Where Tech Tools and Human Skills Meet in Project Management

STEVE HENDERSHOT

The work world never stands still for long; it feels like there is always a new innovation or technology that changes the way companies and teams operate. But lately the pace of change has accelerated in the project world, as artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data and next-generation collaboration tools aggressively transform the way we work.

What do these tech trends mean for you and your teams? Let’s dive in.

NARRATOR

The world is changing fast. And every day, project professionals are turning ideas into reality—delivering value to their organizations and society as a whole. On Projectified^®, we’ll help you stay on top of the trends and see what’s ahead for The Project Economy—and your career.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

This is Projectified^®. I’m Steve Hendershot.

How are emerging technologies changing the way people manage projects? Project leaders are using new tech tools—from cloud computing to the Internet of Things—to boost employee efficiency and improve project outcomes. Just take a look at the fast-emerging AI revolution. The IBM Global AI Adoption Index 2022 found that 35 percent of companies report using AI in their business, and an additional 42 percent say they’re exploring AI. And we’ve all seen the rapid rise of ChatGPT. OpenAI’s chatbot reached an estimated 100 million monthly active users in just the first two months after launch—making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history, according to a UBS study.

So, yes, the ground is shifting beneath our feet. The question is how project leaders can benefit from innovative tech rather than getting caught off guard or left behind.

To answer that question, we talked with a couple of project leaders who are making the most of new technologies. I spoke with Niral Rajani, a project manager at gaming company Aristocrat in Sydney, about how he is making use of machine learning to help with tasks such as forecasting and business intelligence.

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STEVE HENDERSHOT

Let’s start with how you think about the way that technology can benefit project leaders and their teams. Why is it beneficial to continually evaluate new technologies and incorporate them when they make sense?

NIRAL RAJANI

The role of project manager is changing, and the emergence of new tools and technology is changing the way we deliver the projects. So it’s always beneficial for the team to continuously evaluate and incorporate new technology which can help them to deliver the projects, reduce the risk and help to monitor projects in a better way.

Also, the projects nowadays are more and more complex, have multiple dependencies, so these tools can help you resolve this dependency, or manage your dependency as well. It also increases efficiency, reduces the cost and time in [the] longer run. It can improve your productivity, reduce manual tasks by automating certain workflows.

Also, the technology and the latest tools can give [you] a competitive edge over your competitors, enable you to gain insight and analysis in the processes you’ve been using to deliver projects, or to understand the pattern of the feedback received about the product or service you provide to your customer. It can also help you to make a data-driven decision, along with the logical decisions or collaborative decisions.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Niral, you mentioned risk, which I think is an interesting dimension to this. So how do you think about approaching risk, whether it’s in terms of evaluating a potential new tool and how difficult it will be to implement or when it’s time to move on from your comfortable and beloved suite of solutions?

NIRAL RAJANI

Sure. So, look, the risk of sticking around with the old process—it will make you less effective over time because the way we deliver products or run a business is changing a lot nowadays. So if you’re not updating yourself or you’re not using new processes, you’re going to be effectively outdated, and you won’t meet your goals or KPIs or productive goals, or probably the way you deliver the projects. So I think it’s quite necessary for everyone to continuously evaluate and see what tools are available in the market and how they can significantly improve your performance, or scalability, or security.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Let’s talk about some of the tech you’re using for project management. You started experimenting with data visualization tools to help monitor project metrics, but you were looking to condense this data with a little help from your coding skills. Tell me about that.

NIRAL RAJANI

I have all these boards, and I have a lot of historical data in front of me, but when I have to make a decision, I have to analyze all this data. That’s when I started looking at machine learning, which is a little bit more [of a] complex solution. What machine learning does is it has different algorithms which predicts the outcome based on historical data you have provided.

One of the examples I can give here is you can use machine learning to identify a project—what is a risk profile for a project? Is it a medium risk, is it a low risk or high risk? It can also set a classification around what sort of complexity it is. Is it a moderate or simple or highly complex project? So you can enter the scope into the data frame, and you can specify whether this project was a complex project or what was the risk profile of a project. You can also add what was the cost of the project and how much time you took to deliver the project. You can add resources as well. And then, when you train machine learning models to learn this data, next time when you input the scope of a new project, it is going to predict the risk profile of your project. It is going to predict the complexity of your project. It can also tell you what will be the cost and time needed to deliver this project and the resources required for this project.

