There are two trends that have been growing in 2017 and will start to have a real impact in 2018.
The first is the greater understanding of agility. Now you may say that Agile has been around for years and has really taken off in 2017 and that’s not new. But I am not talking about Agile, I’m talking about agility.
In the last couple of years lots of people have jumped on the Agile bandwagon as if is it the answer to all project problems. These Agile evangelists tell us that every project should be Agile and Waterfall projects are doomed to failure.
They are wrong and the profession is starting to realise this. In 2018 we will start to talk about agility as something that we apply to different degrees according to the context of each project. It isn’t a binary choice between Agile vs. Waterfall, it’s about how much agility do we need to apply to respond to the different levels of uncertainty in every project.
The second trend relates to what is often referred to as ‘Best Practice’. Professional bodies and business consortia frequently develop guidance for projects, programmes, portfolios, Agile and so on. They then publish this guidance in expensive books and protect it through copyright laws.
Such guidance is derived from the profession and should be free to use by the profession.
In 2014 a different kind of guidance was launched that is free, open and community driven. As with most good ideas it started slowly but 2018 looks like the year that ‘Best Practice’ becomes completely free on the World Wide Web - www.praxisframework.org is freely available online.
Some of the best-known publishers of Best Practice are now considering making their guidance free of charge in 2018 and this can only be of great benefit to the profession.
Adrian Dooley is the lead author of the Praxis Framework™.
Originally a construction project manager, he became involved in the development of project planning software for PC's in the early 1980's. In 1984 he set up a training and consultancy company, The Projects Group, and ran that until its sale in 2008. Adrian was a founding member of Project Manager Today Magazine and Project Management Exhibitions Ltd. From 1996 to 2000, he served on the APM Council and during that period was the Head of Professional Development.
A frequent author and commentator on Project Management, Adrian has been published in Professional Engineer, Computer Weekly and The Daily Telegraph amongst others.
