Clear vision through cloud

Rev­o­lu­tion­ary changes in project man­age­ment are lead­ing to mas­sive improve­ments in com­mu­ni­ca­tions and effec­tive­ness – all dri­ven by the cloud.

Cloud is just one area of dig­i­tal where mem­bers of the Man­age­ment Con­sul­tan­cies Asso­ci­a­tion (MCA) act as advis­ers to both busi­ness and gov­ern­ment. But as suc­cess in con­sul­tan­cy is the sum of accom­plished projects, how is the cloud chang­ing the deliv­ery of project man­age­ment?

His­tor­i­cal­ly, project man­age­ment tasks have been per­formed using a range of tools, the selec­tion of which varies from busi­ness to busi­ness and often from team to team. Cloud-based project man­age­ment is not a new way of doing things, but a sim­ple and effec­tive way of start­ing every­body off on the same page and keep­ing them on it. The same plat­form is avail­able to any­body with a lap­top or smart device and is man­aged by a third par­ty, leav­ing the busi­ness to focus on its projects.

Project man­agers, team mem­bers, busi­ness lead­ers, clients and sup­pli­ers can share the same work­space, enabling greater inter­ac­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion. This pro­vides vis­i­bil­i­ty of the progress of all stake­hold­ers, allow­ing the project man­ag­er to slice through real-time project infor­ma­tion to unprece­dent­ed lev­els.

Cloud-based project man­age­ment is not a new way of doing things, but a sim­ple and effec­tive way of start­ing every­body off on the same page and keep­ing them on it

Plat­forms are also emerg­ing that extend beyond tools of project man­age­ment and into project imple­men­ta­tion. Team mem­bers can select from a range of apps designed for their roles or cre­ate their own tai­lored solu­tions and share them.

The suc­cess of data shar­ing plat­forms has demon­strat­ed the poten­tial of host­ed envi­ron­ments as key enablers for busi­ness­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly small and medi­um-sized enter­pris­es, to launch into glob­al mar­kets. Such plat­forms allow projects and project man­age­ment teams to span inter­na­tion­al bor­ders, which can cre­ate a step-change in the stan­dards employed in oth­er parts of the world, par­tic­u­lar­ly more remote regions and devel­op­ing nations.

How­ev­er, when it comes to cloud project man­age­ment solu­tions, there is still a reluc­tance to place mis­sion-crit­i­cal sys­tems into the hands of anoth­er, as there is a reliance on the cloud ser­vice provider and local infra­struc­ture. For instance, cloud may not be an option for projects with stake­hold­ers in say sub-Saha­ran Africa or parts of Latin Amer­i­ca, where data access is more dif­fi­cult and there are restric­tions on stor­ing it local­ly or even mov­ing the data across inter­na­tion­al bor­ders.

Glob­al engi­neer­ing con­sul­tants Mott Mac­Don­ald have inter­viewed UK busi­ness­es to see where they are on the path to cloud ser­vice adop­tion. Trends sug­gest that large busi­ness­es have con­cerns for data secu­ri­ty and are there­fore reluc­tant to sac­ri­fice their invest­ments in proven lega­cy in-house sys­tems for a jump into “the unknown”. How­ev­er, sig­nif­i­cant invest­ment is not required from the out­set, and a com­pa­ny has the oppor­tu­ni­ty to dip its toe into the water and test the tem­per­a­ture.

Increased invest­ment in glob­al infra­struc­ture and reg­u­la­tion com­bined with cloud-based project man­age­ment has the poten­tial to bring a new era of col­lab­o­ra­tion from one-man-bands to large cor­po­ra­tions, from the City of Lon­don to Machu Pic­chu. Cloud-based project man­age­ment plat­forms can allow project stake­hold­ers to share the same envi­ron­ment, even if the view out of the win­dow is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent.