Project Management Systems
Introduction
Digital project management tools today are available in everything from the most sophisticated construction and engineering software used in years-long building of Olympic-scale sporting facilities down to personal Kanban boards for everyday productivity. Yet just over a century ago, everything from ships to public roads, and even wars, were won and lost, created and destroyed, or otherwise planned, organised, and managed with pen and paper, where the slightest change in plans meant a total redo of all of the documentation involved and its recommunication to stakeholders. Project management software in its different forms is now used by everyone from CEOs to students planning their career: anyone who is managing resources and tasks towards achieving a goal within a timeframe.
Hence the story of the development of project management information systems weaves through diverse domains, from war and military strategy, to the design and building of defence equipment, development of cities and suburbs, mass manufacturing of vehicles and other products in factories during the economic booms, commercialisation of mass transport over water, ground, and air, and space exploration, through to software, web, and now AI development, across project management methodologies of the predictive waterfall to the rapid delivery and iteration of agile, and along the timeline of technological development from ink and parchment to mobile phones, smartwatches, and VR interfaces. It is an epic story led by a stream of innovators driven to find new ways to produce ever bigger, better, and bolder outcomes in their fields, who created a core set of tools that have withstood the test of time to today.
Beginnings
The Harmonogram
What is a Harmonogram?
The Harmonogram is a scheduling visualisation invented by Karol Adamiecki (1866-1933) to aid better production management. Adamiecki’s invention is so rarely talked about in Western society that the word ‘Harmonogram’ has little presence in any major English dictionaries. Marsh (1976) cites a possible cause for Adamiecki’s underappreciated genius as the dominance of English-language scholarship at the time, as Adamiecki had only published his chart in Polish and Russian, limiting its adoption elsewhere.
It all started in 1896 with the harmonogram and its creator’s aim of improving the visibility – hence controllability – of production scheduling, invented by Karol Adamiecki, a 30-year-old Polish engineer who was managing a steel rolling mill at the time (Marsh, 1975). Adamiecki later became an academic researcher in management, then Professor at Warsaw Polytechnic in 1922 where he led the Department of Work Organisation and Industrial Enterprises, and later founded and directed the Institute of Scientific Organisation in Warsaw, before serving as vice president of the European Association of Scientific Management (ibid.).
Marsh (1976), in an article reproduced by the Project Management Institute, conducted a thorough review, analysis, and comparison of Adamiecki’s harmonograms in a tribute to its inventor, titled, ‘The harmonogram: an overlooked method of scheduling work’. In it he eloquently described the harmonogram as, “various workflow network diagrams which resulted in graphical solutions to production problems.” The system operated by way of a series of detachable paper tabs, each representing a process in production and its position in the sequence, held in place with clamps at each end. When an update needed to be made, the tabs or strips would simply be rearranged as appropriate, though this could become unwieldy in large and complicated processes. Marsh’s analysis provides helpful diagrams (ibid.), as well as a translation of excerpts from Adamiecki’s original article first presenting the innovation and evidence of its hugely positive impact at his steel mill – cited to have increased output by 100% to 400% (ibid.) - to an engineering conference in 1903.
The Gantt Chart
What is a Gantt Chart?
The Gantt chart is defined as a bar chart providing schedule information with activities listed on the vertical axis, dates shown on the horizontal axis, and activity durations depicted as horizontal bars based on start and finish dates (PMI, 2021). Its purpose is to capture and visually communicate high-level schedule information (PMI, 2022), and although they’ve been used since before even the Waterfall methodology was established, they are still considered relevant in the Agile environment of today (ibid.). Atlassian (n.d., Gantt Chart) expounds on the uses and benefits of the Gantt chart in Agile development, describing them as an essential tool in project management that provide a visual timeline of tasks and milestones, enabling easier tracking and management.
The harmonogram is considered the direct predecessor to the better-known Gantt chart, invented by fellow engineer Henry Gantt (1861-1919) around 1910 (Witzel, 2005). Henry Gantt was an American mechanical engineer and management consultant who, like Adamiecki, worked on the theory and practice of scientific management (ibid.). Also alike Adamiecki, Gantt was involved in the steel industry, working at Midvale Steel and Bethlehem Steel alongside another mechanical engineer and renowned scientific management pioneer, Frederick W. Taylor for a number of years, before co-founding The Society to Promote the Science of Management with Taylor and colleagues (ibid.).
At the time of developing the chart, Gantt was privately consulting to industry on efficiency improvement, and it was one of many charts that Gantt created in his quest to improve productivity. The aim of the Gantt chart was to allow foremen to more quickly see the status of production in relation to deadlines, enabling them to make better decisions and take faster action to ensure schedules were maintained (ibid.). Gantt charts were subsequently deployed in major infrastructure projects like the Hoover Dam in 1931 and today are a staple feature in project management software at all levels of complexity. However named, we have both Adamiecki and Gantt to thank for it.
Following development of the Gantt between 1910-1915, a series of historic world events took place that saw new depths and heights reached in the global economy, and throughout the period between 1914 to the 1950s, a period of intense activity in government, industry, and commerce that required the best project management techniques and tools available to bring about fast and effective results in the military, construction, engineering, manufacturing, and urban development. During this time, society experienced two World Wars, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, Baby Boom, and Cold War, and the Gantt chart played an important role in each.
Development
Growth in Operational Research
With the benefit of having refined informal project management methods and theories through three decades of the most extreme circumstances to ensure successful completion of a tide of diverse, large-scale, complex projects of historical significance, the economic boom of the 1950s, combined with the fluctuating tensions between the US and the Soviet Union in the Cold War that most heightened towards the end of the decade, sparked intense efforts in operational research (Informs, n.d., Booz-Allen), heralding a new era of modern project management which saw the adoption of four ‘optimisation tools’ from operations theory (Turner, Anbari, and Bredillet, 2013) that, together with the Gantt Chart, form the essential toolkit of project managers today: the Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT; US Navy, October 1959), Critical Path Method (CPM; DuPont and Remington Rand Univac, December 1959), Work Breakdown Structure (WBS; US Department of Defence and NASA, 1962), and Kanban (Taiichi Ohno, Toyota, 1953).
Program Evaluation and Review Technique
What is PERT?
The PMI Techniques Wiki at Projectmanagement.com (2015) defines PERT as “a planning and control tool used for defining and controlling the tasks necessary to complete a project”, describing it as largely interchangeable with the CPM, depending on how task times are computed. Atlassian (n.d., Pert Chart) adds that PERT is a “powerful project management tool that helps visualise project schedules and identify critical paths”, where the PERT formula “calculates a realistic expected timeframe for a task to help projects stay on schedule, on time, and on budget”. Atlassian suggest that the PERT is best used in complex projects, time-sensitive projects, and uncertain projects, where they can offer visual clarity, improved planning, and flexibility (ibid.).
Concerned with the problem of scheduling at the time was the US Department of Defence, more specifically, Lt. Gen. Bernard A. Schriever (1910-2005), who was then commander of the Air Research and Development Command, leading the development of the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile weapons system (Webster, 1999), which accelerated during 1957 to 1959 after the Soviet Union successfully launched the world’s first ICBM in August 1957 (Siddiqi, n.d.). Lt. Gen. Schriever was trying to find a way to implement concurrency in a crash program with his team, and devised the Program Evaluation Procedure or PEP, which is considered to have directly led to the development of PERT. Apparently, a program manager for the US Navy’s Polaris project, Vice Admiral Raborn (1905-1990), visited Schriever after the success of Atlas to get some tips and based on this advice the PERT tool (initially, the Program Evaluation and Research Task; see United States Bureau of Naval Weapons, Special Projects Office, 1958) was developed by mathematical analyst, Charles E. Clark, then a consultant from Booz Allen Hamilton, working with other consultants in operations research and development at the US Navy, in a team led by one of Booz Allen’s best senior analysts at the time, Bill Pocock (Booz Allen Hamilton, 2024). In the first published article on the technique (Malcolm et al., 1959) Vice Admiral Raborn reported that PERT saved one year’s work for the Polaris program.
Booz Allen Hamilton had been working with the US Department of the Air Force, and later with the Department of Defence, from 1947 after the US Government asked it to “help the government advance its technological competence to win the Cold War” (Booz Allen Hamilton, 2024). The management consultancy, previously focusing on private clients, formed Booz Allen Applied Research Inc. (BAARINC) in 1955 as a dedicated team for military and government projects during this critical period, and around the time of their joint work with the Navy, BAARINC also started consulting for the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Although PERT is sometimes cited as originating in 1958, a US Navy progress report on Phase 2 of the PERT research project published in September 1958 (US Bureau of Naval Weapons Special Projects Office, 1958) provides an estimated completion date for PERT of June 1959 and the next paper on the technique was published in October 1959 (Malcolm et al., 1959), just two months ahead of the CPM.