You can also monitor a project on an ongoing basis. Once you know the cost and the effort required, you can create your baseline and you can monitor the progress of the project. You can predict the outcome for the next six weeks, three months or six months and compare it with the baseline. And you can run this system on a real-time basis. So these are the new technologies we can use in the project management space which can completely change the landscape of how we manage a project and deliver the project.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

So let’s say you are looking to update your workflow or solve a problem with new technology, whether it’s a machine learning application or a collaboration tool. What steps do you take to make sure that implementation is smooth and successful?

NIRAL RAJANI

The first step is to do your thorough research of the tool, which is going to suit best to your need. There are several solutions and tools available in the market, so you need to make sure the tool you’re picking up has all the features, and the cost is matching according to your budget.

Secondly, the planning. Now, you can’t incorporate tools straight away, but you need to make sure you have a detailed plan so there’s no loss of data, or loss of service, or any downtime or potential roadblock which can affect your product delivery or service delivery. And, of course, proof of concept is another thing you need to run, and make sure the tool selected and the parameters you’ve selected for your tool is right, and it’s going to give you the desired output which you are investing for. You need to make sure the proper training is provided to the team, otherwise people may not be able to effectively use the tool or the features, and the whole operations will not give you [the] desired result as well. And evolution is another thing. We need to continuously evaluate whether the tool and the features you have selected is still right for your business.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

If you were going to advise someone who either is interested in or has struggled to get their teams to buy in or to jump on emerging technologies in the past, how do you approach that? How do you stay on top of what's out there, find opportunities to experiment and evaluate, and then, when it's time to make the jump, how do you get the buy-in and implementation to go smoothly?

NIRAL RAJANI

Project leaders are expected to be more tech-savvy nowadays, especially in this environment where things are changing rapidly. The businesses are growing, and the needs are also becoming more and more complex.

A couple of pointers: Stay informed and be proactive. Stay on top of [the] latest tech trends, actively seek out some emerging technologies, and assess what the potential impact will be on your delivery plan, how you can improve your delivery plan, or monitoring your projects using these technologies. For me, LinkedIn is a go-to place. And I see a lot of articles coming [out] on LinkedIn. I subscribe to certain groups, and you see people offering a lot of solutions.

You should always be open to experimenting [with] new tools available in your company or any tools which you think can help you to manage your project well, and you can always make a presentation to your company around these tools. But the whole idea is: Be open to experimentation. Encourage your team to experiment. Explore new approaches and new tools, which can help everyone to deliver projects and control the risk.

Data analytics tools available nowadays can help you to incorporate data from different data points and give a unified picture. Automation tools—you can experiment and create automated workflows or streamline any processes you want, taking advantage of these automation tools. For AI tools, if you’re technical enough, you can use your programming skills and create a machine learning model from scratch or you can use the out-of-box solution available out in the market which will allow you to visually program the workflow of machine learning.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

What would you recommend that project leaders might want to invest in, in terms of their own capabilities, that will enable them to unlock lots of the tech advances that you’ve described?

NIRAL RAJANI

It’s just not tools. It’s [that the] methodology of delivering projects are changing. Traditionally, we had waterfall. Now we have agile. We have a scrum, which is more specialized. We have Kanban. And there are technologies available as well to support this methodology.

Now, delivering is one thing, but when you are working on a complex project, you need to have your eye on a couple of different dependencies, or you may be working on several small projects at the same time, which is quite possible with the agile way we are working. At that point, you have to be relying more on tools. Processes are fine, but tools will help you to manage these projects well and, at that point, I think you need to align to yourself to the best tool which suits your need. The idea of the tool is to reduce your workload, allow you to manage projects well, and keep you well-informed and control the risk or manage the dependency. So, along with knowing the process, you need to be aware of new technologies or tools which can help you to manage this process well.

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STEVE HENDERSHOT

Improved team collaboration is definitely among the most impactful tech advances—whether the teams are all in the same office or spread out around the world—and they’re opening new modes of teamwork.

Projectified^®’s Hannah LaBelle spoke with 2022 Future 50 leader Dunola Oladapo. She is the founder of the nonprofit Luton Lights and leads the Generation Connect program at the U.N. International Telecommunication Union, or ITU. Based in the U.K., Dunola works with young people across the globe, engaging and empowering them to amplify their voices in digital inclusion and development policies.

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HANNAH LABELLE

Let’s talk a little bit about some of the tech and the tech tools that you’re using in your work. So how is the greater use of technology changing how you manage projects?

