Rebles Guide to PM

1. 10 Reasons Why Project Managers Need Risk Burndown Charts

   

   If you're a project manager who wants to deliver successful projects while keeping risks under control, you, my friend, are in the right place.

   Like many other project managers, I struggled with effectively communicating risk statuses to my stakeholders. My risk registers would become unwieldy documents that nobody read, mostly because they didn’t want to sift through the prioritized lists of risks for an idea on where we were when it came to closing out risks (their main concern).  

   And I knew I needed a simpler way to show that we were making progress. Which is where I started adapting risk burndown charts into my risk reporting.

   What’s a risk burndown chart?

   A risk burndown chart is a powerful visual tool that tracks your project's risk exposure over time.

   Originally introduced by John Brothers in The Agile Timesin 2004, it's a graph that plots the total risk severity on the y-axis against time on the x-axis, showing how risks are being "burned down" or reduced as your project progresses.

   Unlike traditional risk registers that list individual risks with their details, a burndown chart aggregates all risks into a single trend line, making it immediately clear whether your overall risk profile is decreasing, plateauing, or – worst case – increasing.

   Burndown charts are typically associated with agile teams and sprint goals, but you can use the same techniques for risk.

   This simple visual representation transforms complex risk data into an actionable insight that both team members and stakeholders can easily understand, allowing everyone to see at a glance if you're successfully mitigating risks (severity over time decreases) or if urgent attention is needed.

   

   Although internal team members might like the details around your risks, those external stakeholders want a simplified visual on the risk picture.

   And the risk burndown chart provides just that even if, like me, you are not working in an agile environment.

   Not convinced? Here are 10 reasons why you and your project team need risk burndown charts starting today!

   Reason #1: You'll gain visual clarity on risk exposure

   As I showed above, it's easy to get lost in the details of a complex risk register. But it doesn't have to overwhelm you, not with risk burndown charts.

   When you know how to visualize your project's overall risk exposure over time, you'll quickly understand whether your risk management efforts are working or not.

   Risk burndown charts transform complex risk data into a simple downward-sloping line that anyone can understand at a glance. Instead of wading through spreadsheets and text-heavy reports, you and your stakeholders can immediately see if risk levels are decreasing as expected.

   Reason #2: You'll make better-informed decisions

   If you want to guide your project to success, you need to know where the dangers lie! Once you have clear visibility of risk trends, you can make informed decisions about where to focus resources and when to adjust your plans.

   The chart plots cumulative project risk severity, so you can make choices about what to do next with that in mind.

   Reason #3: You'll establish credibility with stakeholders

   The best way to establish credibility is to demonstrate control of project risks. You’ll be showing cumulative risk exposure and what you are doing about it.

   Learning this technique will help position you as a professional who takes risk management and project planning seriously.

   If you're unsure where to start, begin by identifying your top ten project risks and plotting them on a simple chart. There are more tips for getting started at the end of this article.

   Reason #4: You'll improve team accountability

   With multiple team members responsible for different risk mitigation actions, it can be challenging to track progress effectively.

   Risk burndown charts give you a roadmap for monitoring risk ownership and creating an impactful risk mitigation plan.

   When you implement regular updates to your risk burndown chart, you'll improve accountability, increase transparency, and encourage proactive risk management across the entire team. And that translates to fewer surprises and smoother project execution.

   Then, regardless of what unexpected events occur, you can respond effectively and maintain control throughout the project lifecycle.

   Reason #5: You'll gain confidence in your risk management approach

   Do you suffer from uncertainty about whether your risk assessment efforts are adequate? Do you worry about risk audits? You're not alone – every project manager does at times, so don't feel bad about it. Instead, take action!

   The fastest way to overcome this is to let data guide your risk management approach.

   When you gain a deeper understanding of how your risk exposure is trending over time, you'll feel more confident about your approach to managing the level of risk, and that increases stakeholder confidence in your leadership.

   Here's what I mean: Lack of confidence is oftentimes due to lack of measurement. Risk burndown charts fill in that gap so you know exactly how effective your mitigation strategies are.

   

   Reason #6: You'll save time

   Time is a limited resource that we all wish we had more of. We can't create more time, but what we can do is prevent risks from stealing it.

   When you apply risk burndown charts, you'll find your project’s risk management processes staying on schedule more consistently. This simple graph can show when you are running ahead or behind schedule with risks.

   And risk owners will be motivated to provide their updates and stay off of the “Behind Schedule” list!

   Reason #7: You'll allocate resources more effectively

   When you use risk burndown charts to understand where your risk exposure is concentrated, you can start targeting your mitigation efforts more effectively.

   Do you really need to spread your risk management resources evenly across all areas, or can you focus them where they'll have the greatest impact? Your team's time is valuable. If addressing minor risks isn't the best use of your resources, then use my risk burndown approach instead.

   Optimizing resource allocation is sort of like finding hidden capacity; it's painless and immediately beneficial.

   Reason #8: You'll improve stakeholder communication

   That's the goal, right? But you don't want to overwhelm stakeholders with complex risk details. And ugh, who wants to? Here's a better way.

   My risk burndown approach helps you communicate complex risk information clearly and effectively, by showing you how to translate technical risk details into visual trends that anyone can understand.

   It all leads to better project sponsorship and support!

   Reason #9: You'll predict problems before they occur

   Maybe you're at that stage in your project management career where you're reacting to issues as they arise. We've all been there! It's likely some of them could have been prevented with better visibility.

