This year IPMA celebrates its 50^th Anniversary, a great point in time for elaborating on the past, present and future of our profession. The reason for starting the IPMA, formerly known as INTERNET, was the idea of having an exchange on network planning techniques. Project management took off in the United States of America, mainly in the aerospace and defence sector. Planning large engineering-type projects was the challenge in the 1950s and 1960s. To cope with the complexity military leadership and all associated organisations built on “Operations Research”, a discipline that was very popular at that time. Through analytical and mathematical methods it enabled planning complex endeavours such as the Polaris missile development. The paradigm of project management at this time was clear: analysing the projects, structuring it into detailed work packages, planning the durations and calculating the critical path was at the heart of what project managers and their teams did. The first gatherings of IPMA were dedicated to an international exchange of all these techniques. But sooner or later the experts found out, that focusing on network planning techniques is not enough. In the 1970s the founders of IPMA started to change their focus, a more holistic view started to spread, far beyond the network techniques. The organisational challenges of projects being embedded in a hierarchical and functional organisational became evident. Leadership aspects were considered, to overcome the difficulties between the powerful line functions and the often powerless project managers. The concept of project management spread in the 1980s into other sectors, for example into construction, communication and information technologies to name only a few. But still the main stream in project management was focusing on methodology and network planning. During the 1990s the renowned ISO 9000 established the process approach in many organisations. That also impacted project management. To perform project management in form of processes gained reputation and PMI published its first PMBOK Guide, offering a methodology and processes for managing single projects, following the roots and paradigms developed in the past. Still too many projects failed. The processes seemed to be too rigid. Some people planned the projects in theory, others performed them in practice – and the gap between the plans and their execution widened.

The growing importance of projects in the 1990s required the profession to develop beyond the traditional approaches. First of all, projects proliferated into many different sectors and required a specific approach, different to the engineering-type projects. Organisational development, software development and other dynamic contexts asked for a different methodology and a much stronger role of project managers. IPMA developed its first versions of the IPMA Competence Baseline, showing the competences a project manager needs. Leadership aspects, communication and stakeholder engagement, change and conflict management, all people-related issues started to become important for successful project execution. Project management started to be emancipated in organisations, the IPMA World Congress in Vienna in the year 1990 (see one of the previous blogposts) even postulated the paradigm of “management by projects”. Concepts for analysing and improving maturity in project management (e.g. PM Delta in Germany) or Kerzner´s Project Management Maturity Model (PMMM) started to spread. The fall of the wall in Berlin enabled a new collaboration between “East” and “West”, project management spread internationally and enriched the concepts through intercultural divers views.

Nowadays, we experience projects in all sectors, all types, sizes and functions of organisations perform projects. During the education in school, at university and throughout our professional life, even in our private life we do projects. This is what we call “projectification”. There are many different types of projects, an increasing complexity of projects and all this requires a virtuous project management. Not “one size fits all”! A less complex project requires a minimum of methodology, whereas a very large and complex project requires a more sophisticated approach, including competent project managers with behavioural and contextual competences. Winter and Szczepanek describe in the book “Images of Projects” the many fascinating facets of projects and project management. Projects have a social and political perspective, often change aspects blend in, projects are performed in a temporary setting, which needs to be balanced with the permanent organisation. Agility, resilience, culture, psychology, to name only a few of the concepts that were merged with project management. But still too many projects fail. Linking projects with strategy, multiple-projects management or programme and portfolio management became important for organisations doing more and more projects. For example, approximately 40% of Germany´s GDP is performed through projects, project-oriented organisations like SIEMENS perform more than 50% of their turnover through projects, some Consultancy firms are even project-based, they do nearly all activities in form of projects. Thus, project management is a key competence, for the people directly involved in projects, in directing and controlling them as well for many of the stakeholders in the wider context. The increasing number of certificates speaks a clear language (IPMA has issued more than 250.000 certificates world-wide since the beginning of its 4-Level-Certification System).

What will the future bring for the profession? More proliferation of the philosophy of project-based working. There are still many sectors that desperately need professional project management, including but not limited to humanitarian projects, the development of growing urban areas, helping communities and our society to flourish and to overcome the many challenges of our world. The future will also see a different way of managing projects. Less management, administration or coordination, more leadership, communication, teamwork, self-organisation and entrepreneurship. Maybe we need to change “project management” into something else. It implies methodology for the administration of a single project and thus has an increasingly negative connotation. Already in 1697 Daniel Defoe published “An Essay upon Projects” in which he called the people doing projects “projectors” and defined: “… the honest projector is he who, having by fair and plain principles of sense, honesty, and ingenuity brought any contrivance to a suitable perfection.” Common sense, ingenuity, maybe intuition and honesty – all for the good of society. Maybe we should read more carefully what was already there in the 17^th Century, before the times of Industrialisation, Scientific Management and traditional Project Management. Back to the roots! It´s as simple as getting things done, performing challenging tasks, helping society to develop. It´s for us people and should help us to realize benefits in the most sustainable way. People shouldn´t be a means to projects. Projects should be a means for us! They should help us to make our visions come true. People drive the way projects are performed. They self-organise projects, they are virtuoso, creative, collaborative, they draw from divers competences and see this as an advantage to cope with the challenges. Modern technologies are supportive, they enable the way we collaborate and communicate. At the end, projects are fun, they are at the heart of how we act and interact. As Roland Gareis put it already in the 1990s: “Happy projects!” and all the best for our profession.