With business disruptions now constant, organizations must continuously evolve how they deliver projects to anticipate market shifts. To explore this challenge, I sat down with Andy Jordan, President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., to discuss the key project management focus areas for 2025.
In this article, I offer a quick glimpse into that discussion and some closing thoughts on how you can embrace, adapt, and move forward.
Watch the full recording here—Project Management in 2025: Five Trends You Need to Know and Embrace.
5 Project Management Trends
These trends cover five key areas of evolution that are critical to success. Some shifts are already in progress, while others may be brand new.
1. Getting Comfy with Your AI Teammates
Want to know the secret to successful AI adoption in project management? It’s not just about getting the technology—it’s about creating an environment where your human team members can use it safely and effectively.
Think of AI implementation like hiring a new team member. You need clean historical data as their training material and transparent governance as their operating manual. This means reviewing your data quality, developing usage guidelines, providing comprehensive training, and selecting technology tools that actually fit your needs.
When you get this right, AI transforms from a mere software add-on into a valuable team member. It excels at summarizing data, producing reports, and spotting risks and opportunities you might have missed.
2. Focus on Value Optimization
One of the most popular and pressing topics we covered was how to effectively guide a shift from performance metrics to value delivery in leadership and the project management office. But what does that look like?
Project success extends beyond traditional metrics of on time, on scope, and on budget. Business leaders ultimately care about tangible benefits like revenue, market share, cost reductions, and customer satisfaction. Miss these value goals, and the project fails—regardless of technical execution.
Your success in this area hinges on your ability to complete tasks while continuously optimizing and adapting to champion project management decisions that will drive real value for the business.
3. Accept More Than One Way to GSD
Today’s most successful organizations realize and accept there is no one-size-fits-all approach to getting work done. The key is moving beyond rigid methodologies to flexible frameworks that provide guardrails while offering your team the autonomy they need.
A big part of this is also acknowledging that the term “project” is evolving and expanding beyond traditional boundaries to include diverse work structures like Agile epics, digital product management, and value streams. Project managers must become increasingly versatile, navigating multiple work formats and tracking diverse activities through centralized technological solutions.
This transformation isn’t just about methodology—it’s about enabling more dynamic, responsive organizational work, especially when unexpected change comes calling.
4. Start Adapting to Changing Environments
Organizational agility—the ability to adapt to changing environments and keep work aligned with priorities—remains a critical challenge. While many organizations have embraced adaptive planning and flexible funding, they continue to struggle to implement project changes smoothly and with minimal disruption.
88% of executives believe their organization’s ability to adapt falls short, according to an Economist Impact study.
Key barriers to organizational agility include ineffective resource management, poor change impact modeling, and resistance to cultural adaptation. To address these challenges, organizations should focus on implementing flexible resource strategies while ensuring clear alignment between OKRs and business outcomes through robust impact analysis and validation mechanisms.
The ultimate goal is to enhance organizational flexibility through advanced strategic portfolio management approaches that induce more responsive and efficient work execution.
5. Keep Looking Ahead
Leading organizations know that staying ahead isn’t just about today’s performance—it’s about expanding their perspective across three critical dimensions: people, work, and culture.
People – proactively developing specialized skills and expertise
Work – analyzing long-term strategic impacts of current decisions with greater frequency
Culture – fostering an adaptive organizational culture through evolved project delivery methods
Delivering on the Trends
Project management doesn’t live in a vacuum. These trends build on what has happened or is happening, aligning with shifts happening elsewhere in organizations. But there is still work to be done. Based on feedback from webinar attendees, almost half felt project management could be doing more to help the organization, while only 10% felt project management was delivering optimized value.
Preparing for AI and shifting to value-driven projects—Trends that present the biggest challenge for organizations per audience polling.
Progress must be made on each of these trends rather than focusing on some at the expense of others. To get started:
- Foster enterprise-wide collaboration by discussing trends and co-creating solutions
- Assign clear accountability through a dedicated change champion who prioritizes implementation
- Drive consistent progress through regular monitoring, clear goals, and stakeholder engagement across all business areas
Optimal performance still comes down to having the right people doing the right things in the right way—but in today’s complex environment, this requires data-driven insights to anticipate and assess impacts.
See how you can empower project management that delivers value with speed and efficiency > Watch Planview’s Project Portfolio Management demo.
