The project Management field has been transformed due to people’s expectations, requirements and different business practices. Times have changed and the use of limited and outdated tools will keep you far behind in the upcoming year. Actually, project management discipline changes as business models and technology advance. We asked the project management community at various forums about their expectations and new trends of project management field for the year 2017. Let’s have a look!

World’s Largest Professional Network Linkedin’s Project Management Community:

Cliona O Hanrahan says:

Without filling out a survey in my mind the two trends that will become part of the project management world will be how to integrate new technology into a fast competitive market and automating a lot of the current PM process this I see happening as project managers we need to be smarter, faster and more accurate than ever before.

Jason Orloske, MPM, PMP, CSM, CM says:

I believe a lot of the trends seen in 2016 will continue into 2017, including:

– Portfolio prioritization and management; ensuring the selected projects meet organizational goals

– Stakeholder engagement & management

– Organizational agility

– People vs. Process/Tools paradigm

Naomi Caietti, PMP, CTM says:

Yes, trends to continue and more new trends to follow in 2017:

Break though project management

Rise in PM/BA partnerships

Popup PMOs – gig economy

Co-located cluster teams

Virtual Teams

Big Data, AI and Robotics & the PM

David Blackman says:

Already identified, but Hybrid PM/BA roles and requested skill sets.

Martin Bell says:

In one word… Devops

On Quora: community responded as follows:

Emanuel Xifré, Business Process Management analyst says:

The new trends in 2017 will go in the line of the automation of tasks that do not add value to the projects. In today´s fast and competitive world the time is a scarce resource and the key fact to work on for the managing of projects is emphasizing work on the areas that produce benefits.

That being said, the new trends will involve agile and efficient management of projects in all its possible scenarios.

Let’s see some examples:

The project managers will need to count with reliable tools like TaskQue, Slack, Jira  and systems where to put their ideas into action. A great idea would be to count with a Business Processes system that executes your project in a smooth way. For that you can try Flokzu, whose aim is to put recurrent tasks in autopilot and improve efficiency in organizations.

Connectivity: the importance of team work has been clear in the late years. Every successful project has been the consequence of teamwork rather than isolated individuals working on their own. For that reason counting with tools that allow collaborative work has turned essential.

Integration: The integration with daily apps and services on the cloud will be a major part in 2017. For that reason every person who wants to develop a successful project must be capable of integrating to today´s tools. Make sure the project manager system you use has a simple and clear connection with your commonly use apps. A good way of integrating is via Zapier.

Definitely the new trends of project management in 2017 will be working towards efficiency and reduction of times.

Hope this helps!

Chuck Cobb, Agile Project Management Author, Mentor, and Instructor says:

It isn’t necessarily new anymore, but increased use of Agile has got to continue to be an important trend in project management.

Agile significantly increases the complexity of project management and the skill required of project managers. It is no longer a matter of force-fitting all projects to a traditional, plan-driven approach to projects that hasn’t changed significantly since the 1950’s and 1960’s. In today’s fast-moving world, there is a need to fit the project management approach to the nature of the problem and the business environment that you’re in. That many times requires blending Agile and traditional plan-driven project management in the right proportions to fit the situation.

Today, “Agile” and traditional plan-driven project management are still treated as separate and independent domains of knowledge with little or no integration between the two and it is left up to the individual project manager to figure out how to put the two together. We need to adopt a broader view of what “project management” is – if we continue to hold on to the notion that traditional plan-driven project management is the only way to do project management, the project management profession will not continue to play the leadership role that it has played for a long time.

Chuck Cobb

Author of “The Project Manager’s Guide to Mastering Agile”

Check out: Agile Project Management Academy (Agile Project Management Academy)

Michael Frenette, Project Manager for over twenty five years. Certified as a PMP and SMC. Says:

There will be a renewed focus on benefits realization in terms of defining and tracking expected benefits to the business through project definition and execution. Agile methods will be used within the context of overall project management frameworks. Agile methods will continue to spread into industries other than IT.

Now, see what community says at reddit:

Yes_thats_right says:

Evolving technologies like the cloud and devops are significantly reducing the complexity of making changes and as such, we as project managers will need to be more diverse in our skills and offer additional value to our organizations.

I see this resulting in a shift toward product management; business analysis and more customers focus (E.g. agile, design thinking etc).

Dprescott says:

More Project Manager SMEs in a particular domain. With so many new SaaS and ERP tools out there we’re becoming more product liaisons.

Well above are the top 10 predictions which were committed but below is a bonus trend prediction from a Reddit User:
Practicingitpm says:

More global projects, with multiple vendors, widely distributed teams, and a variety of business stakeholders. Project managers will be expected to facilitate more complex business decisions – getting stakeholders to agree to difficult trade offs and accept responsibility for managing their risk responses. We’re going to have to get better at business acumen, quantifying risks and responses, and putting decisions in a strategic perspective.

Conclusion:

I hope now you have got the idea about the agile and automation process predictions for the year 2017. Lets’ see what 2017 brings for project managers. If you have another prediction in mind, feel free to add your prediction in comments section.