

“It has become crucial for people at every level and function across an enterprise to have the tools to adapt rapidly”

business agility and recognise the need to constantly evolve – implanting the impetus to change with the marketplace in their corporate DNA – thrive and embrace opportunities when market dynamics shift. Putting in place technologies that ensure employees are able to quickly recognise changes in their industry, understand how the business needs to react and have the flexibility to initiate the necessary adjustments creates a faster, more effective decision process.

• Effectiveness: businesses need technologies that enable more effective communication and collaboration across teams, business units and geographies.

It is vital they put in place methods and tools that ensure communications between spread-out teams and individuals are simple and direct. Having a technology platform that lets employees coordinate work, monitor resourcing, manage workf low and keep up to date on the status of projects – regardless of where they are – is key to true business agility.

Tools that drive the agile business Tools such as Clarizen One, our core project management and workplace collaboration solution, provide a solid foundation for a connected and flexible approach to projects and other functions within the business.

For many enterprises, however, achieving true business agility may require additional solutions that improve visibility and allow

for more rapid input at every level of the organisation.

Executives and managers today need clear line-of-sight between objectives and activities to drive employee engagement and foster collaboration. Clarizen Eagle is a tool designed to do just that, creating a unique virtual space for each initiative where stakeholders collaborate and all relevant goals, KPIs, decisions, action items, discussions and meeting notes are captured in real time.

Additionally, in the front lines of the enterprise, employees may require a streamlined task-management solution that enables them to work in a more agile manner, yet still meet deadlines and achieve goals. In Clarizen Go, teams can do that by accessing workspaces where they create multiple boards, each with its own workflow and customised milestones.

Over the next decade, businesses will see major changes in their markets, their competitive landscape and their customers’ expectations. To be ready to meet these growing challenges, they need to ensure they are devising and implementing strategies and using tools that provide the business agility needed to meet these and other, unforeseen hurdles.

INDUSTRY VIEW

Gadi Lemberg is VP, customer experience and professional services at Clarizen.

Visit www.clarizen.com to safeguard your organisation in today’s challenging and complex market

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The debate What needs to change in the UK in order for projects to run more effectively?

Gemma Shaylor

Debbie Dore

Allan Thomson

Cindy W Anderson

Boaz Chalamish

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B

INDUSTRY VIEW

EADERSHIP AND communication skills need more emphasis and can support the delivery of project management methods in organisations.

Agility cannot just be a buzzword – there needs to be specific support and processes in place across the organisation to embed agile ways of working, including sponsorship guidance.

The use of project end-reviews is low. Lack of resources and time have been cited as the main reason, but other factors include senior management being more concerned with delivery, a general lack of interest in project reviews and small or simple projects not always being seen to require them. Project reviews need to happen, though, so teams can avoid the pitfalls that have occurred in the past. This will increase their chances of success.

The PPM function should be lobbying the organisation to ensure they have representation at the most senior level. However, beyond mere representation, senior managers need to appreciate the work project managers do and understand the challenges that they face.

@APMProjectMgmt www.apm.org.uk

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Allan.Thomson@AXELOS.com

tinyurl.com/UKPMI

www.clarizen.com

Project product marketing manager Microsoft E ALL do! There’s a new generation of project management that reaches far beyond old-school individual projects hidden away in the IT department. The distinction between project management in the traditional sense and portfolio management as it’s emerging is an important one, and, although it’s a phenomenon that isn’t new, digital transformation represents a recurring and crucial conversation in the business landscape.

While we can hire more people and adopt new tools to manage our projects, if the whole organisation isn’t willing to embrace change, those projects will continue to miss deadlines, be over budget and never actually achieve the intended goal. After all, people, not organisations, drive change, which means everyone needs to be involved when it comes to improving and implementing more effective project and portfolio management (PPM). That’s why we recommend all our customers adopting Microsoft Project Online to engage with one of our PPM partners to support their digital transformation journey.

