The future of project management

Abstract

The intention of predicting or anticipating the future of business has motivated consultancies, managers, and researchers over time. This was the challenge of experts and researchers on various subjects such as John Naisbitt, who wrote about “Megatrends” in the nineties (Naisbitt, 1982), as well as Slaughter (2002), who with his article presented several studies that dealt with issues such as technology, sustainability, among others, that will impact society in the future.

In the field of project management, this discussion can be seen in Morris (2010), Padalkar and Gopinath (2016), Wawak and Woźniak (2020), Alshaikhi and Khayyat (2021), March and Dalcher (2022) and Locatelli et al. (2023). These authors addressed issues such as the development of new competencies for professionals who work with projects, changes to deal with the intensive use of Industry 4.0 technologies, as well as the challenge of incorporating sustainability into its social, environmental, and economic dimensions throughout the entire project life cycle.

Regarding technological advances, contemporary society has tried to incorporate digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Digital Twin, Internet of Things, Blockchain, among other technologies related to Industry 4.0 in a more natural way (Sankaran, Jacobsson, & Blomquist, 2021). In this sense, we can highlight in 2023 the democratization of Generative Artificial Intelligence, such as ChatGPT, BARD, among others, which are influencing work processes and the way we deliver value to customers. An example of changes that could become increasingly common is making an Artificial Intelligence application a member of a project team (Marnewick & Marnewick, 2019), which could become a trend inside and outside work environments.

Despite issues related to technological evolution, it is still necessary to deal with organizational barriers to incorporate sustainability in different production and consumption contexts (Martens & Carvalho, 2016; Toljaga-Nikolić et al., 2020), which becomes a challenge for the project area of any organization. Despite the challenges, project management scholars and practitioners have intensively discussed how to generate sustainability from projects and with projects (Stanitsas, Kirytopoulos, & Leopoulos, 2021; Ma et al., 2020).

Although the aforementioned challenges are evident, many other issues arise when adapting organizational and social structures in order to solve problems about resource allocation, designing new processes, and developing new competencies. In this sense, we can say that a project constitutes the way in which the transformation of organizations, cities, or even a country happens, with project management having and still has a fundamental role in dealing with the changes arising from the society evolution process (Marnewick & Marnewick, 2019). Regarding organizations in general, we can say that their ability to compete is directly related to their ability to create and manage projects.

Therefore, project management not only provides management practices, but also guides changes in organizational structures for the design of their activities in order to deal with changes in their internal and external environment (Lundin et al., 2015). Thus, temporary structures allow better use of resources to achieve organizational objectives, whether from the private sector or the public sector, which also increases the organizations' ability to adapt to adversities (Dalcher, 2022).

Regarding project management approaches, the evidence points to a paradigmatic shift from planning-oriented practices to those oriented towards value delivery (Bizarrias, Penha, & Silva, 2021), the latter being understood in the agile project management approach. Corroborating this perspective, the 15th State of Agile report (Digital.ai, 2021) pointed to an increase in the adoption of agile methods in IT development teams. In the same sense, agile transformation and Business Agility have become means of achieving competitiveness through a greater ability to adapt organizational structures to respond to market challenges (Dikert, Paasivaara, & Lassenius, 2016). In addition to this advancement in agile approaches, it is necessary to highlight the need to have hybrid methods as an alternative to the use of project management approaches that are purely planning-oriented, or even the adoption of agile practices without a proper structure to support it (Gemino, Reich, & Serrador, 2021).

Based on this context, the editors of this special issue bring perspective articles, that is, opinion articles that present a vision for academics and practitioners on “The Future of project management”. The challenge in this special edition was to consider various perspectives, such as the management of public and private projects, in addition to issues related to technology and sustainability. For this edition we present seven articles that deal with the future of public projects, aspects related to the use of technologies, as well as the aging of project professionals and the renewal of competencies in the context of projects.

The article “Exploring the future of research in project management” by Ralf Müller presents trends in relevant journals on the future of project management research. Müller (2023) highlights that researchers must understand the transition from process-based project management to principles-based project management. Other relevant topics such as the human side of projects, sustainability and Artificial Intelligence are also explored. Müller (2023) divides research opportunities into five topics: (i) Research on project management and the Grand Challenges; (ii) Research on the human side of project management; (iii) Research on the general understanding of project management; (iv) Research into advanced tools and techniques; (v) Emerging research methods and approaches.

The article “Some insights into the future of project management in public administration” by Stanislaw Gasik indicates some opportunities and challenges for project management in the public sector. Gasik (2023) highlights topics such as the projectization of public administration, the creation of structures to support service providers in carrying out their work and, especially, in resolving problems in public projects. Gasik (2023) also indicates, that in the future, more decisions related to public sector projects will be taken by the communities involved - stakeholders. This trend is related to the depoliticization of public projects, which should be facilitated by virtual and remote ways of communication between the community and public administration.

The article “The management of projects seen as non-linear, complex and dynamic systems in an adaptive and hybrid way” by Leando Patah presents, among other relevant topics, the discussion on the adoption of agile and hybrid methods to adapt to each project context. Patah (2023) highlights the importance of observing projects as systems, which can be understood as linear and non-linear systems. This perspective helps to understand system properties, analogous to projects, such as additivity, homogeneity, synergies, and interferences. Another highlight in this article is the opportunity to address the complexity inherent to projects. In the end, Patah (2023) makes a provocation by proposing that project management should be seen as a non-linear, complex, and dynamic system.

The article “Trends in systems development projects in the public sector” by Enock Godoy de Souza, Igor Pinheiro Lagreca de Sales Cabral and Roberto Lopes de Carvalho deals with research opportunities in Information Technology project management processes in the public sector. Souza, Cabral, and Carvalho (2023) are Tax Auditors at the State Revenue Service and work in the IT Department or in the Strategic and Project Management Department of the Treasury and Planning Department of the State of São Paulo. The authors mainly bring a practical perspective on the reality of managing Information Technology projects in the public sector. One of the highlights in this article is related to the trend towards adopting the agile approach in public project management, which is strongly influenced by Digital Transformation, the adoption of Objective and Key Results (OKR), Artificial Intelligence and Data Science. A research opportunity highlighted by the authors is the expectation of evolution of the metrics used to evaluate the projects results, which would contribute to replacing the function point method.

The article “The future of project management competences: How to make the right choice of competences for project professionals?” by Nelson Rosamilha presents a discussion on the adequacy of professionals' competeces according to types of projects. Rosamilha (2023) presents his point of view based on previous research that analyze 170 project management competences categorized by common, relevant, and exclusive competences, which were distributed across different project types. The author assumes that the competences needed to work on projects are those that best fit the context of project types through the Competences Funnel Approach. In this sense, Rosamilha (2023) points out that the competences of the future for project professionals must be contextualized in specific types of projects. Furthermore, a relevant aspect for future studies is the understanding that competences that were previously restricted to project managers are now distributed among professionals involved in projects.

The article “Future perspectives for project management and its relationship with the sustainability of organizations” by Marcio Pimenta, Bruno Leonardo and Paula Pimenta brought more relevant future perspectives on project management and its relationship with organizational sustainability. Pimenta, Leonardo and Pimenta (2023) point to five future perspectives for project management: (i) a cloudy and turbulent future (ii), a technological and disruptive future, (iii) a future full of new skills, (iv) a future to build sustainability, and (v) a challenging future for diversity. One of the highlights of the article is the vision of professional recycling and the retention of competences due to restrictions on hiring older professionals – ageism. In this sense, the authors warn of the need for strategic planning for the aging of professionals to deal with a supposed blackout, in the future, of professionals and competences in the context of project management.

The article “Pioneering the future of project management: Trends and emerging opportunities in the Brazilian context” by Jeferson Kerbes, Sidnei Vieira Marinho and Ovidio Felippe Pereira da Silva Junior presents opinions and perspectives based on discussion with 15 professionals who work with project management in Brazil. Kerbes, Marinho and Da Silva (2023) bring insights obtained from these professionals considering the thematic areas of Management, Leadership, Management Themes and Areas, Tools, Environment and Professionals. The authors compare the insights generated with previous studies. One of the highlights in the article is the adequacy of the competences of professionals involved in projects in order to break resistance to change or the adoption of new technologies.