Alexandra Levits Water Cooler Wisdom Project Management Whats Hot for 2017

Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom Project Management What's Hot for 2017 The Project Management profession is evolving. Just this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics gave project management its own occupational category, a major sign that Project Managers are more important players than ever. Here, we feature some of the most intriguing Project Management developments heading into 2017, including 3D and virtual reality PM, crowdsourcing, corporate social responsibility, big data, and the rise of DevOps. Trend #1: 3D Printing and Virtual Reality Many projects today take place in the cloud and via distributed teams, which can make it difficult for team members to feel fully immersed in their work experiences. Virtual reality and 3D printing technology reinvigorate the project lifecycle so that tasks and collaboration efforts resonate more strongly. dFakto is a small 45-person startup in Brussels, Belgium that has brought both VR and 3D into the field of program and project management, mainly for large enterprises like banks. As dFaktoCEO Thibaut de Vylder said in a recent Forbes article: “We created a UX experience in project management that allows people to update their project status in 30 seconds or less each month just by focusing on what’s most important.” The virtual reality experience provides full immersion with an app that allows Project Managers to see progress charts in a personal theatre style. Focus your eyes on a particular chart, and it grows. You can dive into elaborations the same way. The 3D printing component, similarly, facilitates the sense of touch. It creates something you can put on your desk, unlike a digital report that you can’t see once you close it. Trend #2: Crowdsourcing According to a recent article on Raconteur, more project managers are taking advantage of new software programs to coordinate contributions from various sources. Wazoku Idea Spotlight is one software-as-a-service tool that allows organizations to create a central hub for ideas, innovation, and feedback. Users include Aviva, Oxford University and Waitrose, a UK-based supermarket that leverages Wazoku to capture ideas from its 60,000 employees. “The success of our Partner Ideas scheme goes to show that sometimes the truly great innovations can be as simple as making small changes to the tasks you do every day, rather than the big ideas which transform everything,” said Stuart Eames, operational improvement manager at Waitrose. “By engaging our partners with the right platform and process, we’ve managed to achieve significant productivity and financial savings.” For the rest of the post, head over to the QuickBase Fast Track blog.