As businesses have learned how to recover from one of the biggest global disruptions, being prepared for any impact on operations is wise moving forward, with finance as a cornerstone of an organisation’s disaster response strategy.

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Google has announced the launch of its online courses for UK job seekers in partnership with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

The Google Career Certificates courses cover a range of in-demand skills, from IT support and UX design, to project management and data analytics, which are open for enrolment starting today.

The Google Career Certificates courses usually take up to six months to complete, with some possible to finish within three to five weeks if done full-time. Recognised by industry experts and employers, including Google, the courses don't require any prior experience or a degree in the topic in order for someone to enrol.

Originally priced at around $39 per month, the courses will also be available to some job seekers for free with financial aid, thanks to the 9,500 scholarships offered by Camden Council and the DWP. Universal Credit claimants will also be able to access the courses for free using a referral from their Work Coach, while the Prince's Trust and the INCO Academy are set to provide another 1,500 scholarships aimed for young people from underrepresented and disadvantaged communities across the UK.

Ben Marson, director of Partnerships at The Prince's Trust said that the organisation's partnership with Google will contribute to its "efforts to close the digital skills gap, allowing The Trust to provide a pool of young, diverse talent for businesses across the UK".

"Young people have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, accounting for over 60% of the fall in employment, with young people who were already facing disadvantage and adversity being hit harder still," he added.

The Career Certificates were first introduced in the US in August 2020 as an alternative pathway to conventional education for budding tech workers constrained to their homes due to the pandemic. However, the courses could continue well after lockdown restrictions are lifted, with Google reopening enrolment for its flagship training and certification programme earlier this year.

The tech giant also expanded its employer consortium as part of wider efforts to boost digital skills, which include more than 130 businesses, such as Verizon, Deloitte, and SAP.

Commenting on the announcement, chancellor Rishi Sunak said that "nothing is more important than helping people get new jobs".

"That is the mission of our Work Coaches day in and day out, and I'm delighted they'll be working with Google to give people the digital skills they need to do exactly that," he added.

The following article originally appeared in Issue 11 of IT Pro 20/20 as part of a new series that invites industry experts to give their take on some of the most pressing issues facing businesses today. To sign up to receive the latest issue of IT Pro 20/20 in your inbox every month, click here. For a list of previous issues, click here.

Women in the technology industry, especially those in technical roles, routinely face a plethora of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. They shouldn’t have to follow such a tough path on their own - but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Today, I am part of Mars, one of the world's largest consumer goods companies, in a role that shapes our key technology strategies, but I’ve come a long way from where I started and it was often tough going.

My path into tech started with a doctorate degree in experimental physics - a subject which fascinated me due to its logical and structured nature. I had started to build upon my experience of scientific computing by engaging in small projects alongside teaching, but in 1999, my husband was transferred to the UK through his company. I arrived with my family to start a new life in a new country.

My first job in the UK was as a support analyst in a startup, answering customers’ phone calls and logging their IT questions. Initially, I focused on finding a suitable role, doing it well, and then taking the next step. Since my first role in IT, I have technically led many digital transformation programmes for various enterprises, including government departments and multinational companies.

Many people assume that strong communication skills are not necessary to work in the technology industry, reasoning that workers will be spending more time with computers than with people. I too started my career in technology with this assumption, but quickly realised that my technical skills would never gain the recognition and value that they deserve if I couldn’t successfully convey their importance to others.

I have always focused on learning business processes and understanding business challenges, without relinquishing my core technical skills, and my key achievement has been to learn to communicate well. The key to effective communication with business stakeholders is to make a conscious effort to listen, clarify, and respond in a language that is both relevant and jargon-free. The key to successful communication is to do this consistently.

My focus on maintaining my integrity and learning continuously has been key to my professional development, but my biggest challenge has been finding ways to fit into the male-dominated IT industry.

I did not fit in a typical IT organisation. I believe in fairness, value integrity and advocate diversity of opinion, but I was often told that such principles conflicted with organisational interests. I was frequently urged to overlook unjust treatment, encouraged to be more like my colleagues and toe the line. My technical abilities would also get dismissed. I struggled to accept such compromises.

As an example, I was working on a large, complex programme alongside a senior architect who was well known in the organisation. Unfortunately, he had neither much knowledge of the subject, nor did he take any responsibility for the team. He would ask me what I was doing, write it down and then take full credit with the senior managers, who assumed that it was all his own work.

