2016 was a great year by all measures.
Trainers of Pokemon finally caught Pikachu without a console.
Beyonce created a new standard in exposing cheating husbands to all of the world.
Our sweet prince was too soon taken from this world.
There was also all the other bad stuff that occurred, but that’s not why you’re here. You are here because you want to learn how the field of project management will change in the next twelve months.
You are right to be curious. 2017 will be a huge year for project management.

We compiled a list of 2016 project management predictions. The growth that can be derived from the integration of traditional project management and change management. We predicted that PMPs would increase in popularity, as well as the emphasis on risk management.
We are confident that 2017 will be the year of project management excellence. Some of these may surprise you.
1. Agile project management is accepted outside of software development.
Although software development has been the mainstay of agile project management for many years, we have been watching agile slowly leak into other industries. There is an agile marketing manifesto already, editorial staff use Kanban software to organize articles, and Scrum has been used in finance almost a half-decade.
These examples are a small selection of industries that are not familiar with project management. This is about to change.
Agile project management has risen in all industries in the past few months. It is being used by UX professionals and graphic designers. Agile is revolutionizing pet food product development. Agile has been adopted by construction management. IT does not have the sole right to project management.
2. A pivot will emphasize nontraditional collaboration tools over traditional software for project management.
You might expect that agile’s popularity will lead to more industry-specific software. However, we are not there yet (with the exception of marketing and design).
2017 will see a shift away from project management software to collaboration software like Slack, and other alternatives, such as Slack. Gartner says that the “applications” are already in use, which encourages adoption and change management within employees. They are used to Yammer and Jive so they will likely stick with them.
The trend will be in effect in 2017, but Gartner warns that these collaboration tools are not designed for project management. Users will need to adjust their settings. Gartner suggests that employees agree on the basic methods of communication such as “@” mentions to include team members, and hashtags for red flags. The project manager will need to be skilled in change management to adopt these systems.
3. “NPD PPM” will not be just jargon anymore.
NPD PPM is the new product development portfolio management software. (See why there’s an acronym? ) has slowly begun to creep into enterprise product design organizations. Some examples brands include Decision Lens and GenSight, PDWare Planview, Sopheon and UMT360.
Gartner attributes the merging of NPD/PPM to agile’s widespread adoption as well as the Internet of Things. It states, “Consumers pitted with talented product developers drive product innovation that cannot ever be ‘fast enough’ or ‘agile enough to meet market demand… The Internet of Things, digitalization, and strategizing are pushing product companies and their product innovation teams to strategize and prioritize, select, source, and execute projects.