INDUSTRY VIEW

You can read more online at www.microsoft.com/uk/project

Chief executive Association for Project Management ILLIONS OF projects are already running effectively in the UK delivering change and benefit to society – in fact, our new study with PwC, The Golden Thread, indicates that projects contribute £156 billion to the UK economy, with project management employing almost one in 12 UK workers.

That said, there is definitely room for improvement. We need to recognise that raising the standards of project management, through, for example, chartership, will help. But equally critical to success is the environment in which projects, programmes and portfolios operate. Many projects are started without clear goals and outcomes in place, with inadequate funding, or funds that have been agreed before the true nature of the project is completely understood, and led by sponsors without a full understanding of what is required. If we could make improvements in these areas, as well as ensuring project professionals have the right skills, then project outcomes would immediately improve, delivering a greater benefit to society.

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Vice president, brand management Project Management Institute O INCREASE project effectiveness, the UK needs to ensure that its workforce is equipped with the right digital skillsets. Although the UK is recognised as having a technologically capable and intellectually agile labour force, there are certain skillsets that will be increasingly important in the coming years.

Our recent Project Manager of the Future report found that the top digital-age skills include data science, security and privacy knowledge, legal and regulatory compliance, and the ability to make data-driven decisions.

Only 29 per cent of UK organisations already prioritise the development of these digital skills, which is comparable with the global average of 33 per cent, but offers incredible opportunity for UK organisations to gain competitive advantage. We call these leading organisations project management technology quotient (PMTQ) innovators, which are defined by always-on technical curiosity, all-inclusive leadership and a future-proof talent pool.

When the number of innovator organisations grows, more projects run more effectively and drive more value and business outcomes.

Why a project management career can weather the economic storm

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N TODAY’S political and economic uncertainty, it would seem understandable for many to have concerns over their career prospects.

Yet according to new research, project management seems to be one profession bucking that negative trend.

Nearly eight out of 10 professionals questioned in our recent Salary and Market Trends Survey – taking in more than 4,600 project professionals across multiple sectors – said that they were feeling optimistic about the supply of jobs over the next five years, with 70 per cent expecting pay increases in the next year.

What’s driving this confidence when so many other industries remain fearful? One factor could be increasing job satisfaction, shown by our

survey to be high – with 81 per cent stating they were satisfied in their current roles, compared to 77 per cent in 2015. Confidence around project professionals’ own economic prospects has also grown, rising to 56 per cent this year, from the 43 per cent who rated it as excellent or good in 2017.

Opportunities to move within the industry could be another reason for project management weathering the economic storm, with 35 per cent saying they are likely to change employer within the next 12 months.

It is this encouraging outlook that could help the project management profession ride out any uncertainty faced by the UK in the months and years to come, while also fuelling innovation in

many different sectors and offering new or existing project professionals the chance of an attractive and sustainable career path full of increased learning opportunities and rewarding professional development.

It’s clear that, whatever the weather, nurturing talent through training, development and standards (such as chartership) remains crucial to retain a positive workforce and develop a talent pool that is fit for purpose.

INDUSTRY VIEW

Debbie Dore is chief executive at Association for Project Management @APMProjectMgmt www.apm.org.uk

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USINESS AGILITY is even more crucial in the UK, as Brexit may bring economic uncertainty, digital disruption and other challenging situations that force change. Increasingly, organisations can expect to see major shifts in business conditions, the competitive landscape and their customers’ expectations.

Enabling agility and improving working practices are absolutely crucial to achieving strategic goals and business objectives. This is only possible with better collaboration, visibility and engagement – from the C-suite to the frontlines of the business. Enterprises need to establish their vision and ensure teams have the impetus and flexibility to execute it by keeping initiatives and projects on track and aligned with the business.

Companies need to address why a third to half of all UK projects fail.

Management teams must strive to refine ways of working by gathering insights from the planning phase of any project or initiative. It is vital that they establish a feedback loop to avoid repeating past mistakes and avoid pitfalls and behaviours that stand in the way of potential success.

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