Just-In-Time Project Management: A Digital-First Framework for Modern Projects

Technology has transformed every aspect of business, from the tools we use to communicate and collaborate, to how products and services are built and delivered, to how we conceive of organizations and communities.

But it hasn’t yet transformed the heart of how we manage and execute work – project management (PM).

A new paradigm for project management in the digital age has a few requirements:

• Digital-native, not only allowing but assuming that most work will be completed using digital technology and online
• Explicitly enable knowledge workers, who are no longer an exotic curiosity, but the dominant economic force in the world
• Thrive in the face of uncertainty and change, not only surviving but excelling in the face of the VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) we find ourselves working in every day
• Accommodate any team or organizational structure, adding value regardless of whether a project is being completed by a single freelancer, a team of contractors, across organizational boundaries, or by traditional employees
• Leverage emerging digital technologies, remaining open to and expecting new capabilities to become available regularly
• Operate through and within networks, taking advantage of existing platforms and ecosystems to learn and move faster
• Integrate deeply with learning, making continuous improvement synonymous with work itself
• Assume remote collaborators, capitalizing on the advantages of distributed teams while neutralizing their disadvantages
• Maximize return-on-attention, explicitly recognizing that attention is our most valuable resource