Frequently, I was the only woman in the team and had a different ethnic and cultural background, so I directly attributed these differences in attitude to biases. I had reached an impasse and had to find a way out. I decided to change myself, but on my own terms and conditions. I worked on eliminating my own biases about people and their culture, background, nationality, and gender in order to ensure that I could be objective about any gender bias that I experienced.

This objectivity has changed my approach. Instead of dismissing comments which may at first seem biased, I have learnt to try and appreciate where they are coming from. If they are borne out of a lack of understanding, I have a rational conversation with the individual. If this does not resolve the matter, then at least I know that I have attempted to build bridges.

Introspection has helped me redefine my values and I live by them, while simultaneously trying to internalise feedback to continuously improve myself. I recognise that this is all a work in progress, and one which I may never complete. However, exercising the ability to be my natural self has brought me peace that I have not known before.

Two decades after I arrived in the UK, it’s gratifying to see more young women choosing careers in STEM, but while I am fiercely proud of the technical skills that I have honed over the course of my career, the skills of communication, empathy, and introspection have been just as vital. It has been a remarkable and rewarding journey, professionally, personally and intellectually, and it’s not over yet. I know I have a lot more work to do and I’m intrigued to see where it will take me next.

IT projects fail all the time. McKinsey has found that somewhere between 25% and 40% of projects exceed their budget or schedules by more than 50%, and that 70% of complex, large-scale change programmes don’t reach their stated goals. What’s going on, and how do you avoid being in the majority?

There are some common reasons IT projects fail that are as relevant to small companies with a handful of employees as they are to large international mega-corporations. Anyone starting an IT project, whatever its size and scope, from a full digital transformation exercise to bringing digital resources into just one area of the business, should be aware of these, and refer to them regularly to make sure they’re not about to make the same mistakes.

Skills, skills, skills

When there is an absence of key skills to generate the desired outcomes, a project will be in trouble. When thinking about knowledge and expertise, you should look across different aspects of the project and different parts of the organisation. It’s also important to remember not all of the skills required will be technical ones.

Internally, an organisation needs process management and managerial skills to ensure implementation is smooth. Often the talk here is about project management – and that is part of it – but soft skills are needed too. The board of directors must take the task of creating buy-in seriously and champion a project through its development and after its implementation as it beds in and people get used to new work practices.

Managers need to be able to understand the changes and bring their teams with them. Some of their roles will be technical, some will be ‘people skills’.

Consultants, internal and external technical teams, implementation partners or others need to be fully able to turn an organisation’s ideas into reality. This means among other things helping with the vision, being a ‘critical friend’ and suggesting different approaches where these seem relevant, at all times ensuring they work within, and not against, the organisational culture. The best organisational change, technical or not, is done with people, not to people.

Scoping and planning is key, and this involves a range of skills both internal and external. This is not a one-time activity, though, as Hans Tesselaar, executive director at the Banking Industry Architecture Network (BIAN) explains. He says projects need clear and defined end goals from the outset, but that these can develop over time, and that projects teams should be given “an opportunity to re-scope the project in some capacity without losing track”.

Pauses help with scoping and finance

A project can’t be allowed to run out of money, but keeping tabs on finances can be a challenge. Building a budget for a project can be difficult as there are many elements to consider, including some that won’t become apparent until work is already well underway. Including contingencies and undertaking re-evaluation at very regular intervals are crucial. Otherwise, by the time a budget line is raising red flags, it might be too late to save the project.

One strategy to ensure a project stays on budget and within its original scope is to build in deliberate pauses. Pausing and stepping back to re-evaluate doesn’t have to wait until issues are identified – indeed by then getting back on track can be time-consuming and expensive.

Regular pre-set pauses where all involved can take a moment to breathe and think can be really valuable. ‘Function creep’ is a real and present danger in any project, and it can happen without being noticed as someone adds a small tweak here, another tweak there. Tessellaar tells IT Pro: “Often, when a group is in the middle of a project, they may lose track of their original goals or plan … pauses become necessary to take a step back and rethink the process.”

Three golden rules

With lots of people involved in a project, external contractors who may well be new to an organisation and its culture, and people pulling in different – maybe even conflicting – directions, the stresses on any IT project can be significant.

Project management in its process-focused form is not enough to avoid the traps. Tessellaar suggests project managers keep three things in mind: “Focus - stay as close as possible to the original objectives. Communication - ensure all project members and stakeholders are extremely well informed on a day-to-day basis. Craftsmanship - ensure you have the right skills and competencies in the project.”

