How Project Managers Can Stay Valuable Amid Rapid Changes in Business and Technology | Insights

For many years, project management skill was treated as independently valuable expertise on its own. Project managers and PMO teams were expected to focus on excelling their project management skills such as managing schedules, tracking issues, controlling scope and budget, and reporting progress to stakeholders. There were also assumption that as long as these project management activities were executed properly, the project will result in success.

Under this traditional view, project management was clearly separated from the substantial work of the project like business analysis, process design, and development works. Those project tasks were regarded as the sole responsibilities of specialists at each team. Project managers and PMO teams, on the other hand, were not expected to be deeply involved in details,and rather concentrate on logistic and management works.

This approach made sense in an environment where project management tasks themselves required specialized skills. In the past, project management tasks such as project planning, issue management, and progress tracking were assumed to require specialized expertise, and knowing how to develop those documents and how to use them is considered as valuable skills. Hence these activities were not easily delegated to other teams in the project.

The business environment surrounding today’s projects is changing. In recent years, a different view has become dominant among both practitioners and executives. Project management by itself is no longer sufficient. In fact, the idea that managing projects alone can create value is increasingly questioned. From an executive perspective, a project that is perfectly managed but fails to deliver business benefit is still a failure, which is often caused by misalignment between the project and the business.

About the Author

Yoichiro Kato

Senior Manager

The Expectation Gap Facing PMO Teams

PMO teams are often established with a clear responsibility to ensure project control. Because their formal responsibility centers on the project management, their focus are naturally on those tasks like managing schedules, issue and risks handlings, and reporting. This tendency becomes even stronger when the PMO operates as an independent and dedicated management team, where efficiency and accuracy of management on Project QCD are commonly regarded as the value of their works. From view of the PMO team, the work appears correct and professional if progress is well-tracked, risks are documented, and reports are delivered on time. However, from the perspective of executives and business leaders, dissatisfaction can arise when these well-managed projects are not aligned with business needs or its strategy at the end. What stakeholders expect is not simply visibility into project status or not merely good control on project progress. They expect the project to succeed in a business sense. They expect the project to solve a real problem, support strategic objectives, and deliver tangible outcomes. When issues arise, they expect the project management team to help navigate uncertainty and assure the project result will produce tangible benefit to the business.

Why Projects Fail Despite Good Project Management

To understand this gap more clearly, it is useful to look at why projects fail.

According to the Project Management Institute (PMI)’s Pulse of the Profession 2020 survey, the most common causes of project failure are not related to basic project management techniques. Instead, the top causes include changes in organizational priorities, changes in project objectives, inaccurate requirements gathering, poor upfront planning, and lack of a clear vision or goal.

For executives, this finding is particularly important. These factors of failure are issues related to business alignment, requirement analysis and decision making. For example, changes in project objectives often occur because the original goals were defined without a clear understanding of real business needs. At the start of the project, objectives may appear reasonable and aligned with strategy. However, as implementation progresses, decision makers realize that the project is not addressing the most critical problems or there are lack of understanding on external conditions. When this happens, objectives are revised, which creates rework and delay in project works. The cause of project failure is often embedded in the upfront phase such as setting right vision, right project objectives, conducting proper business analysis and right planning.

Does Project Manager Quality Still Matter

At this point, an important question arises, especially for executives who sponsor projects and allocate resources. If project failures are mainly caused by factors outside traditional project management skills, does the quality of the project managers really matter. The answer is yes, but not in the way it was traditionally defined. The success or failure of a project depends heavily on the project manager’s ability to go beyond management skill and address the real drivers of success. Followings are the capabilities which modern project managers are required to possess.

Business Analysis as a Core Capability

One essential capability for modern project management expert is business analysis skill. This does not mean project management experts need deep domain expertise or many years of experience in a specific industry. Rather, it means the ability to understand the nature of the business and the value chain of it, and the problems it is trying to solve. In most cases, the project is initiated to drive business changes, and such change must ultimately be connected to business value. Therefore, project managers needs to understand how the project outcome will affect operations, customers, costs, risks, and competitive position.

From an executive standpoint, this capability is critical because project managers often serve as a bridge between strategy and execution. If they lack business understanding, strategic intent can be lost as it moves into implementation.

Take a procurement transformation project in a consumer goods company as an example. The value of procurement process transformation project is often set at direct and indirect cost reduction. However, procurement functions are also responsible for ensuring stable material supply, maintaining quality standards, supporting product safety, and preserving traceability to meet regulatory and societal expectations. As a result, a procurement transformation project must balance cost efficiency with these non-financial but mission-critical values. Effective project management, therefore, requires a strong business analysis capability to recognize, evaluate, and integrate these sometimes competing objectives into the project design and execution.