DUNOLA OLADAPO

It has actually been interesting for me over the course of my career to think of how tech has played a part in the delivery of different projects and initiatives. I actually started off my career in finance. I was working on lots of different platforms, funding and balancing trades and things, and managing my work and my projects through quite niche platforms that were built in-house. But then on the side, while I was doing that, I was also working on charity projects, NGO projects, and I was also starting off my term as a Commonwealth Youth Peace Ambassador. So I was working with diverse people across the world, again, in this kind of charity sector on different kinds of projects. Some just dealing with volunteers, some dealing with stakeholders and board members. So I say all of this to give the context to say I’ve had my fair share of trying out different kinds of platforms and applications when it comes to trying to deliver something hybrid, physical or virtual.

I have noticed there are a lot more project management tools out there, especially since now a lot of people are working more virtually and hybrid way, and it’s objectively a good thing. But for someone who’s in a fast-paced workspace, I really do appreciate the simple. I really do appreciate the platforms where, especially working in a U.N. agency and working with international audiences, where it’s really easy for people to learn and to get on it, and there aren’t too many complications, and it’s something that can be universal to an extent.

HANNAH LABELLE

When you’re looking for collaboration tools, you said you like to keep it simple, so what are kind of the characteristics in that way of a collaboration tool that you find works the best for your teams and your scenarios that you’re working in?

DUNOLA OLADAPO

I think the number one thing for me, looking at collaboration tools and so on, is for something that everyone can easily get on. Something with not too high of a learning curve.

Because of my work specifically with young people, I do find that beyond just a shared document or space to have shared work, it’s really useful and helpful to have tools where people can brainstorm and visualize that in real time in an engaging way. We do calls and things with young people from across the world to brainstorm, to co-design and to get their perspectives on a range of things. We do a lot of these meetings virtually because, of course, it’s very difficult to try to physically bring everyone to one place at a time. We have 180 youth envoys in over 120 countries. These are young people doing incredible work in the communities that we’re working with almost on a daily basis. Even if they’re having connectivity issues and can’t unmute, or they can’t do these things, they can at least just very easily click on a link, put their idea in and it counts, and it adds to the impact of that meeting, and their voice is also heard and included.

It’s really important for me to share, especially as someone who works in the ITU, that 2.7 billion people do not have regular access to the internet. So when we’re discussing all of these tools, all of these projects, I just think it’s important to also bring [that] to the conversation.

HANNAH LABELLE

I think it’s a very interesting place to be working with young leaders who are leading their own projects in a way themselves. How has working with these young leaders changed how you’re managing projects from the tech aspect, as well as others?

DUNOLA OLADAPO

It’s really interesting for me because, as a young person myself—I’m 28—I work with young people that are even a decade younger than me as well. It’s really incredible working with young people digitally, but also on digital issues. So it really does, in real time, inspire our work because every engagement that we’re having with young people virtually is directly doing exactly our mission of trying to really engage them and amplify their voices in digital development.

Every single event, project, initiative that we do is always co-designed with youth. That’s one of our key things, so every day is definitely a learning experience because we actually have this open door as well where if there are other ideas, or initiatives, or applications that they suggest, we want to co-design. We want to learn. We want them to learn from us, too. We want it to be a real exchange. We want there to be an intergenerational dialogue, and that’s really important for us.

HANNAH LABELLE

When we’re looking at project leaders and using technology or tech tools in their project management, what skills or capabilities do project managers need to thrive in a tech-fueled world, and what are some ways project leaders can acquire or further develop these skills?

DUNOLA OLADAPO

Technology is supposed to, and does in so many ways, make things easier, make things more flexible for us and help amplify our work. It gives us superpowers to be able to speak to someone in a totally different time zone, in a totally different place. These are wonderful superpowers, but then there are some superpowers that technology cannot give us because these are superpowers unique to human beings at the moment, and that’s humanity, compassion. I think bringing that, and mixing our own empathetic superpowers with the superpowers of technology, is really the recipe for a really great, successful virtual project where it’s not just a project, but it’s people, right? It’s people, and we’re delivering outcomes for people.

HANNAH LABELLE

Dunola, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation.

DUNOLA OLADAPO

Thank you for having me.

NARRATOR

Thanks for listening to Projectified^®. If you like what you heard, please subscribe to the show. And leave a rating or review—we’d love your feedback. To hear more episodes of Projectified^®, visit Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, Stitcher, Spotify or SoundCloud. Or head to PMI.org/podcast.