What is the top challenge for Project Managers nowadays? and what is the best way to deal with? (Massimo)

Project management has undergone significant changes in recent years. These changes are due to changing conditions in the context in which the projects are located.

In the past, there was project management and planning of it based on a plan that was determined and approved before the project and product-related tasks were carried out. The project in doing so was dealt with in a traditional way, that is, a scope planning was done, the timing , the costs of the project were all determined so that each part of the project was planned and during the execution of the project each change to the forecasts made in the planning phase was subject to modification that had to be approved either by the sponsor or by a board within the organization.

The planning phase lasted a long time, sometimes months.

This is not the case today: due to the change in society and the constant changes in the market in which it operates, projects are managed with an adaptive or hybrid approach.

It turned out that it's not worth wasting time and costs on a push schedule.

Project planning is performed only for that part of the project that is carried out in a timebox time that varies from two to four weeks, called a sprint.

The part of the product or chunk, after its execution, is immediately verified and validated by the customer.

This means that quickly you get a working part of the product and that with this approach the customer can make all the changes that he deems appropriate in subsequent sprints, being attentive to his needs and the needs that the market and that society in constant change indicates.

The product is therefore always increased by new chunks approved and delivered until at some point you have a minimum product that has a business and market value and that in theory could also be sold.

In a hybrid approach we tend to have a mix of the two adaptive and traditional approaches and try to take those parts of the two approaches that best meet the needs of the project.

Hybrid approaches are in high demand for companies at the moment because they carve out exactly one approach that the project needs to have: it is crucial that before adopting an adaptive or hybrid approach, the organization must be aware and eavesdrop methodology that will be adopted.

That is, it must have an agile or hybrid mindset because the entire project team must work with that approach and not just the Project Manager.

This seeks to maximize the business value of the project and to have a product that better and quickly meets the needs of project stakeholders, recovering all the time and costs of very high planning that may ultimately not to serve.