Critical Path Method
What is the CPM?
The PMBOK, Seventh Edition (PMI, 2021) defines the Critical Path Method as “a method used to estimate the minimum project duration and determine the amount of schedule flexibility on the logical network paths within the schedule model”, where the critical path is the sequence of activities that represents the longest path through a project, which determines the shortest possible duration (PMI, 2021). Atlassian (n.d., Mastering Critical Path Method in Project Management) describe the CPM as “the cornerstone of effective project management”, enabling project managers to “optimise resource allocation, mitigate risks, and ensure timely project completion” (ibid.).
DuPont started as a chemical company over two centuries ago and today describes itself as a scientific and industrial innovator (see DuPont, 2024). In the 1950s the DuPont Engineering Department was undertaking a program of cultivating new ideas, among these, a project to improve planning, estimation, and scheduling in which engineer Morgan Walker was invited to contribute in 1956, joined in 1957 by James Kelley who was a computer programmer at Remington Rand Univac at the time (Kelley, Walker, and Sayer, 1989), owned by John Mauchly, a major contributor to the emergence of electronic and commercial computing (see Computer History Museum 2024a and 2024b). Over the next two years their team developed the Critical Path Method, publishing its design and implications in their seminal paper which was presented at the IRE-AIEE-ACM Computer Conference 1-3 December 1959 (Kelley et al., 1989).
Where the Gantt chart visualises all of the tasks that need to be completed for a project, their sequence, and timeframe, the CPM graphically depicts the longest path of dependent tasks which determines the minimum amount of time it will take to complete all essential activities that will deliver the project in its required state. It is described as a project network (see Marsh, 1976) and provides more detail on the relationship between tasks and time, creating metrics such as the early and late starting and finishing times, and the float by which each timeframe is determined – how many days the completion of this task can be delayed without impacting the deadline. On the other hand, the PERT is better for tasks with an unspecified duration, is useful in shifting or dynamic circumstances, and is a probabilistic rather than determinative estimation of the timeline of a project.
Work Breakdown Structure
What is the WBS?
The PMBOK, Seventh Edition (PMI, 2021) defines the Work Breakdown Structure as “a hierarchical decomposition of the total scope of work to be carried out by the project team to accomplish the project objectives and create the required deliverables”, with a PMI Wiki adding that it “visually defines the scope into manageable chunks that a project team can understand, as each level of the WBS provides further definition and detail” (Projectmanagement.com, 2019). Atlassian (n.d., Work breakdown structure (WBS) in project management) suggest “a well-crafted WBS is the roadmap to success”, setting “a clear framework for project planning, execution, and control” (ibid.)
Ongoing successful application and refinement of PERT across US military and government agencies and beyond over the ensuing years gave rise to its next legacy, the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) (see Fleming and Koppelman, 1998). Key deliverables of the project and their acceptance criteria are identified, and each deliverable is broken down through a process of decomposition into the smaller tasks and deliverables that will lead to the fulfilment of the acceptance criteria. In the first recorded practical application of PERT in the US Navy’s Polaris program, tasks were organised by the deliverables they were intended to produce (see Haugan, 2018), and a book published in 1962 by the US Department of Defence and NASA described the WBS in the context of a PERT/COST system (ibid.). By 1968 the Department of Defence mandated the use of the WBS across all branches (ibid.).
Kanban
What is the Kanban method?
The PMBOK, Seventh Edition (PMI, 2021) defines Kanban as “a visualisation tool that shows work in progress to help identify bottlenecks and over-commitments, thereby allowing the team to optimise the workflows.” PMI (2016) describes Kanban as “a method for managing knowledge work which balances the demand for work to be done with the available capacity to start new work”, deploying visualisation and pull-based work management where team members take work as they have capacity. Atlassian suggests Kanban is ideal for Agile projects, its benefits in software development including dynamic task management, accelerated delivery cycles, and enhanced customer satisfaction, essentially enabling “efficiency - a harmonious blend of transparency, adaptability, and continuous improvement - unlocking the full potential of Agile methodologies” (Atlassian, n.d., Kanban).
