The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Five Focus Areas for Project Managers in 2025 | S4Ep16

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

As a Project Manager I'm always seeking new knowledge, skills, and abilities to help me empower my team members and project partners. In Five Focus Areas for Project Managers in 2025, I'm sharing focus areas I will be diving deeper into and that I've gotten questions about from my teams and the internet.

There are a lot of emerging trends for project managers to consider in 2025 that include artificial intelligence or AI. How does that integrate with what you do and the tools you use, especially if we want to apply it to data analysis? How do we use these methodologies, agile, waterfall, a mix of those, Six Sigma, change management? How do we mix all that stuff together? How do we continue to keep our teams engaged, whether they are your direct reports or the matrix folks that are in your projects in 2025, which is four or five years after everybody went remote. And now there's a mix of some people going back all the time, a little time, that kind of stuff. How do we have the impact of these emerging technologies? How do we manage that impact on our scope and our resources? And in this more disconnected, meaning less in person state that we're in in 2025,

how do we build ourselves and our team's soft skills up so that they have those strong relationships that get us to the outcomes and help us all work together on the process? We're going to talk about that on this episode. But first, please silence your cell phones, hold all sidebar conversations to a minimum. and let's get started with the People Process Progress Podcast. Three, two, one. Thanks again for sticking with the show. Again, I'm Kevin Pinnell. I'm a project manager professional, certified scrum master, which I haven't used near as much.

But I'm a person that leads teams. I lead a team of project managers all the time, then I also lead projects as a project manager facilitate process. And so I think about since we're still early in this year, what have I learned? What do I want to learn? What do I need to focus more on? And I've seen a lot of questions, whether it's on Reddit, people contact me directly, or that I face myself. So I'm going to give you my Kevin Pinnell's two cents, not those of who I've worked for work for now, on these trends on AI, data analytics, hybrid project management, remote work management, ethical considerations of AI and soft skills.

And so let's jump into the AI, right? It's a huge, huge topic in the world, let alone in project management and in IT, because, well, everyone's concerned about security as we should be, right? And some of us concerned about the Terminator coming to life. But in reality, how does this artificial intelligence, could it take part of our job? Could it not? I say it's never going to take a project manager's job because AI can't bring people together and read the emotions of people. It's still to me a little clunky in the standpoint of if you've ever tried to get something written, the first pass that AI writes is very grandiose and you have to kind of tell it no, think like this, or have this tone.

But a cool thing is you can use AI to do calculation. So let's say you're trying to do resource allocation and optimization. You have the data. Hey, we have these kind of resources and we have to fit this time schedule, you can plug that in to your favorite AI tool. And it's super helpful to write objectives, hey, write me some smart objectives focused on these things. And it gives you really good iterations of those. So that's a couple. The other very practical piece and is a huge part of project managers job is taking notes

for meetings or minutes. We call them notes because minutes seem so official. And it's one of the least favorite things that I do, whether it's bullet points in an email or on an official document or whatever, but it's something we need to do. So a great thing is you can use AI and again, different platforms to record the meeting. And it tells everybody, hey, we're going to record so they know it and they can choose to stay in the meeting or not. And then essentially it'll transcribe what you've said. Now, again, you need to go back and check it because it's not a perfect transcription, but it's very helpful and you can pay attention to discussions you're having. That's another old school tactic I do. I just take notes on a pad

of paper. I don't sit there and type the whole time because I feel like it gives the impression that I'm not paying attention to someone. And I can't really pay attention to somebody. So either write notes or not as often, but a tool I should use more is an AI empowered transcription service. So a couple of things to consider there for AI powered project management tools. So let's talk about data analytics. So I talked

about AI analyzing data, it can do it way faster than I can. But even spreadsheets and throwing them in graphs and doing burndown charts and having Gantt charts, the traditional visualizations that project management and project managers use to tell the story to show show the impact, to manage risks, I found those to be invaluable. A picture of how we're burning down to zero on the work we're doing, a chronological show of how many tickets we've had throughout this go live, how many tasks we have open and close and the status. It shows it right there. You don't have to do a lot of talking.

You can speak to it, have it on the screen. And it's, it's extremely valuable. And that doesn't require a lot of manipulation, really, if you're using a project management system, like project online, or ServiceNow, or there's so many systems out there. And so it's very easy to export that data and then manipulate it in Excel. And that's a skill that project managers should have. One of our hard skills is being able to manipulate data to tell the story,

meaning you can put the data out there objectively and the story kind of tells itself. And if you have a huge data set, then obviously we need to know or know the people that can help us facilitate use of that data. But largely for the project manager, it's going to be about the overall status of the program you're leading with the projects that are in or the project and the components that are in it. You can also use that data to do like a risk and vulnerability or probability matrix, like based on this risk, what's the probability? Do we still want to go forward? So knowing how to manipulate data analytics and visualize it and present that and speak to it is a huge skill that project managers should be able to have or build in 2025. So there's hybrid project management, right?

