Project professionals in more than 200 countries look to Axelos(r), Global Best Practice to help them move more quickly, more efficiently, and more collaboratively while delivering projects in a rapidly changing environment.
However, remote management of projects is a complex and difficult task as organisations try to recover from the pandemic and meet the increased demand.
Amy Hatton, PM Today’s Associate Editor, spoke recently to Allan Thomson (Axelos(r), ProPath(tm), Product Ambassador). They discuss how remote working is affecting project management and how Axelos (r) ProPath ™ can help project, programme and portfolio practitioners deliver outstanding results even when they cannot be together.
After his webinar, Remote Project Management, I caught up with Allan. A poll of the delegates revealed some shocking statistics. When asked about their most pressing problems right now, 62% of the delegates identified poor communication among their top challenges. Allan explains that this is not surprising.
“Communicating on projects is always a complex enterprise. The problem of working remotely only makes it worse. We humans love to communicate, but often fail to communicate. Seven percent of communication is based on the words we use. Remote management of projects can cause us to lose much of the nuanced information needed for communication, such as body language, gauging other’s reactions, and so forth. Technology is a great enabler.
“I recently discovered that I have traveled around the world three times in the last year without ever leaving my home. It’s amazing, but it also means that we must pay more attention to the three critical components of Leadership, Communication, and Team Management that are essential to any project’s success. This requires us to inspire confidence, resilience, as well as the right behavior in all project stakeholders. It’s also about building a team that has the right skills and knowledge to move projects forward.
ProPath(tm) was born out of this. According to Axelos’s research, professional certification gives practitioners the confidence and skills to do their jobs better. ProPath(tm), a flexible designation scheme, offers no time limits and gives individuals a greater organisational picture to help them deliver better results. The new Managing Successful Programmes (MSP), 5th edition certification is a key to this. It also gives organisations the ability to build the skills necessary to implement change and delivery.
Change is always accompanied by risk. This was something I discussed in a podcast with Allan. Allan states that risk is always present in projects, regardless of whether they are in an Agile or traditional sequential environment. “That’s why M_o_R (Management of Risk) has been integrated into the combined designations of ProPath(tm), Agile Project Expert and ProPath[tm] Project Expert. It is imperative that organisations are equipped to adapt to changing circumstances and pivot at speed.
“But it is important that we don’t sacrifice critical controls, methodologies, or disciplines in order to reach that goal. We must keep our commitment to professional development in the new remote working environment. The Project Management Institute reported in 2017 that project management is on the rise.
“That hasn’t changed, but remote working has become more challenging. ProPath(tm), a project management program, was created to equip project professionals to deliver best practices and change one powerful step at time. Thanks to tec