It’s 2009…do you know what Project Management is doing for your company?  What will PM look like in 2010, 2015, 2020?  I’m not trying to write another ‘1984’ here, but what will it be like?  Will everyone have to have PMP certification to even send in an application?  Will every organization have a PMO?  Or will none of them have a PMO?  Let’s see what we can predict for the not too distant future in a few hundred words…

Certification

PMI is a great organization and PMP certification gives a stamp of approval to a PM who has acquired educational credits, led projects for the required number of hours and passed a test.  But it doesn’t measure your skills in actually running a project and your success in customer satisfaction, etc.

It is my belief – and you can bash me if you want – that hiring companies place too much emphasis on this certification.  I have nearly 18 years of PM experience, yet no PMP certification.  I was going to get it around 2004 as it was part of a hiring agreement that I would get a $10k bonus upon obtaining certification.  That bonus was important to me, but the PMP certification really wasn’t as I was very busy and preparing for the test was not something I felt I could spend my time on right then.  But, for the bonus, I was going to do it, of course.  Then the company closed down and so did my motivation to get the certification.

I’m probably biased because I don’t have the certification, but I think too much emphasis is placed on it by hiring companies…I think it  trendy to put it in the job requirements.  In the next 5-10 years, I think a push for this type of certification will only increase, not decrease.  That said, if there are any of you hiring managers and CIOs out there who need a very experienced PM and don’t care about the paper certificate, you know how to contact me.

PMOs

Will PMOs be the norm in 5-10 years?  Will they be necessary?  I think so.  A well-run, well-organized, well-stocked, and well-documented PMO can definitely help an organization as long as that organization is large enough to need a PMO.  Smaller IT shops running mostly internal projects can probably just get by with a few project managers and some documented processes.  And these PMs would need to be stationed within each business unit, not a centralized unit.

However, if the organization is large enough with enough project activity going on, then a centralized PMO with a proven leader at the helm is essential.  It helps ensure that someone is fighting for the following:

- PM training for PMO resources

- Common, repeatable processes and documentation

- Project prioritization (project portfolio review)

- Project resource assignments

These are essential to ongoing project success in larger companies.  I believe, therefore, that the PMO will see an increase of installations within larger organizations that are experiencing a significant amount of project activity.  The current economy, of course, will play a big role in the growth of PMO activity, so we’ll wait and see how quickly this happens.

Greener PM

I still stand by my stance that greener project management is and should be the trend of the future.  In running my projects mostly remotely over the past three years I have decreased my own carbon footprint enormously.  I produce almost no paper for my projects relying on electronic documents and communication methods to very successfully manage my projects.  I’m not driving to the office very often so I’m not adding to pollution and wasting resources that way either.  And by not requiring a physical onsite workspace, I’m not taking up space and resources needed by positions that are required to be onsite (HR, accounting, finance, maintenance, etc.).

This won’t work in small organizations where all resources are already in one building.  But with larger organizations, they’re likely already dealing with a very distributed workforce anyway…so remote project management is just another step in that direction.