Agile methodologies were huge. Then they didn't quite fall off, but, you know, aren't aren't all the rage as much. And I'm seeing more folks be like, hey, this Agile, it's not all it was cracked up to be. But I think any methodology has to do with, do you have these foundational five things that I've talked about before? Do you have the leader's intent that says, we're gonna do this, we're gonna use it.

So everyone that you have to pull into your sprints and the scrum process and all that, that need their time for dedicated time each day and a couple of weeks and whatever your interval is, you to have the leadership support that says, yes, we're going to do this. Because if folks can tell you know, and you're the scrum master, it's, it's kind of wasted time, right? And then if you have construction, let's say, that has to be a pretty sequence thing, you're not going to work a backlog, so to speak, and then tell stories. And the story is, we need the space built, so we can then put the infrastructure and then

put the stuff in it and test the devices. So you will have, let's say you have construction and then you have hardware and then you have software. You could build some sprints in there or something. But the gist of it is make the methodology. And that's why I have relationships over outcomes over process. Processes last. So let's get those good relationships.

Let's determine the outcomes we want to achieve. And then let's figure out the process, right? Do we have to be pure waterfall, pure agile or scrum component of there? Or do we mix them up? Do we set up a framework where we've done some upfront planning? Now we're going to do sprints in the middle. And then we're going to kind of come back into the waterfall as we monitor and close it. They can all work if people work together. If people buy in, if we're giving time and our

partners are giving time and we're all communicating well, then the type of methodology you use is less important than how you implement it. But knowing how to pick and choose from the buffet of project management methodologies to have a hybrid is very important. Remote work. It's 2025. And while the federal government folks aren't quite as lucky, I'll say since they're being sent back to the office. But for folks that work either entirely remotely or hybrid or you know, a hybrid, they go in a day or two a week or whatever that mix is across different organizations. We need to know how to lead our teams, empower our teams, stay connected with our teams. I have found regular standups with your whole team.

They get a lot of good crosstalk. That's a way to see each other when you're all busy and you won't maybe see them as often, especially because you're not in the same office or even in the same state in some cases. It's also very important to make sure that if you're a leader of those folks, that you're monitoring from the standpoint of to give helpful advice. How are the communications going when I hear you talk to somebody and see your body language and vice versa? How are our partners treating you? Right? And if you are the project manager, like when I'm leading a project, how is that going for me? Am I reading the emotions from someone on camera? And I would

say this for remote work management. I wish it was required for everyone to be on camera because one of my least favorite things is to be in meetings with folks that aren't on camera, especially if I've never met them before. I think it's just it lacks that personal touch that you need when you're about to spend money and time and frustration and resources together. Right? If you don't take the time to show yourself, I get remote management, but I still, you know, another good thing for working remotely is you could dress, you could dress however you want if you're not on camera, but it pays to get up, get after it, of course, get a workout in and then get dressed for the day in an outfit that you would go out in because

you feel like I'm ready for work. It mentally does something. And then when you're on camera, you look like you're ready to do some work. Not that you just, you know, came from the gym. And if you're late, and you're like, Oh, I'm from the gym, sorry to come in this cool, that makes sense. But if you're in, you know, ragged t shirt and shorts all the time, that's, that's just not didn't give the air that you're invested, right? Unless you're, I don't know, an IT startup somewhere. And that's, that's the jam. But typically, typically, for remote work management,

you know, to me, it should be outcomes focus is are the folks that are working remotely, getting the job done? Well, are they facilitating a process as project managers, other teams, getting along for the most part, because as we know, during a project, teams are gonna butt heads is gonna be a messy middle, there's gonna be a downturn in the curve of learning and all this kind of stuff. But it shouldn't be how long you're sitting here and how long you're sitting there or I need to know how many meetings you're having. You can't micromanage from afar. And I'll share a lesson I learned about when I was in emergency management. And it's unfortunate timing because this just happened.

Family assistance centers after disasters, particularly airline disasters. And one example of leadership or coordination that I learned about that airline industry does is they'll have folks there right at the airport where the disaster happened. And then they'll have folks in a quote, command center, halfway across the world or the country trying to run things. Well, you can't run things well from afar, right? If there are folks there, let them lead, right? If your project managers are leading teams, or you have folks on your project team that are leading certain parts of it, let that happen. The ask then could be, because we're remote, because I don't see you, because we don't

talk all the time, if you can just keep me aware so that I can have a big picture of the whole process, that's the most important thing. And that leads me into this last part I want to riff on a little bit, which is soft skills development. As project managers, your soft skills, in my opinion, are vastly more important than what you can do technically, what tools you know how to use, the whiz bang graphs you can make. And I love me some spreadsheets and graphs because of the output they generate and the conversations they can support. love me some spreadsheets and graphs because of the output they generate and the conversations

they can support. But if you can't talk to somebody as a professional, if you can't supplant your ego when someone is talking to you, not great, but not allow it, right? What you allow in your present, you promote still stands. But part of our soft skills is reading someone and saying, you know, this person, I think they just need to get this out, whatever they're going to say in a tough spot, and then respond accordingly, right? I hear you, I see your frustration. You know, this is how I think I could support you or how the team could support it. So that's, to me, one of the biggest detriments to not being together is the body language that you can kind of see on camera, but it doesn't beat in person. I was just in some leadership training. And the great thing is, our groups, you know, the different groups I was in,

we didn't agree on everything, you know, we're prioritizing as a bunch of leaders together. And that was okay. But sitting there being able to turn towards someone and say, you know what, I don't agree with that. And here's why. And what do you think? And have that like adult conversation was invaluable. And you can emulate that online if you're remote, but it takes some work. It takes setting up one-on-one meetings with folks. Maybe there's someone that you're just, you're just not connecting with. You're not able to, you're just not vibing. Right. And so that's when I've found it very helpful to say, I'm going to set up a one-on-one and just talk through, here's what I'm seeing. How can I help? How can I be the, the,

the best resource for this, for you and the team? And then vice versa, listen to them, right and talking about communication. How do we communicate? What tools are we going to use? What do you agree, agree upon for this project, or maybe organization has some standards, which is great conflict resolution, right? Having those difficult conversations or crucial conversations. Those have to happen on projects.

And sometimes you have to throw it out there and say, What do you all think about where we're at? Here is my viewpoint from this looking holistically, you know, we're go we're go later, we're doing well, we're not and here's why. And I think those soft skills help soften the blow when things aren't going well. And they also help prop up things when they're when they're are going well, I think, and then having diverse teams, people that that are different in many

different ways that learn different, speak different, work different, you're going to have I work in it. So there's folks that don't want to be involved in other people, but they have technical. So for soft skills, being able to resolve conflicts, being able to play normal face, right, which I got from Jocko Willink, where you just kind of sit there, absorb, listen, you know, understand what maybe what they're trying to say, ask questions, and then give feedback, being able to objectively without a lot of emotion, report the status and queue it up for decision, resolving conflicts through through just discussion, and then, you know, managing teams that are from different

maybe countries, areas, time zones. You got to figure that out too. And the soft skill of that is relationships. You got to build relationships with folks. So in 2025, if you're leading projects or programs, or you're leading a team of folks that do that, consider how you're going to use AI-powered project management tools or integrate AI in some capacity

because it's growing more than more and it is very helpful. Consider and make sure your folks know how to use data analytics and how to visualize that data for other people and for themselves as they make decisions on you know, scope, schedule, cost, quality. And it's also helpful to really measure before and after key performance indicators, right or eight KPIs. Figure out your hybrid project management approach or your clean slate. We're going to do one or the other. It's hard to wholesale do that though,

and just change people right away. That typically doesn't work well. We still have to lead teams and manage projects remotely. So you have to have the balance of what's the right meeting cadence. How are we going to communicate? What tools are we going to use? And then those soft skills, those should never go away, regardless of what kind of technology we have, we have to be able to relate, relate with people in the good, the bad and the ugly times of the project. And that's a key skill that project managers can build. And there are so many courses, I've used

Udemy, Coursera, LinkedIn learning, there's so many out there, but it's good to do those soft skills or get in touch with your own human resources department. Thank you for getting in touch with me at people process progress.com. There's so many out there, but it's good to do the soft skills or get in touch with your own human resources department. Thank you for getting in touch with me at peopleprocessprogress.com. There's a contact form there. You can let me know what questions or feedback you have about leadership, project management, even some jujitsu. I started the jujitsu podcast again, where I'm going to help new folks.

I did that a few years ago. You can follow me, Kevin Pinnell on X and Instagram at P-A-N-N-E-L-L-K-G, Pinnell KG. And then you can go to my YouTube channel, Pinnell Fly Fitness Club, where I share fitness 15, 20 seconds at a time, workout ideas, jujitsu after action reports, and of course, the good old cold plunge. Remember everybody, keep that hope and help it ignite how you grow yourself with these things to consider in 2025 as a project manager. Put a plan together to guide your actions and that of your organization, and then take action to transform yourself into the best project manager you can be and your teams through

empowerment. Godspeed, y'all. Thank you.