Verktækni - 2019, Síða 110

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• Professionalism: There will be a better understanding of what the difference is between a
project and what is a day to day job. The importance of projects will grow, and the importance
of defining projects with other companies will be increasingly used.

Coping with complexity
• Cooperation: There will be more focus on projects as investment and for long-term gain, rather
than as a single contract and such cooperation with other companies will make projects more
complex.
• Employees’ skills: In complex projects, emphasis will be on communications and skills. People
will have to learn more languages, be more open minded and be able to work with different
cultures. This will also call for increased specialization of employees.
• Technology: Better software solutions will be available.
• Flexibility: Project management will entail more flexibility and new methods. Agile and Scrum
will be used more effectively to make complex tasks simpler.
• Increased analysis: Projects will be better defined from the beginning and with it will come
more thorough analysis of risk and interests of different groups.
• Benefits: More emphasis will be placed on benefits and cooperation with those who buy the
end product or service.
• Professionalism: There will be better supervision of projects where processes and
documentation will be stricter.

Professionalization of project management
• Professional title: Ethics and standards will be more apparent and project managers might be
awarded a regulated professional title.
• Certification: There were different views on certification of project managers, but overall the
panel agreed that there will be increased demand for certification from the public sector, and
this will entail an extra dimension where project managers have more specialised knowledge.
• Education: Universities will set requirements for a general knowledge of project management
and project management will develop in a similar way as the human resource management has
developed. Companies are likely to have a team which focuses on complex projects, in similar
fashion as does a human resources management department with regards to staff.
• Research: More research will be done on topics with project management as the focus.

Discussion and conclusion
Our findings indicate a noteworthy development, whereby future trends in project management will be
characterized by a shift from a focus on conventional, permanent organisations towards a keener focus
on the ‘temporary organization’ of projects and programmes. We also expect a stronger focus on
individual project managers and their leadership abilities. This shift will call for more emphasis on
comprehensive skills and general project management knowledge at a higher level.

Our findings further indicate that the use of IT-technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) in project
planning, organizing and estimation, will make many project management practices increasingly
automated. Instead of invalidating the future role of the project manager, it will enhance this role and
demand a higher level of leadership competences, such as an increased ability to deal both with intra-