   My risk burndown technique will help you spot plateaus or upticks in risk exposure and learn how to identify problem areas before they impact your project.

   You'll be able to predict potential issues, implement mitigation plans early, and maintain control without last-minute scrambling.

   And you'll never have to explain why you didn't see a problem coming again.

   Reason #10: You'll reduce project stress and improve work-life balance

   You can make your work easier and more enjoyable when you use risk burndown charts to gain control over project uncertainties. That's because having a visual representation of risk reduction provides peace of mind that simply can't be achieved through conventional risk registers.

   Once I stopped relying solely on communicating with stakeholders through risk registers and started visually showing risk trends, my "work" became less stressful and far more productive during status calls.

   Next steps for incorporating this technique

   If you’re convinced, here’s what you can do next.

   • Identify and quantify risks: List all identified project risks in a risk register. Assign each risk a severity score based on impact and likelihood. Use a numerical scale (e.g., 1-5 or 1-10) to quantify overall risk exposure.
   • Establish a risk baseline: Sum the severity scores of all risks at the start of the project to create a total risk exposure value. This will serve as your starting point for the risk burndown chart.
   • Track risk mitigation progress: Regularly update the risk register to reflect mitigation actions taken, reassess remaining risks, and adjust severity scores accordingly. Reducing the impact or probability of a risk should result in a lower overall risk exposure value.
   • Plot the risk burndown chart: Use a simple line graph to map total risk exposure (y-axis) against time (x-axis). Update the chart at regular intervals (monthly works well for longer projects) to visualize trends and ensure that risk levels are decreasing as expected.
   • Analyze trends and take action: Review the burndown chart to spot patterns. A steadily declining risk curve indicates effective risk management, while plateaus or increases may signal new emerging risks or ineffective mitigation efforts that require additional action.

   There you have it, 10 reasons you need risk burndown charts and some tips on getting started. When we invest in ourselves with the best risk management tools and techniques, positive and powerful results are inevitable.

   Start using a risk burndown chart to communicate your risk picture to your senior stakeholders. If you do, you’ll start seeing more productive conversations and more engaged stakeholders during your status meetings!

   This article first appeared on Rebel's Guide to Project Management and can be read here: 10 Reasons Why Project Managers Need Risk Burndown Charts

2. How to Secure Resources for Your Projects

   

   Resource management is planning, getting and using the resources that you need to do your project efficiently.

   Often, organizations use ‘resources’ as an unfriendly shorthand for ‘people’. The term can also mean equipment, services, software, hardware, supplies, raw materials and anything else you need in order to make the project go forward efficiently.

   When you manage multiple projects, the biggest resource challenge is normally people. You might have to order supplies or book equipment, but that is easier to manage than people’s time.

   Identify the resources required

   In order to make sure you are using individuals’ time in the most effective and efficient way, you first need to know who is going to be working on the project with you. These people form part of your project team and are normally subject matter experts or others who can contribute to the work.

   Typically, these people will work on your project on a part-time basis. They might be working on several of your projects, or supporting another project manager with their work. Maybe they have ‘day job’ responsibilities in an operational capacity.

   Give people notice

   People are busy and have other things to do besides work on your projects. That’s why it is important to give team leaders and individuals enough notice for the work required.

   Get commitment for their time as early as you can so they know the work is coming up for them and they can plan for it.

   Consolidate your project plans

   Use a multi-project, consolidated schedule to plan forward, identifying what support or skills you might need in four or five months’ time if you don’t currently have resources booked.

   If you have secured time from an individual, look across all your projects to see how you can best use it, especially if there are lulls in the upcoming work. They could use their project hours to train a colleague, develop new skills so they can support other areas of the project or get ahead on future tasks.

   Use capacity planning software (if you have it)

   Capacity planning software allows you to see resource assignments across multiple projects and teams. However, many organizations don’t have tools that provide this level of data, or a culture that enables forecasting and planning at a granular level.

   You may find yourself having to plan people’s time commitments with just a spreadsheet and using detective work to talk to team leaders about who is available to work on what at what time. This can be time-consuming in itself.

   Secure support for the work

   In some situations – for example where your organization does not yet have a mature approach to managing projects – the onus falls to you to ensure you secure support for your work. There are some things you can do to make it easier to make sure that your team members have enough time to dedicate to the work that you need them to do.

   That starts with understanding who influences decisions around how individuals spend their time – the gatekeepers.

   

   Build relationships with gatekeepers

   Build relationships with gatekeepers – the people who manage the priorities and time for subject matter experts and resources who work on your projects. These gatekeepers could be team leaders or department heads. They are typically the line manager of the person whose time you want for your project.

   Ideally, you will have built a relationship before you need to ask for someone from their team to support your project. Your internal network is an important source of support for your project.

   Try to dedicate some time regularly to improving and deepening your professional relationships with colleagues by making time for them, sharing useful information with them, and being interested in what they are doing.

   Explain the commitment required

   When you need to ask for support from their team members, start by explaining the role that that individual would play on the project so that the gatekeeper understands what that person is being asked to do.

   If you can, show how the project work links to the strategic objectives of the organization or department. This helps demonstrate the value in the work and elevates the ask from simply a task to a contribution to the organization.

   It’s really important to keep communication channels open with the line managers of your project team members.

   Make time for regular check ins with team leaders. This is one of the primary ways that you will find out about upcoming absence, planned holiday and other times when the individual will be unavailable for project work, if the person themselves doesn’t let you know.