The final project management innovation that was developed after World War II and is now a staple of project management information systems was one of the first to be created in that period, and developed into Lean and Just-in-Time production management, then the Toyota Production System, but only adopted and applied in project management in the form we know it as today from the early 2000s with the development of the Agile methodology to manage software and web engineering projects (PMI, 2017). In the late 1940s in Japan, Taiichi Ohno (1912-1990), an industrial engineer and businessman leading production at a Toyota Motor Company plant, worked with Eiji Toyoda (1913-2013), one of the founding fathers of the Toyota Corporation and a major figure in its growth from a small local vehicle manufacturer to the international giant it is now, to find new ways to reduce waste and improve productivity and quality at the plants (see Automotive Hall of Fame, 1994 and 2022). Taiichi took an example from how supermarkets manage their inventory with such efficiency by only stocking shelves with the level of inventory calculated to be consumed by customers within a certain period (see Fleming and Koppelman, 1998). Hence, the Kanban system is based on a visual trigger, much like the empty shelf in a supermarket, for further replenishment of inventory, a production item, or a task, where Kanban boards are used to visualise the flow of work across each of its stages, from to do, doing, and done, with flexibility to modify these statuses according to the setting. It aims to reduce work in progress by facilitating a continual flow of the work, rather than being based on timeframes and deadlines.
Professionalisation of Project Management
Throughout the 1960s each of these five tools was applied and refined in megaprojects across aerospace, energy and utilities, construction of landmarks, roads, and high-rise buildings, manufacturing of vehicles, and planning of major events. In 1969 the Project Management Institute was founded (PMI, 2024a) - the same year as perhaps one of the most remarkable projects in the history of humankind, when NASA first landed on the moon, now listed by PMI as only second to the creation of the Internet in its Top 50 Most Influential Projects 1969-2019 (PM Network, 2019) - in 1970 the Waterfall methodology adhered to diligently over the next three decades was established by American computer scientist Winston W. Royce (see Atlassian, n.d., Waterfall Methodology: A Comprehensive Guide), and the techniques that until then had perhaps been applied in a disconnected fashion slowly became codified and formalised, enabling a greater sense of professionalism, cohesion, and standardisation in the field and the gradual development of more advanced and sophisticated computer programs customised to the needs of project management in industry.
Personal Computing
During the late 1970s to early 1980s personal computers such as Apple I and II, and Commodore 64 were launched, with the latter declared the greatest selling computer of all time by the Guiness Book of Records (Computer History Museum, n.d., Timeline), and the era of the personal computer was announced by Time Magazine’s annual special (Time Magazine, 1983) sharing its ‘Machine of the Year’, in reference to the growing popularity of personal computing and its predicted importance in society. This was accompanied by a rapid increase in the growth of software companies developing programs for both the enterprise and personal settings, including in the area of project management where the first among them was Autodesk.
State of the Art
Enterprise Software
Autodesk was founded in 1982 by American computer programmer, the late John Walker (1949-2024), working with a team of 12 other programmers (see Markoff, 1994). In his earlier years John Walker was said to be something of a mischievous hacker, creating what is possibly the world’s first Trojan Horse virus, ANIMAL, which was reportedly more annoying than malicious in nature (Interesting Engineering, 2007). He set about solving engineering problems like computer hardware integration and programming translation with his first company, Marinchip (ibid.), to enable collaboration across companies and researchers, and finding engineering solutions to other challenges, later writing ‘The Hacker’s Diet’ (2007), sharing an Excel tool he created using engineering principles to help him lose excess weight in under a year and maintain it thereafter (ibid.).
Autodesk focuses on the design, drafting, and management of large-scale projects and initially aimed to meet the specific needs of those creating solutions for the physical environment through architecture, construction, and engineering, with end-to-end construction project management software, AutoCAD for computer-aided design, Revit 3D architecture and construction software, and other applications in civil engineering and building information modelling, before expanding its offering to include software in product design and manufacturing, and media and entertainment.
In 1983, the next project management software stalwart was founded - Primavera, by Primavera Systems Inc., a US-based developer of project portfolio management software founded in the same year by Les Seskin, owner of a mainframe batch scheduling system, Dick Faris, a senior power plant planning engineer, and Joel Koppelman, also a senior planning engineer (see Weaver, 2006). The unique advantage offered by Primavera was its ability, in the days of DOS, to manage a large volume of activities (ibid.) Where Autodesk addresses the technical visualisation, graphical, and other design needs of large projects and provides project management systems for focusing on construction, Primavera has long sought to meet the most complex project management planning, estimation, and scheduling needs among very large organisations such as government, military, and multinational corporations. Primavera was acquired in 2008 by Oracle, and its product P6 EPPM (Enterprise Portfolio Project Management) is still very popular in manufacturing, construction, and engineering, both private and government.
