siliconindia | | September 20199opment; still most of estimates are `at best intuitions and at worst wild guesses' resulting into `best case & hope based' plans. Why? Project interdependencies and external environment result in nu-merous variables & probabilistic sce-narios, creating a huge web of `What-If' conditions. Humans have limited cognitive abilities to produce, store and analyze this large information at will in real time manner. AI-powered decision support sys-tems can continuously retrieve para-metric information, derive & analyze the potential risks, validate project success criteria, and predict project outcome. Imagine an assistant that delves into history, analyzes team's capability based on past contribution, recommends right quantity and type of resources, assess their actual avail-ability, and produces an optimal solu-tion of schedule & cost. It even auto-matically reassigns the tasks based on its knowledge of how good people are with different technology and differ-ent areas of the system. This is mean-ingful, powerful and useful. In the other side of the coin ­ Dell Technologies estimated that 85 per-cent of the jobs that will exist in 2030 have not even been invented. Fear in every PM's mind is `What will be my role as PM, will I be replaced by a machine?' The era in which many adminis-trative tasks will be automated, suc-cessfully navigating disruptive tech-nologies requires one to have digital skill set. PMI recommends the project leaders develop their project manage-ment technology quotient (PMTQ) ­ the ability to adopt, manage and integrate technology based on organi-zation & project needs. Professionals will gain competitive advantage by acquiring skills where machines can't match humans ­ building trust & motivating team, leading in difficult times, effective negotiation, engaging with stakeholders, conflict resolution and others.Owner of Trustworthy & Compliant DevelopmentWith the evolution of digital capacity, cyber crime continues to increase in prevalence and sophistication, lead-ing to multifold increase in cyber-security risks & challenges. On eco-nomic & political front, globalization has hit the reverse gear; world pow-ers are advocating more protection-ism & nationalism. (De)globaliza-tion bring onus on Project Manager to understand and adhere to various international & regional regulations related to Legal, Taxation, Regulato-ry, Security and Privacy, Technolog-ical transfer, Environment, Labor and Local Culture. Any non-compliance carries penalties or sanctions that, in-deed may threaten the very existence of the organization. Yahoo lost $350 million valuation when user accounts were hacked; Marriot, e-Bay, Equi-fax, Uber, Aadhar and many more are victims of cyberattacks. Any new project being contem-plated in current landscape should pay sufficient attention to the security fundamentals of confidentiality, avail-ability and integrity. Project Manager is primarily accountable for incor-porating security into development lifecycle of the product or service and should be on top of achieving the trustworthiness. Beginning with the End in Mind Have a look around and you will find, A foot over bridge which is hardly being used; or introducing a flyover has shifted the point of traffic jam 500 meters further. Both of them though successfully delivered projects but not yielding the benefits which were expected from them i.e. improve the pedestrian safety & reduce the traffic congestion. Not only the traditional measures of scope, time, and cost, but the achievement of sustained business benefits is the primary success cri-teria for a project. Business leaders (sponsors), EPMOs and Project Man-agers need to bridge the gap between the output & outcome by enhancing the conversation throughout the val-ue chain of Strategy-Portfolio-Pro-gram-Project-Operation.For a Project Manager, Value de-livery capabilities are the full spec-trum of competencie, including do-main knowledge & business skills that enable him for quick adaptation to changing market conditions by bal-ancing efficiency and creativity. In a nutshell, PM need to "Identify how his project is expected to add to com-pany's efficiency and competitiveness as a whole". This requires evolving from project managers to value gener-ators, accountable for project's finan-cial performance, benefits realization, and its impact on organization's Top & Bottom line.To conclude, technology will en-able the PM to spend energy being more creative than administrative. A digital PM will have a pivotal role in keeping the organizations ahead of the curve by creating the strategic equity Believe me, it's not too farfetched and something to be excited about. Palash Gupta
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