About the Author Jay T. Ripton is a freelance technology, business, and lifestyle writer from Scottsdale. He likes to write to inform, educate and provoke spirits. At first, the computer was a game of efficiency. Then came social media, smartphones, and the cloud. This has radically changed the way of doing business, forcing every business to become a digital business. However, not all companies have become a digital company; many are still in the midst of what is called the "digital transformation." In simple terms, digital transformation integrates digital tools into all aspects of a company's operations, fundamentally changing business processes and the way companies interact with customers. This change not only changes the way companies interact with customers, but also the way companies make products; all aspects of operations are affected, including the project management function. With this in mind, here are five ways digital transformation is changing the way project management is done today.
1. Asynchronous communication
Teams have always talked, but digital tools are nothing more than communication today. This has opened up the round trips that take place between project team members, and this happens asynchronously. Communication was previously done through meetings and emails, but now tools like Slack and Chanty have created a virtual space where much of the interaction between project team members takes place. . This change not only increases the speed of communication, but more fundamentally, it changes it to an asynchronous model where team members check in and provide updates between project tasks rather than within the project. ;in real time. Real-time, face-to-face communication always happens, but most of it starts happening in these team spaces.2. Less management
The era of working in silos is coming to an end. For project managers, the team's role as guide ends even in the traditional sense. In fact, better communication combined with the trend of agile project management, an extension of digital methodologies, ushered in an era of self-guided and self-organized project management. For example, digital transformation and project management experts at Digicoop.io, developers of the Kantree Work Management Platform, have made project managers more enablers than traditional leaders. "We chose not to have managers, but rather coordinators who make sure that what we decide together gets done," the company said in a recent blog post. "This is not a full-time role, but rather a temporary assignment. The coordinator handles projects that are 'up to the task' and match their abilities, so that we can collectively draw on the strength of each person." Project leaders still have their place, but it's much lighter and broader than before digital transformations.3. Greater attention to results.
Project management tools have gotten a lot better since digital took over the business. Tracking deliverables, setting goals, managing time, and observing team interactions have become almost a hassle for project managers after digital transformation. A project manager I know personally doesn't even spend two hours a day working; With a bit of automation and effective habits, he turns his full-time project manager job in Silicon Valley into less of a part-time job. Even for project managers not optimizing right now, digital transformation frees them to focus more on global thinking and strategic planning rather than the bolt-and-screen process work that was once the hallmark of management. of projects. Parliamentarians can do more with less, which means more focus on results and less on process work.4. Analytics in the foreground
A fourth way that digital transformation affects project management is that numbers play a bigger role in decision making; Project management is increasingly focused on analysis. Almost everything a team does can now be tracked and quantified through fully digital workflows. This opens the door to more data that project managers can use to track and quantify the work done. At the same time, artificial intelligence and business intelligence built into the software make it easy for project managers to use data in new and creative ways. Project leaders have always focused on key performance indicators, but digital transformation has significantly expanded the possibilities to rely on digital data to manage projects.