   Build relationships with subject matter experts

   Certain project team members and stakeholders are senior enough in the organization that you don’t need to talk to their manager about their availability and what else they are working on. Talk to them directly.

   These are the kind of things that you can ask:

   • How much time do you/your team/individual have for my project?
   • What is your top priority if it’s not my project?
   • And how can my project and I support you in doing that?

   This question is not an offer to take on more work for their top priority project. It’s a way to uncover how you can manage your project work in a way that doesn’t interfere with their priority goals.

   For example, you may be able to work around their other commitments by only scheduling project meetings with them on a Tuesday, for example.

   • When do you/they have upcoming leave?
   • When will you/they be really busy?

   Getting visibility of absences is helpful for your project planning. Knowing their busy times is useful too. For example, if you’re working with the finance department, there will be particular parts of the financial year where they’re very busy. Try and find out what those are for the people in the project team.

   • What roadblocks do you see?
   • What’s coming up that I don’t know about that you think might be a problem?

   There could be activities or events happening in the future that you’re not aware of. Ask open-ended questions to uncover things that might create problems or opportunities for your project schedules.

   Keep resourcing under review

   Whatever you hear from line managers or the resources themselves, assume that things will change in the near future. The information you get today is only good for today – who knows what their priorities will be in three months.

   Monitor progress against your plan and to do that you need accurate, updated information about what people are doing and how much time they continue to have to work on your projects.

   Keep talking and reviewing, having the same conversation about availability and upcoming work as a way of reminding people about their commitments and also to reassure yourself that they really will be available when you need them.

   Make changes to the schedule based on that information to ensure it reflects reality.

   A lot of the challenges come from the organization around you not being able or willing to understand the logistics and requirements of running multiple projects in parallel. There’s no magic bullet for that, but keep communicating and using your documentation and data to demonstrate the impact of resource conflicts on your work.

   Pin for later reading

   

   This article first appeared on Rebel's Guide to Project Management and can be read here: How to Secure Resources for Your Projects

3. How to Thrive in the Multi-Project Workplace

   

   Around a third of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the average Western economy is a result of project activity so it is unsurprising that organizations do so many projects. They are the way strategy gets delivered, and in what PMI calls the ‘project economy’, it’s likely that organizations will continue to deliver work through the structure of projects.

   However, because there are so many projects, we all often have to contribute (or lead) several at a time. That makes multi-project management an expectation in many roles, so let’s unpack that for a moment.

   If you are managing multiple projects, it means you have more than one project on the go at the same time.

   You’ll have different project teams (even if the people on them are the same people).

   You might have different sponsors or customers, all with their own expectations of what’s possible, and probably the belief that their project is the most important.

   Each project has its own timeline and you have to manage your time to keep them all moving forward to hit the planned deadlines and milestones. This workload is different from the workload of someone managing a single project, or carrying out their day job. There are more moving parts and normally more people involved.

   Managing multiple projects is different from having responsibility for just leading one project. That’s not to say that leading a single project is easy: the larger the project, the more complex and strategically important it tends to be, and that comes with its own stressors.

   What a multi-project environment looks like

   A multi-project environment features the following:

   • A large number of unrelated stakeholders who need to be engaged in various, sometimes isolated, sometimes connected activities
   • More project sponsors to please
   • More expectations to meet
   • Project teams made up of part-time resources who also have a day job to do that takes priority over their project work
   • More resource conflicts to resolve, often with subject matter experts booked to work on multiple projects who then struggle to see their whole work commitments and aren’t able to complete their tasks in the timeframe they expected
   • Constant pressure from deadlines instead of the comfortable ebb and flow of busy and not-so-busy points on a single project: every month one of your projects is beginning, completing or hitting some major milestone.

   A workload that includes multiple projects also requires a slightly different take on the core skills that are used to manage a single project.

   It’s not a totally new skillset, but it’s a smarter, more complex way of addressing the work and the complexities of balancing many people, processes and products.

   Balancing your workload

   Every day is a balance between doing something to advance your own To Do list, and supporting your team and colleagues with their work. What should you be focused on? How do you choose what to do first? How can you use what you already know to make this easier? Those are some of the challenges of delivering multiple projects.

   Whether you have the job title of project manager or not, you could have a workload made up predominantly of projects. Perhaps the bulk of your time is spent in an operational role, with the expectation that you will manage projects around the edges of that.

   You may find that your project workload changes from time to time depending on what your organization requires of you. For example, a finance manager may find themselves spending more and more time on improvement projects during the majority of the year, and then be fully focused on year-end accounting when it’s time to do the books for the past 12 months.

   If you’ve only recently been given a couple of projects to manage, you might be feeling OK about your workload at the moment, whatever it looks like.

   The default approach most people use is to replicate the same methods as you use to run a single project. Just repeat exactly what you are doing for your first project, using the same approach, tools and techniques.

   However, it won’t be long before you start to feel that you don’t have time to do everything to the level of quality you expect of yourself.

   You recognize that things aren’t going as well as they could, and you feel it should be easier to work efficiently with a multi-project workload.

   Skills for managing multiple projects

   To thrive in a multi-project job, you need different skills – or at least the ability to apply your project management skills in a different way.

   Perhaps unsurprisingly, in a survey for my book Managing Multiple Projects, communication came out as the top skill required for people managing multiple projects, closely followed by planning, scheduling and stakeholder engagement. Then there was:

   • Team management (53%)
   • Resource management (50%)
   • Leadership (49%)
   • Risk management (39%)
   • Governance (31%).

