The project economy is here

This time last year, many of us were bidding a happy farewell to 2020 — and looking forward to a glorious near future of unmasked get-togethers, full-contact hugs and best-of-both-worlds hybrid work. And while it might seem like not much has changed, we’ve come a long way in twelve short months.

Take, for example, the shift to remote work in 2020. Remember how disruptive that was? In 2022, we’re old pros — and now the idea of a standard, cubicled workday built around recurring tasks and operational rhythms feels very 2019. But even before the pandemic upended work as we knew it, things were quietly changing. Projects — understood as unique, time-bound initiatives outside the range of usual activities — were becoming the new business paradigm, overtaking routine work as the primary driver of both short-term performance and long-term value creation.

The Project Management Institute (PMI) has called this new work model the “project economy,” and experts have been struck by the rapidly growing need for skilled project professionals, even in traditionally less project-oriented sectors like healthcare and the public service. In 2017, PMI estimated that by 2027, some 88 million people around the world will be working in project management, and the value of project-oriented economic activity will have jumped to $20 trillion. More locally, the demand for project managers in Canada is expected to outpace almost every other occupation, growing by 11% in project-oriented industries alone.

So what does the projectification of work mean for you? For one, familiarity with the principles and language of project management isn’t just for project managers anymore: all staff, no matter what their job title, are increasingly expected to understand and work effectively on the key elements of any given initiative. As companies adopt a more project-driven structure, some have gone so far as to ditch traditional job titles, defining employees not by their department or management layer but by the projects they work on.

All this was happening even before the pandemic put a firm end to business as usual, forcing even traditional organizations into more fluid, project-based ways of working. And as the world changes and uncertainty becomes the new normal, project management is changing too. In the past, the ideal project leader had strong subject matter skills in the project discipline. Today, project management is increasingly a meta role, combining subject expertise with process, facilitation and human resource skills. Project leaders need to be comfortable working under uncertain conditions and making plans with only limited information, and they should be prepared to apply some agile methods such as Scrum, Kanban and agile project management.

Want to stand out in the project culture? You can check out our project management course offerings and the path to certification on our courses page, or contact a learning consultant at training@algonquincollege.com or 613-727-7729 to find the best training strategy for your needs.