Welcome to the 21st Century for Project Managers

Abstract

If the O&G industry adopted new mail technology at the same rate it adopts project management technologies, it would still be using the Pony Express. Risk aversion and resistance to change are two of the main reasons for project failure across the industry. The industry still solves problems by throwing a bunch of human resources at the issue. The more people in the room the better the solution will be, right? In the 21st century, project management needs be based on the interaction of technology with human behavior. The objective of this paper is to introduce the industry to project management in the 21st century. In today's ever-changing global economy, the definition of success is just as fluid, and project management must be agile enough to deal with this. Finding something that works and then sticking to it for decades will no longer suffice. Modern technology companies take a unique approach to major project management which continually polls for changes and empowers individual employees to use their own best judgement while maintaining coordination with their fellows. An examination of this approach can provide helpful insight into optimizing the use of available resources, human or otherwise. Today's top technologies make it easy for individual team members to continuously update and record the progression of the project, and helps employees work toward better solutions rather than limiting themselves to the original requirements and company protocol. Employees are empowered to look for solutions, think out of the box and outside of what is currently available in-house. In the 21st century, the solution to problems is not a complex spreadsheet shared on SharePoint, it's an elegant integration of technology that optimizes human performance as shown in this case study.