The Changing Nature of Project Management

Project management in the 21st century shapes up to be profoundly different to the past. New technologies and exponentially increasing complexities affect both the project ecosystem as solution and delivery aspects. At the same time, demographical developments are leading to a significant shortage of qualified resources.

Traditional project management applications are insufficient to deal with the tasks at hand. While 4^th generation, back-end integrated, applications are not even yet widely implemented, the first 5th Generation collaborative system solutions start taking shape.

Complexity Driving Change

Dealing with the changing nature of 21st century project management means the difference between success and failure. Most of the changes - and challenges - come from increased complexity. And complexity has its own rules and challenges.

A lot of research remains to be done in understanding and optimizing complex projects. However, it is clear that the explosive increase of integration of data, communication, and processes has a combined effect that requires new approaches to project management.