Teamwork and project management have changed forever. Gone are the days when the whole team was based in the same office, working nine to five, five days a week. Today’s team is often made up of a mix of remote employees, freelancers, contractors and project managers, working from different locations or even different time zones.
Often these teams’ customers and partners are not in the same country either, as the digital economy continues to break down geographical boundaries.
Use diversity to your advantage
This evolution has enabled businesses to capitalize on team members’ diverse set of creative strengths, and created teams where best practices are shared across offices and cultures.
Project management has been impacted by this evolution too. More and more team members are working on a matrix structure, contributing to more than one project at a time, often with different team members, across different locations, organizations and deadlines.
Adopt a new way
To continue to manage projects effectively and meet deliverables in this new world order, project managers need to adopt a new way of working, with the management of each individual team member’s tasks, time or other resources firmly on their radar. That is why people and resource management is now beginning to enter the project managers’ remit.
By extending their view from single projects to all the outside factors that impact on their team’s ability to get things done, and ultimately the success of their own projects, project managers are able to regain control. No more guesswork. They are able to make better informed decisions based on individuals’ overall capacity and develop clearer and more realistic timelines, preventing delays and ensuring that deliverables are met according to key stakeholders’ expectations.
Keep track of how people work
More and more project managers are tapping into cloud-based collaboration tools such as ProjectPlace to stay in control. ProjectPlace helps project managers to enhance their visibility over individual tasks across different projects, empowers team members working across multiple projects to self-organize, and enables businesses with a matrix structure to reach their goals more efficiently.
As the way people work continues to evolve, the way projects are managed can’t get left behind.
More on how to manage a modern workforce in this free whitepaper: 7 project management tips.