   That’s a lot to factor in to every working day. While we don’t get up in the morning and say, “Today I’m going to use my leadership skills,” we cycle through a huge number of professional skills each and every hour so the job gets done.

   That’s a lot to factor in to every working day. While we don’t get up in the morning and say, “Today I’m going to use my attention to detail,” we cycle through a huge number of professional skills each and every hour so the job gets done.

   

   People are an important part of making sure multiple projects stay on track, and are delivered in an efficient way, but there is something else that will help you thrive in a multi-project environment, and that’s prioritizing.

   Understand the work priorities

   Make sure you know what your top priority work commitments are. Then line up everything behind those so you have enough time and the right resources to see them through.

   Share your personal priorities and team priorities with your colleagues so they know what is important – and, crucially, can redirect your efforts if you’ve misunderstood something.

   There is the expectation that we’ll juggle more and more projects at work as organizations expect more from leaders and deliver parallel changes. However, we can step up to meet those expectations with the right skills and support.

   This article first appeared on Rebel's Guide to Project Management and can be read here: How to Thrive in the Multi-Project Workplace

4. How Resource Management Can Help Organizations Reduce Workforce Burnout and Turnover

   

   Burnout and high turnover aren’t simply just HR issues. They are stark indicators of deeper organizational challenges. When employees are continually handing in their resignations, feeling overwhelmed, and morale is slipping, the root cause typically lies in how work is allocated and managed.

   Yet many businesses still act as though excessive stress is "just part of the job." They expect individuals to soldier on, managing heavy workloads indefinitely. What happens is that overburdened employees are more prone to mistakes, less engaged, and more likely to leave.

   Instead of accelerating growth, companies end up in an endless cycle of hiring, training, and inevitably losing talent.

   The good news is that burnout can be prevented. It’s not an unavoidable outcome. By implementing deliberate strategies – chief among them a structured approach to resource management – organizations can rebalance workloads, protect wellbeing, and reduce churn.

   

   Workload management is the foundation of a healthy workforce

   Most managers don’t set out to overload their teams. It often begins innocently: a pressing project arrives, deadlines tighten, and tasks multiply. People volunteer to absorb the extra work "just until things calm down," but that temporary arrangement becomes the new norm.

   Before long, the same high-performing employees shoulder most of the extra load, while others remain under-utilized.

   Over time, this imbalance leads to burnout. A 2021 Deloitte survey found that 77% of professionals have experienced burnout at their current job, and 91% say unrelenting stress negatively impacts the quality of their work. Feeling trapped under a never-ending backlog of tasks can swiftly degrade morale and productivity, driving employees to reconsider their tenure.

   Without a formal resource management system, these warning signs go unheeded. By the time an employee resigns, you’re left with depleted team capacity, knowledge gaps, and the high costs associated with recruitment and onboarding. It’s no exaggeration that replacing a single employee can cost anywhere from 50% to 200% of their annual salary.

   Employee wellbeing is a competitive advantage

   There’s a persistent misconception that supporting work-life balance is a "soft" priority. In fact, a mounting body of research shows the opposite: companies that value employee wellbeing tend to outperform their competitors. For example, Gallup reports that engaged teams see 23% higher profitability and 18% lower turnover.

   When employees feel they have a reasonable workload and the necessary support to do their jobs well, they’re not just present – they’re motivated.They produce higher-quality work, bring more creativity to problem-solving, and collaborate more effectively.

   Meanwhile, companies that allow excessive strain to go unchecked suffer from heightened absenteeism, eroding morale, and escalated recruitment costs when valuable team members inevitably move on.

   The real cost of ignoring burnout

   Burnout manifests slowly, but its consequences are often dire. Employees might start by working a few extra hours "just to catch up." The average worker puts in an additional 4.5 hours a week. It’s not far from there to gradually slide into chronic exhaustion.

   Burnout has been recognized as an occupational phenomenon by the World Health Organization since 2019. It’s characterized by feelings of energy depletion, increased mental distance from your job and reduced professional efficacy.

   Do you feel negative, tired and disconnected from work? Maybe burnout is around the corner.

   When exhaustion morphs into full-blown burnout, it doesn’t just impact the individual. Productivity plummets, mistakes increase, and frustration spreads across the team. In some cases, top performers are the first to exit, fearing they’ll stagnate or be perpetually overworked.

   This cycle is costly for businesses. Beyond the cost of hiring a replacement, a revolving door of employees disrupts organizational knowledge, undermines team cohesion, and dampens overall momentum.

   Left unaddressed, the ripple effects can stall growth and tarnish an organization’s reputation as a desirable place to work. And no business wants that on Glassdoor.

   How smart resource management fixes the problem

   Balancing workloads isn’t about simply hiring more people. It’s about using the employees you already have more effectively.

   A robust resource management and planning platform provides real-time visibility into who is doing what, allowing managers to identify bottlenecks or workloads that have ballooned beyond sustainable limits.

   Retain’s resource management software makes capacity planning simple by centralizing insights on projects, availability, and deadlines. Instead of hoping employees speak up about feeling overwhelmed, leaders can pre-emptively spot capacity issues and intervene by levelling, smoothing, reallocating and acting before burnout sets in.

   Forecasting tools empower companies to plan for upcoming projects. Managers can anticipate demand, shift responsibilities as needed, and ensure that everyone shares work fairly.

   The result is a more engaged workforce where individuals feel valued and in control. When people trust that their workload is equitable, they’re far less likely to look for opportunities elsewhere.

