Project Management and Risk Mitigation Strategies post Covid-19
It was December 2019 when the news broke out about a deadly virus in Wuhan, China. Nobody expected our lives to change to the extent it has changed now. Each segment of society got affected and as I write today on 21st January 2021, over 2 million lives have already lost the battle against the virus with more than 97 million people infected. This pandemic had compounding impacts on the socio-economic environment of the entire globe. The exacerbating is so large that it is difficult to quantify the losses and hence becomes important to think about rapid collaborative remediation. Talking specifically about the business world many projects have stopped only to resume at a later date. Projects in different industries suffered greatly. A radically disruptive approach towards project management was needed as we underwent prolonged lockdowns and restricted movements. At the same time, it created a great number of opportunities for managers and leaders to ponder about the huge dynamic shift triggered by the pandemic. As a quick response, the stakeholders and leaders responded with providing flexibility in projects to adapt to the situation. However, without a framework and strategy, some of these projects failed. Therefore, it is important to switch the traditional project management strategies with innovative and dynamic practices.
Project management is stabilized with the strength of four pillars, i.e. Plan, Process, People and Power. Any disruption within any of these pillars jeopardizes the project management and hence the project. Unfortunately, this pandemic affected each one of these pillars. The suddenness of the pandemic took the business world with surprise and all the short and long-run plans failed. The processes which were traditionally defined took an abrupt turn and everything fell cascading down. The overall dynamics of how people worked, collaborated and communicated got challenged.
As an immediate response, we responded the best we could to adopt instant actions to keep people safe and essential business functions operating. As time passed the world started recovering back to the new normal. Now it is time to renew the strategies and find out durable solutions. Let us look at how can we expect the strategies to adopt post-pandemic.
Agility and Resilience
Software Development companies have long adopted Agile Methodologies for development which provided Project Agility. Increments of work are released as soon as they are developed and can add value to the customer. Agile methodology provides a lot of space for feedbacks during the entire process. Can we adopt a similar strategy for all the industries? Yes, the framework applies to all the industries in one form or the other. The leaders should call for organizational agility. This would enable the organization as a whole to respond quickly and in the right direction according to the changing demands of the customer. The Agile approach is best suited for disruptions and frequently changing demands. The agile methodology will equip the managers with a framework to handle the disruptions due to unseen/unclear future. Post pandemic period is relatively obscure and depends largely on the success of vaccines. It is still uncertain and the best way to handle uncertainty could be to go Agile. Although not all industries might align with this idea but with the rapidly changing world it becomes necessary to understand the days of long-term strategies are over and short-term strategic plans are what is needed now.
Resilience is another term that constitutes crisis management and business continuity. Agility and Resilience are two sides of the same coin and once can’t move ahead without another. It represents the ability of the organization to quickly adapt and act with resolute responsiveness to any disruption that unfolds, natural disasters, cyber-attacks supply chain disruptions, to name a few.
As an example of leveraging the data in the right way, we can talk about Data centralization and how it would help the project executions. A centralized data repository gives a closer look at the projects for managers and leaders. An informed decision rather than an intuition-based decision will be much more fruitful towards driving the costs and profitability in the unprecedented times. More than ever, monitoring is key to efficient project management. Data enables efficient monitoring of the resources and actual progress of the projects which can be so much fruitful to the resource management portfolios. With a good data centralization tool, efficient reporting can be achieved. Real-time monitoring capabilities can be achieved through centralized monitoring dashboards with standard KPIs. The benefits of data will push more industries adopting the strategies about it and with the kind of potential that data would bring to project management, it becomes imperative to link data security as an integral part of risk mitigation strategies.
Step ahead with Data Security
Data analytics helps companies learn about their consumers and much more. From recommendation systems on Netflix to product recommendations on Amazon, data analytics is disrupting the growth patterns within the industry. The last decade was all about data with the explosion of the internet, e-commerce, social media platforms. Companies, businesses and consumers have been making efficient use of the data. Having said that, a lot is still left behind when it comes to the security of the data. Data governance and security is equally important just like leveraging the data for studying consumer behaviours and financial transactions. It is extremely important that project managers take a step ahead in terms of data security and management before even starting to leverage the data. The pandemic brought in huge change in dynamics of project execution and many industries specifically knowledge based companies have been trying to centralize their data repositories as their workforce and resources became more disintegrated. Therefore, we need a step ahead with data security in project management as well for all industries alike.
It is a simple method to increase the visibility of risks and assist the manager’s decision making. [2] Given the uncertainty of events which cannot be estimated, a risk matrix is a fruitful approach. With slight modifications and boutique changes related to specific areas, project managers should adopt this technique with agility.
The key to successful risk mitigation is to understand that probability of an event cannot be predicted. The disruptions which were brought in by this pandemic were completely random with probability at all. However, the impact can be assessed and can be controlled. The actions have to be measured, controlled and impactful to mitigate the impact of the disaster. Intuitions and often crowd foolishness hampers the mitigation process. Therefore, disasters will continue to happen and we can never be prepared for it. The only option is to redefine the Impact Probability Matrix, promote Agility, develop Resilience and stay Persistent.
Digitisation
Technology has revolutionised our lives to a great extent and it will continue to do so in the coming future. The major impact of technology has been the penetration of digital technologies in the workplace. Covid-19 carried this penetration to an exponential growth level. The way project would be handled post-pandemic would greatly be driven by the competitiveness of an organization’s digital capabilities. Not only the knowledge industry but the traditional industries too would be utilizing the benefits of digital capabilities.
As we swiftly move towards Artificial intelligence (AI) era, it would not be surprising to see much of the traditional tasks of project managers being done by AI bots. This is a clear indication of the paradigm shift in the project management arena as well as creates opportunities for project managers to work upon. We will continue to see the rapid penetration technology through efficient data storage, cloud integrations, management systems, and a whole host of employee tasks will be becoming more streamlined challenging the status quo of the company’s operating strategy.
People-Centred
Another important aspect of change would be the shift towards people-centric policies. Organizations are driven through people and Covid-19 affected the people first. With drivers of disruption that followed the modulo effect toppled each segment of the society. Put simply, project success is related directly to the success of individuals. And, to do this effectively, upskilling and reskilling programs will be more common. With the rapid penetration of digital technologies, learning new skills will become more important than ever. Managers will keep this ambidexterity alive for developing capabilities of their teams.
Another opportunity which was driven through this pandemic became the remote work and work from home strategies. No one would have imagined earlier that technology companies would go completely remote and still deliver the projects efficiently. Technology companies got an advantage of their agility for being the drivers of the VUCA world. However, shortly, we will see more of such transitions happening in other industries alike as more and more digitization takes place.
Conclusion
The pandemic had a catastrophic impact on the projects and businesses across the industry but it also opened the horizons of new opportunities and innovations. We saw some really good strategies coming up from different sections of society. It gave us the time to restrain, reflect and reinstate our strategies going forward. Instead of staying stuck in the past, the need is to reimagine the working modalities and business with agility, resilience and persistence. The upcoming trends in technology, digitization, innovations will shape the future of the sustainable world.
References
[1] Wikipedia
[2] “What’s right with risk matrices?”. Julian Talbot on Risk, Success and Leadership. Retrieved 2018–06–18.
[3] Tableau Public Gallery