Project managers who understand these multiple dimensions can guide decisions more effectively. They can evaluate trade-offs not only based on costs, but also based on long-term business impact. Additionally, communication with stakeholders becomes more effective when it is grounded in a shared understanding of business value.

Change Management as the Real Challenge

Another critical capability is Change Management skills. Every project involves people, and people respond to change in different ways. Some stakeholders are concerned about operational risk while others fear change of job nature due to digitalization. Different persons and departments has different concern and perspectives..

Managing these dynamics requires more than logical problem solving. It requires empathy, communication, and the ability to understand what motivates different stakeholders.

From an executive perspective, this is often where projects succeed or fail. Even well-designed solutions can fail if the organization is not ready to adopt them or overcome emotional resistance.

Project managers who understand stakeholders as real people, rather than abstract roles, is far more likely to succeed. This understanding allows the project manager to design communication approaches that fit each stakeholder group and to create an environment where change can be accepted rather than resisted.

The 3R Principle as a Practical Foundation

A useful principle for modern project management is the 3R Principle, which stands for Real Work, Real Place, and Real People.

Real Work refers to the actual tasks, processes, and objects that the project team is handling or trying to improve. Without understanding the nature of day-to-day works in the target business area , project manager’s direction and decisions remain abstract and disconnected from reality.

Real Place refers to the physical locations where the project activities and business process take place. Projects that are designed without understanding the real place often face unexpected constraints during implementation.

Real People refers to the individuals who perform the work, support the processes, and stakeholders who will be affected by the change. Understanding their concerns, skills, and motivations is essential.

Case Study: Lesson learned from a project for digitalizing and automating production planning process by APS

One example to illustrate why the 3R Principle is critical is the case of a project aimed at digitalizing the production planning process in a manufacturing company. The objective of this case project was to improve the efficiency of the production planning team by implementing digital solution called APS, Advanced Production Scheduler. The expectation was that, once implemented, the scheduler would automatically generate production plans and significantly reduce manual works.

From a system perspective, the solution appeared suitable for manual work reduction and logically speaking is good approach to improving production planning team’s productivity. The scheduler was technically capable of handling complex constraints, and the project team believed that automation would naturally lead to efficiency increase. However, after implementation, the system was rarely used by the production planning team, and the project failed to deliver its intended benefits. Why?

This outcome can be explained clearly through the lens of the 3R Principle. First, the project team did not sufficiently understand the Real Work. Although the scheduler can set up various parameter settings to generate reliable plans, project team failed to set proper parameters for production planning due to lack of understanding towards the nature and logic of production planning operation. Second, the Real People aspect was underestimated. The production planning team perceived the new system as a threat to their role. They believed that full automation could eventually eliminate their jobs. Because of this concern, they were not motivated to actively learn or adopt the new system, even though it was officially introduced. Finally, the Real Place was overlooked. In practices, production planning was tightly linked to shopfloor control operations where user always need to check actual production progress, availability of machines and availabilities of WIP product to be processed. Project team did not take care of situation that production status is dynamically changes at shopfloor and failed to provide solution for how to sync the shopfloor situation to reflect in production scheduling system.

As a result of these gaps, the production planning team gradually returned to their familiar Excel-based processes. The system remained technically available, but it no longer utilized to provide its original value to the business. This case demonstrates that project failure was not caused by poor project control or lack of technical capability. Instead, it resulted from insufficient understanding of Real Work, Real People, and Real Place. Without this understanding, even well-designed systems can fail to deliver value. On the contrary, project managers who understand all three elements are far more likely to anticipate issues early and guide the project toward realistic outcomes.

Project Management in the Age of AI

The role of technology in project management is rapidly expanding.

Tasks that once required significant effort, such as updating schedules, maintaining issue logs, or preparing cost forecasts, can now be automated. Collaboration tools can now simplify project communication, while generative AI can organize information, summarize discussions, and create documents with minimal human efforts.

As these technologies continue to advance, the value of purely administrative project management work will continue to decline. This trend is unavoidable.

However, this does not mean that project managers will become obsolete. It means that their value will shift.

The project managers who continue to be valuable will be those who can understand business context, interpret project goals and turn it to concrete execution approach, align stakeholders, and guide organizations through change. These capabilities are difficult to automate because they require judgment, experience, and human connection. Project management is no longer about controlling tasks. It is about leading change. They are expected to support executive decision making by providing insight, not just project status.

In this sense, project management is not becoming less important. It is becoming more demanding. Project management are not standalone technical discipline and skills anymore. Even the project manager who possesses knowledges certified by PMP might not necessarily be able to survive in modern business environment. Those who excel in business analysis, change management together with project management skills will continue providing values, even in an era where AI supports much of the project management tasks. Ultimately, the value of a project manager is no longer defined by how well projects are managed, but by how effectively business change is understood, designed, and realized through the project.

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