   The bottom line: Balance over burnout

   Burnout and high turnover don’t arise by accident. They’re the product of imbalance and unchecked workloads.

   Organizations that fail to address these realities risk hemorrhaging talent, losing valuable organizational knowledge, and stunting long-term growth.

   On the other hand, companies that invest in resource management see immediate and tangible benefits: enhanced employee satisfaction, more cohesive teams, and healthier bottom lines.

   By ensuring that your workforce is distributed strategically rather than chaotically, you create an environment where people can excel without sacrificing their wellbeing.

   The critical question is whether your organization will continue to let burnout erode potential – or step up with a strategy to address resource management challenges that keeps employees engaged, fulfilled, and eager to stay. In our humble opinion, a workforce that stays with you for a long time is the key to your company’s ongoing success.

   This article first appeared on Rebel's Guide to Project Management and can be read here: How Resource Management Can Help Organizations Reduce Workforce Burnout and Turnover

5. Project Management Trends [2025 edition]

   

   There’s no denying that project management today looks different to how it did even 5 years ago. Project management trends shape our profession. We see technology evolving, new tools, consolidation, innovation and more.

   Trends come and go, or they stay with us and evolve into new ways of working that stick around and become “the way we do things around here.”

   Change is inevitable – we all know that. So what are the emerging trends in project management that are going to shape how you do your job in the future? And how can you benefit from them? Well, I have the answers for you. Read on!

   How project management is evolving

   The trouble with trends is that you might not notice they are happening. Often, ‘trend’ is shorthand for the prediction of a gentle evolution. You just carry on doing your job and you don’t notice the world shifting under your feet.

   Until it’s too late.

   Staying relevant in a fast-changing business environment is part of the job these days. We all need to be following what's happening in consumer and commercial environments so we can keep our skills up.

   The way tech, economic, social and environmental considerations are evolving – heck, even the way public health affects workforce planning – will impact the way projects are run.

   https://youtu.be/oW7bAekVPx0?si=KiRwVDwbu4EXRpHU

   10 Project management trends you need to know

   Leaders need to know how the world around them affects the work they are doing today, and how to plan to capitalize on those trends in the future.

   Ready to find out more? Here are the top project management trends that are already shaping the world of project delivery.

   1. Data analytics

   Bringing more data professionals into projects was a theme of Andy Murray's column in Project magazine's Winter 2023 edition, and it's still relevant today.

   APM now has a Data Advisory Group. Questions like: "Do we need project data analysts or translators?" now come up in board room discussions.

   Data analytics is all about using current and past project data and predictive data to help people make better decisions. It gives us the information to bust myths, uncover truths and reinvent how projects get done.

   Why is it important?

   You can only get the benefit from data if you know how to use the data.

   A huge trend at the moment is making sure that the vast amount of data in our project management software is accessible, presented in an understandable, meaningful way and available to decision-makers.

   What you can do

   • Look at what data is available on your project and consider if it is being used to its full advantage.
   • Take the Google Data Analytics Certificate for an introductory, solid understanding of what can be done with data - it's eye-opening!
   • Consider the bias in your data and how that might influence decisions.

   2. Managing a hybrid, multi-generational team

   Project leaders today have to manage a hybrid workforce. Your project team is no longer guaranteed to be in the office every day.

   Remote work has always been part of the project ecosystem, from off-shoring and near-shoring development and customer services but now even the colleague who lives down the road is likely to be in her home office at least some of the week.

   On top of that, we're facing the first time that 4 generations have been in the workplace together. Managers need to adapt their leadership styles to better address how different team members want to work and be managed.

   Why is it important?

   “The only positive thing to have come out of this pandemic was the (at first) necessity and (later) willingness for employers to embrace flexible work,” says Amanda Haynes, Marketing Manager at Ganttic.

   “Remote and hybrid work has been a boon for employee work/life balance (what we now call work/life integration) and often a prerequisite for new employees. Since 91% of US workers want to work at least somewhat remotely in the future,” she adds. “And since we're already in the middle of the great resignation, companies need to be willing to allow this work model in order to retain their employees.”

    What you can do

   • Embrace the trend. It benefits you as well, not to be in the office every day.
   • Listen to your team. Find out how individuals want to work as well as how the team overall wants to work.
   • Use tools designed to help keep your remote and hybrid team on the same page.
   • Be willing to incorporate a few different tools to meet the varied needs of your colleagues.

   3. More trust, less control (especially in remote teams)

   If nothing else, the coronavirus pandemic has shown us that remote teams are an effective way of working. Businesses that resisted the shift to Zoom meetings are now embracing the flexibility that remote teams give them.

   Project managers need to be competent in leading remote teams and working with colleagues online, and that means a different approach.

   “There is already a shift in employer-employee relationships,” says Jacob Udodov, Founder and CEO of project and task management platform, Bordio. “And there will be more changes in the next few years. What we practice already and more and more companies are adopting is more trust and less control. Results are what's important, and it doesn't matter how many hours employees spent at their desks or what time they logged in today. If the deadline is met and the end-product is great, why micromanage the rest?”

   Couldn’t agree more! A results-oriented workplace is where we should all have been for some time, and finally that’s gaining traction.

   Why is it important?

   Remote work gives you flexibility. It stops you having to rely on people who work in your local area and means you can draw on subject matter expertise from wherever the best people happen to be.

   In the APM Salary and Market Trends survey 2021, 61% of respondents reported that working from home options were an important criterion for choosing a new role, up from 52% in 2020.