In 1984, Microsoft, having already achieved success since its launch in 1978 with the introduction of the MS-DOS operating system in 1981 and Multi-Tool Word in 1983 (the predecessor to Microsoft Word) (see Wallace, 1993), released the first version of Microsoft Project for DOS, before releasing the first Windows version in 1990 (see Wikipedia). With the growing popularity of its productivity suite across enterprise, business, and personal settings in the following years, the demand for Microsoft Project increased (ibid.). Where both Autodesk and Primavera were targeted to meet specific market needs, Microsoft Project, like other Microsoft products, seemed to better meet the needs of the general business user at mid-range complexity and scale.
The Internet, Agile Methodology, and Collaborative Software.
Atlassian, Asana, and monday.com
In 2001 the Agile Manifesto was published with its 12 principles that formalised what was anecdotally already taking place in many project teams, revolutionising software development. With the value of Agile practices now acknowledged and the increasing popularity of such an approach, new business software was developed to support this new way of working that placed more emphasis on meeting the customer’s needs than documentation and following strict methodology, which had been a part of the predictive Waterfall approach that had dominated project management to that time.
In 2002, two Australian university students started Atlassian, providing collaboration tools for software development, ITSM, and project management, and today helping over 300,000 customers with a marketplace of more than 5,000 apps (see Atlassian, About Us). In 2008, Asana was founded by two Facebook engineers trying to save time wasted from ‘work about work’ such as meetings and emails, and today Asana serves over 100,000 organisations and millions of teams worldwide (Asana, Company). Finally, in 2014 monday.com was launched by its three entrepreneur founders and today helps over 225,000 customers across many countries (monday.com, About). Each platform offers digital templates, views, marketplace apps, widgets, tutorials, and step-by-step guides on creating Gantt charts, CPM, PERT, and WBS diagrams, and Kanban boards, with integrations across their products and features enabling sharing, collaboration, and greater productivity.
Where software such as Autodesk and Primavera provide deep specialisation in their domains, Microsoft offers synergisation of project management with productivity so that this documentation can be created, stored, shared, edited, and updated in the same platform as enterprise financial accounting, internal communications, data warehouses, production, and business intelligence. In contrast, digital platforms designed for smaller businesses like Atlassian, Asana, and monday.com prioritise user-friendly interfaces, customisation, and flexibility, allowing businesses to tailor workflows, dashboards, and reporting to their specific needs. These platforms are also more mobile-driven, with an emphasis on supporting the accessible collaboration that is a requirement for field services or remote teams and has reached peak popularity since the pandemic with the work-from-anywhere trend.
Possibilities
Generative AI, Blockchain, and Simulation Tech.
Over the past decade, technologies such as blockchain, mixed reality, and more recently, generative AI, have been explored in project management across major industries like construction, engineering, and architecture. Blockchain is seen as a potentially effective way to manage contracts and supply chains (see Autodesk, 2020), mixed reality can be used to create simulations of projects or products for the purpose of modelling and finding the best solution (see Autodesk, n.d., Simulation Overview), and generative AI offers the advantages of assistance, augmentation, and automation, particularly in the more routine and repetitive aspects of project management, from administration to lessons learned (see PMI, 2024d). Each of these have been deployed in different project management software in varying ways, with the enterprise platforms incorporating blockchain, mixed reality, and generative/general AI, and SME platforms focusing on the benefits of generative AI solutions.
With 3D a part of its offering since 1985, Autodesk launched its Digital Twin platform - Autodesk Tandem - in 2021, and in November 2023 it introduced Autodesk AI in its Design and Make platform, providing augmentation, automation, and advanced analysis capabilities. Autodesk has also been investigating the application of blockchain in its building information modelling software since around 2018, describing its potential benefits as including reducing corruption in construction (see AFR, 2018). Meanwhile, Oracle continues to innovate in the area of construction and engineering software, launching Construction Intelligence Cloud in 2021 and its own generative AI integrations in 2024. Similarly, Microsoft has since expanded to project-based services software with Dynamics 365 Project Operations in 2020, launching Copilot in 2023, and introducing its Copilot Studio in 2024, with Copilot providing interactive chat, task plan generation, risk assessment, and project status report capabilities, and Copilot Studio offering the ability for companies to create their own agents or use a prebuilt version to unlock knowledge, turn conversation into action with triggers, and connect to data and services for better project outcomes.