   People want flexible options for work.

   WFH and flexibility also minimize our impact on the environment by cutting down on commuting, give us more time in the day (which many people then spend working instead of traveling) and improve work/integration balance.

   What you can do

   • Brush up on your virtual leadership skills.
   • Think about how you are going to run remote team meetings and workshops – it is different to holding meetings face-to-face.
   • Assume trust in a remote team, but consciously try to build it as well.
   • Make sure you’re alert to burnout in remote teams. Research from Gallup shows that nearly 80% of full-time employees experience burnout on the job at least sometimes.

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   4. Integrating change management for project success

   Too much of project management focuses on building and completing something. There’s not enough focus on whether the people receiving the ‘something’ are actually ready to work with it.

   “Reimagine the must-have project management skills,” says Brantlee Underhill, Managing Director, North America, Project Management Institute (PMI). “Project management isn’t just about managing spreadsheets and timelines. The projects of the present and future need project managers who are strategic partners and changemakers. In addition to business acumen, the top bracket of project managers deploys interpersonal skills like relationship building, collaborative leadership, strategic thinking, creative problem solving, and commercial awareness.”  

   Change management uses all of the skills that Brantlee mentions and if you want to be a changemaker, it’s an important area to embrace.

   Change management is the forgotten discipline of project success.

   You might be lucky and have change managers working in your business. Or you might be like most of us and have to do the change management as well as the project management.

   Relationship building is one of those cross-over areas that relates to both project management and change management as disciplines. We need to engage stakeholders about the project’s progress, but we also need to engage the people affected by the project work with what’s happening and why it’s happening.

   Without change management, your project will struggle – and it might even fail. A successful project embraces change management, even if the only person doing it is you.

   Why is it important?

   Here’s an example of how project communications are changing, and how we can tap into that for better change management.

   In 2021, Ciscoestimated that 82% of consumer internet traffic was video. If that’s what your stakeholders are doing on the internet outside of work, how do you think they are going to want to get status updates and briefings at work?

   Research by Vidyard and Demand Metric reports that video converts better than any other content type. In other words, it shifts behavior. It gets people to buy or sign up or whatever.

   And my own research during the winter of 2017 shows that getting people involved in projects is still the most challenging part of getting work done. Stakeholder relationships are a huge area of concern for project managers.

   Video shifts behavior? I’ll have some of that please.

   Yes: video is coming to employee communications and to how we become changemakers and engage others.

   To a certain extent, it is already here. Some companies are already using video as part of staff onboarding and training.

   What you can do

   • Read up on change management – learn what it is and how to best apply it to projects.
   • Take a change management class (like my fab workshop which has loads of templates and support resources included).
   • Look at your project schedule and consider whether you have truly incorporated enough change management activities (and time/budget for those activities) in the plan.

   5. Soft skills and EQ as a differentiator for leaders

   Emotional intelligence is one key skill that it’s worth calling out because it’s about how you operate in your environment.

   Your project environment is a complex socio-political web of interactions, populated with people who know what they want, most of the time. And those wants don’t always play nicely together.

   As in the past, we’ll see soft skills valued more highly – perhaps valued more highly that credentials. As the demand for project management work grows, certification schemes are a simple way to differentiate candidates, but being able to operate effectively within the organization is key to getting things done.

   Why is it important?

   The trend towards valuing soft skills is important because as automation and AI bring advanced features to our tools, much of the ‘technical’ bits of project management can be done by software.

   I see a day in the not too distant future where you plug your task information into a tool and out pops an estimate, based on the last 12 projects using the same resource and qualitative data on past performance. The tech is already there – it’s just a case of making use of it.

   That means your interpersonal skills are more important than ever – the shift is to project managers being awesome at stakeholder engagement, conflict resolution, change management (more on that later), negotiating, influencing and all the things that tools aren’t (yet) capable of doing for us.

   Emotionally intelligent project managers are in demand. The exec team need to know that you aren’t going to do or say something to upset anyone. Beyond that, being able to look out for your team takes being able to interpret social cues and people with high EQ find that easier to do.

   What you can do

   • Be culturally and socially aware.
   • Be curious.
   • Invest in relationships and actively value the people you work with.
   • Read Anthony Mersino’s excellent book: Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers

   Read next:15 easy-to-do types of professional development

   

   6. Resilience as a priority

   Project work is stressful, we know that. I’ve written in the past about the results of my survey into why people are leaving project management. And let’s face it, so far this decade hasn’t exactly shaped up to be that great for many people’s mental health.

   Safeguarding our emotional and mental health and that of our teams has to be up there as a trend for the forward-thinking leadership team. Resilience as an individual, resilience for the project, and business resilience are all essentials for the next 12 months.

   Businesses were quick to put in place the resources to help staff work remotely. But the associated support networks for remote and hybrid work haven’t been as quick to appear. And given the ongoing disruption, frequent ups and downs and economic fallout that has happened recently, resilience is top of my personal list for next year.

   “What businesses didn’t have the time or realization to do at the time, was to provide their people with the mental support they needed to adjust to this change,” says Karine O’Donnell, Director, project trainer and coach at Australian consultancy, Projecting With People.

   “More and more, projects are being impacted by emotional and cultural factors caused by the changes to how people are working,” she adds. “I’ve already seen several organizations planning projects to support the emotional needs of the hybrid model of working, where some of the team work-from-home and some work from the office.”  

   Karine predicts that more organizations will start projects to support well-being at work including:

   • New HR regulations for people working full or part-time from home 
   • Time sheeting projects to help businesses address productivity concerns
   • Digital tools to facilitate online collaborations, task completion, project planning and management 
   • Online mindfulness programs to support staff anxiety, stress, and burnout.

   Why is it important?

   People are our most valuable asset. It’s not enough to simply do the work. We have to do the work in a way that doesn’t destroy us.

   The Great Resignation, quiet quitting, workplace stress, and having to hold the fort while colleagues are off have all taken their toll on teams.

   In a research report by the UK's Ministry of Defence into psychological safety in major projects, projects that scored in the top quartile for high psychological safety had 47% higher median wellbeing scores than the lower quartile. That's basically saying that teams that put effort into creating psychological safety have better wellbeing (and higher resilience, I'd add).

   Looking out for each other should be a top priority.

   What can you do?

   • Use resource reporting to check workloads and ensure no one is overloaded. If you don’t have resource management tools, do a verbal check in with the team at least once a week.
   • Create psychological safety at work so people feel it’s OK to tell you they are struggling.
   • Live it. Don’t be the kind of boss that says everyone should have a work/life integration and yet send emails at 2am while you’re still working. Model the environment you want to create.

   7. Artificial intelligence and RPA

   This won’t be news to you: everyone is talking about AI being a powerful trend for the coming years. There are lots of applications for this in project management software including:

   • Identifying potential risks through natural language search
   • Improving risk assessments
   • Testing risk response
   • Allocating resources and resource levelling
   • Intelligent, real-time scheduling
   • Automating mundane and repetitive tasks
   • Improving consistency in process and decision making.

   However, AI is more likely to be suggestive rather than active, as Dennis Kayser points out in this podcast on the DPM website.

   Remember the paperclip in Microsoft Office?

   Clippy was early suggestive AI, bringing you “helpful” suggestions. It was so helpful that Time declared Clippy one of the 50 worst inventions of all time.

   AI is coming to the tools you use,but let’s hope that the developers have learned the lesson of the doomed paperclip.

   Bots are another aspect of this: if you’ve had auto-responses through Facebook Messenger or used a Slackbot then you’ll have seen them in practice. I think there are some good uses for this such as opting in to receive status updates, sending team member reminders and so on.

   RPA is Robotic Process Automation. It’s a way of automating repetitive tasks and it’s having a bit of an impact on the PMO community. As a way to save time, it has huge potential, so expect to see more of that in your Project Office.

   Why is it important?

   Tech is always evolving, and if you want to stay relevant in the marketplace, you need at least some understanding of what’s happening to the tools you use.

   Ultimately, AI, bots and RPA are there to make lives easier for project teams, streamline tasks and give us more time to do the stuff that robots can’t do.

   “If you can have your project management tool do more for you without lifting a finger, you can save money and increase productivity,” says Lindsey Allard, CEO and Co-Founder of  PlaybookUX. “Use automation to help you to perform basic tasks, organize specific things, and even compile helpful data.”

   She adds: “I’ve seen how helpful automation can be in regards to project management and I look forward to seeing how automation can elevate my processes in the coming year.”

   Varada Patwardhan, Managing Director at Xebrio, agrees. “The role of project managers in the industry is evolving into project leaders,” she says. “They will be expected to integrate AI capabilities in their project management styles and give more emphasis on their emotional intelligence and soft skills like ideation, communication, and problem-solving skills.

   For project leaders and organizations, implementing AI capabilities can help attain transparency. AI can accurately identify potential risks in a project and augment a project leader’s decision-making ability by analyzing data from multiple projects at the same time.”

   What you can do

   • Look at how you can leverage the AI capabilities of the tools you already have.
   • Look at how you could adopt new tools with automation and AI features to speed up repetitive work and data analysis.

   

   8. A strategic shift for PMOs

   With tools becoming smarter (more on that in a minute) and automations taking some of the grunt work out of project data crunching, what’s the future for the Project Management Office?

   PMOs are here to stay in my view, but they might look different as they evolve to meet the changing needs of organizations.

   For example, instead of putting together a strategic plan for what projects are going to be delivered over the next 3 years, they may be called on to answer “How” questions instead like these:

   • How can we optimize our processes?
   • How can we make a splash in a new market?
   • How can we launch a new product in 4 months?

   “I believe the PMO will have to focus on those more strategic areas and shift away from specifically defining the teams and resources that will do the work,” says Bill Raymond, host of the Agile in Action podcast. “Moreover, the PMO may be removed from tracking those efforts after the problems have been identified and the teams set the work into motion.”

   Why is it important?

   Bill says that with cross-functional projects – especially those that are highly visible – it’s almost a given that a PMO will be set up to track and plan the work.

   “Moving forward, organizations will put the tracking and delivery of the work on the teams and tools,” he says. “PMOs will be reporting centers and support the teams in addressing major issues or risks that the teams escalate.”

   What you can do?

   • Think about how your PMO teams are rewarded. Are they rewarded based on things within their control, or is an aspect of the bonus dependent on other people completing projects within a given time? What would make it fairer?
   • Determine business outcomes and priorities and start operating strategically within the PMO, even if it isn’t demanded of you yet.

   9. Customization of project management tools

   Customization is where you can tailor your messages effectively to the audience to the point that they think they are getting a more personalized service, but without too much work behind the scenes.

   It’s another consumer trend. When I first wrote Social Media for Project Managers, I was reporting on consumer trends that were making their way into the business environment.

   When the book was updated and reissued as Collaboration Tools for Project Managers, we saw that a lot of the consumer uses of social media were firmly embedded in collaboration tools: think features like chat, file sharing, liking and gamification etc.

   Perceived customization is another example of a growing consumer marketing and tech trend that will find its way into how we manage change.

   One aspect is all about making sure people see the right data at the right time, and smart analytics is definitely going to shape how we process data as project professionals.

   “The predictive analytics space will be a completely new market to figure out,” says Ryan Fyfe, COO of Workpuls. “Primarily because those might model for strategic intent, human strategic intent. We're going to have predictive analytics that not just look at what somebody does but tries to figure out why they do it, and figure out how their decision-making process works. It's going for a much higher level of insight than you can get by looking at the person's behavior alone.”

   Rich data will help tailor the project management journey for stakeholders and help leaders make smarter choices about what next steps to take when the environment seems uncertain.

   Who knows, we might see more virtual reality environments, tailored to our stakeholders, in the years to come.

   Why is it important?

   Customization is a different take on tailoring your approach and communications to suit the audience. Within project management tools, I want to see the things relevant to me. My sponsor wants to see different things, like real-time information on progress and budget. The data we both need is different, but obviously drawn from the same data set.

   It’s all possible with a few clicks and a smart set up. One-size-fits-all doesn’t cut it any longer. Did it ever?

   What you can do

   • Look at how you can customize your project management software to present data intelligently to different groups via reporting and dashboards.
   • Ask stakeholders how they would like to receive project information and customize to the best of your ability to make it relevant (and therefore more likely to be read).

   Need advice choosing the right tool? We’ve partnered with software comparison portal Crozdesk to bring you expert suggestions. They’ll call you to find out your needs and then recommend products to fit — massively cutting down your time to shortlist suitable project management software.

   
   
   

   10. Tailoring project management methodologies

   Are you waterfall or Agile? Or something else? Project managers need to make smart tailoring decisions and choose the methodology that best fits your team and your project.

   And let's be honest, there aren't only two ways of doing work: linear and predictive methods are simply two ends of a spectrum of tools and techniques and you pick where you sit on that spectrum based on the risk and uncertainty level of your project, amongst other things.

   With the PMBOK® Guide, The Standard for Project Management and the PRINCE2® manuals both discussing tailoring more thoroughly than ever before, project managers have more flexibility to adapt project approaches to their environment.

   But do project managers have the skills to tailor their approaches?

   Tailoring requires professional judgement. It requires being able to differentiate between the benefits of Agile, waterfall and blended approaches, understanding the pros and cons of each. You don’t get that from reading a book.

   What matters is whether you can get the job done in a way that works for your business.If that’s a blended approach, and I’m seeing that more and more, then good for you. If pure Scrum works, or you’re totally a waterfall shop, then as long as you are seeing results no one is going to care.

   Having spoken to a lot of project managers over the last year, formal training seems harder and harder to come by, and more and people are having to take responsibility for their own career development. And this is a global project management trend.

   If project success rates are going to go up – and they really should – then value and business benefit are where we should be putting our energy. Not into what template you need to use or whether it’s a ‘risk log’ or a ‘risk register’.

   Agile is no longer a ‘trend’ – especially since we’re now more than 20 years on from the Agile Manifesto. It’s a reliable, repeatable way of working that brings huge benefits to the teams that do it well.

   However, it’s still not widespread or adopted reliably and effectively.

   There’s a trend, in my opinion, towards more intelligent adoption of agile methodologies in a way that better suits your context. For example, more Kanban for operational teams – shock! Non-project teams using agile tools to get work done! And Scrum of Scrum style set ups for larger organizations looking to scale.

   Why is it important?

   Today, more than ever, we need flexible ways of working.

   We have to be able to change and adapt to market conditions, but the type of work we do often needs input from specialists, meaning the ‘traditional’ multi-functional and self-sufficient Scrum team doesn’t work for every project that would benefit from Agile methods.

   Hybrid project management works – we know that. This trend is important because ultimately business value is the only thing that matters.

   As project managers, we want (and need, if we care about our careers) to deliver something brilliant that is valued by the organization. Who cares how you get there? Methodology is not a competition.

   The complexities of your project management environment are encouraging more managers to seek out mentors and coaches for themselves and their teams to learn from others.

   That makes tailoring decisions easier, because you’ve got support and past experience to draw from as well as your own theoretical knowledge.

   Oh, and that is something I can help with, if you are looking for a professional project management mentorship scheme.

   What you can do

   • Look critically at the project management methodology in use and consider if it really fits your project. Make conscious decisions about how to work effectively.
   • Be brave with your tailoring. Flex your agile approach to truly suit the needs of the team members.
   • Share your agile knowledge with people outside your immediate team. Ops teams and others can benefit from a smart way to manage their work.
   • Find a mentor with experience to help you make tailoring choices.
   • Don’t be snooty about agile or non-agile – whichever side of the fence you come down on as a personal preference. You can combine them and still get the work done. We’re all friends in project management, and we all have the same goal: delivery.
   • Be open and collaborative. Work with your colleagues to learn about their best practices and bring your knowledge together to create the perfect solution for your teams.

   Now you’ve seen what’s coming in the short term, why not check out what thefuture of project management holds for us? Get ready… more change is coming!

   This article first appeared on Rebel's Guide to Project Management and can be read here: Project Management Trends [2025 edition]