In 2023 Atlassian launched its Atlassian Intelligence and expanded this in 2024 with genAI team member, Rovo, which became generally available in October. With these tools Atlassian aims to transform teamwork and increase productivity through features such as use of natural language to find information, identifying issues and incidents sooner, and generating insights from data more quickly and effectively. Similarly, Asana introduced AI innovations in 2023 before launching Asana AI in early 2024, promoting the benefits of automating tasks and orchestrating complex workflows, and intelligence that is able to adapt to dynamic business circumstances and needs. Lastly, monday.com also integrated AI into its products in a beta version in 2023, releasing monday AI in later 2024, which helps customers build workflows to meet their needs with AI automations, templates, columns, and apps built on its AI Assistant infrastructure.
The Project Management Institute (PMI) has introduced its own AI coach and assistant for project managers, PMI Infinity, in January 2024, and PMI Infinity 2.0 in September. PMI Infinity 2.0 provides a prompt library, guided experiences through expert-led real-world scenarios and simulations, document generation, templates and checklists, and also allowing document upload. PMI also offers training in project management with AI and has acquired Cognilytica, with its innovative Cognitive Project Management for AI Certification, and continues to produce the best research and writing available on integrating AI into professional project management practice, including four insightful reports published just in the past year, with Community-Led AI in Project Management (February; PMI, 2024b), Navigating AI in Project Management (April; PMI, 2024c), First-Movers’ Advantage: The Immediate Benefits of Adopting Generative AI for Project Management (June; PMI, 2024d), and Pushing the Limits: Transforming Project Management with AI Innovation (September; PMI, 2024e).
Their research discusses generative and general AI adoption so far among project management teams for use in automation, assistance, and augmentation (PMI 2024d). With an expected annual growth rate of AI in the PM market of 17.3%, the top three industries deploying AI in PM were found to be financial services, insurance, and banking; government and defence; and IT and telecom, and Atlassian among the top global players in this area (PMI, 2024a). In a later review of recent research, PMI found that companies deploying AI in project management had experienced an average 15% increase in productivity (citing KPMG), increased project success rates by up to 50% (citing Journal of Information Management Systems), and improvements including more timely delivery, greater benefits realisation, and higher return on investment (citing PMI, 2019).
The most recent two surveys form part of the one study, with PMI reporting that high-adopters of AI in PM (those using AI in 50% or more of their projects) had increased by 85% since January 2024 and identified a 99% positive impact from GenAI, compared to 64% of low-adopters (those using GenAI in 1-15% of projects), with its most common applications in data analysis (64%), summarising and reviewing (53%), and planning and monitoring (46%), and over half of those applying it reporting improvements gained in productivity, collaboration, and problem-solving (PMI 2024d). PMI highlights the still untapped potential of GenAI in project management, identifying significant opportunities in high-impact tasks, along with challenges that remain to be overcome, emphasising that both individual proficiency and organisational support are necessary for truly transformational use of GenAI, with reskilling of professionals and organisational acceptance of GenAI important next steps that should be taken to optimise its integration into the project management profession.
As project management evolves, the next frontier lies in the deeper integration of technologies that remain underutilised in practice. AI agents, mixed reality, and blockchain represent transformative tools with untapped potential to redefine project workflows, collaboration, and outcomes. AI agents could autonomously manage entire phases of a project lifecycle, from inception to completion, and mixed reality can enable teams to immerse themselves in virtual models of projects for unprecedented problem-solving and decision-making precision. Lastly, blockchain could revolutionise transparency and trust in contract management and supply chains, minimising disputes and their associated delays, as well as inefficiencies. The challenges involved in fulfilling these possibilities go beyond simple adoption of these technologies to the skillsets, workflows, and organisational structures needed to harness them fully, and they promise an exciting future in the management of projects, not only in their delivery, but in the types of projects that will be achievable with their assistance.
Summary
Throughout the journey of project management systems, from the pioneering harmonogram in 1896 to PMI’s Infinity, Atlassian’s Rovo, and Autodesk Tandem in 2024, the pursuit by project management professionals to find new ways to better visualise project schedules, formulate estimates, and model the impact of variables on project outcomes for more effective planning remains as driven as it was in the days of scientific management theorists and their passion for productivity, as energetic and enthusiastic as in the economic booms following the critical urgency of war, and as clever and resourceful as the dawn of the Space Age and humanity’s first visit to the moon. This persistent ingenuity, combined with the advanced technologies of today and their developments tomorrow, can only offer a bright future for project management and all of the benefits that projects bring their stakeholders and the societies impacted by them.
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