French digital transformation specialist Capgemini has announced plans to hire 1,500 new workers in the UK over the next 12 months.

The strategy will focus on recruiting "junior talent" from across the country, the majority of which will be sourced through the company's long-running graduate and apprenticeship scheme.

Both of those programmes already employ almost 600 graduates on average each year, but a further 470 roles will be added for 2021. The new recruits will form a "vital" part of growing the UK's digital talent pool and will receive training in a range of digital and technical services as well as project management and cyber security.

Capgemini said it is also committed to sourcing talent from across the UK by "strengthening" its focus outside of London, adding that many roles will be based in Glasgow, Inverness, Telford, Worthing, Manchester, Liverpool, and Treforest. The new headcount in Scotland alone will be approximately 400, the firm said.

The company said it has "doubled" its planned talent intake for 2021, adding that 2020 proved that digital talent, particularly in the cloud, is now more critical than ever to solve some of today's most pressing issues.

"We are thinking more broadly than ever about where the next generation of talent could come from and how best to nurture it - carefully crafting our programmes to offer exciting and varied long-term careers in the technology industry," Paul Margetts, managing director of Capgemini in the UK.

Inclusivity is a key part of the scheme, according to Capgemini, with critical training and mentoring being provided by partners such as the Prince's Trust and Code Your Future. The Cloud firm worked with 37,000 young people as part of the Code Your Future initiative.

The new recruits will add to Capgemini's 8,800 strong workforce and will represent its biggest operation outside of France and North America.

Basecamp is a web-based business collaboration, project management, and communication platform that allows you to create dedicated workspaces for your business’s teams and projects. Unlike many online collaboration tools, the subscription includes an unlimited number of users.

It also does a lot of hand-holding when you create your account, prompting you to create projects and add colleagues, before presenting its core layout in a video and giving you some sample teams and projects to play with.

You’re also guided through creating welcome messages and check-in questions for your colleagues, with pre-drafted introductions to the system that come in handy if your creativity is running low.

Basecamp is keen to introduce you to its systems through the medium of video and interaction, but there’s also an extensive manual and guide series for the latest Basecamp 3 system, making it easy to distinguish current documentation from that for previous incarnations of the platform.

It’s a fundamentally simple system. There are three categories that you can add colleagues to. HQ is for company-wide announcements and comms. Teams provides a home base for individual departments, such as your finance, marketing or customer support divisions. Finally, Projects allow you to create spaces where people in different roles and departments can communicate and share resources about a specific project they’re collaborating on.

Basecamp 3 review: Features

Each HQ, Team or Project has various tools available to it. A message board, to-do lists and scheduling all work much as you’d expect. Document and file sharing includes support for Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and OneDrive, but not WebDAV. Some document formats, such as PDFs and images, display previews, but spreadsheets and word processor documents have to be downloaded or accessed via their home cloud service if you want to look at them.

Campfire is a simple chat system with support for emoji and file attachments, including animated gifs, and the ability to tag specific people if you need their attention. It’s not very sophisticated compared to Slack or even Microsoft Teams, without threading, hashtags, multiple channels within a team or an in-chat search.

However, you can quickly view all posted files and enable or disable notifications when people post, depending on whether you can be disturbed or not, and it’s fine for quick communication with whoever happens to be online.

Automatic Check-ins regularly ask team members a question and collect their answers, with suggested questions asking people what they worked on today, what they’ll be working on this week, what inspires them and whether they’ve read any good books.

The feature seems to primarily be oriented towards team-building and exchanging tips, but could also be used to collate friction points on a given project or, for that matter, photos of your team’s pets. However, it feels intrusive compared to the more natural flow of chat and forum communication.

Finally, and disabled by default, Email Forwards allow you and your team to forward emails – for example from clients or collaborators – to Basecamp. The first time you forward a mail, you’ll get a reply via email asking you to select which team or project area to save it under. Basecamp will at this point generate an email address for that project, and any email you forward to that address in future will be automatically sent there, including any attachments.

Once imported into Basecamp, the Email Forwards interface in the relevant project area will allow you and your colleagues to discuss and reply directly to the message. The interface here, again, isn’t particularly sophisticated – there’s no keyword tagging, for example. But it does the basics well, includes an archive for anything that’s been actioned and finished with, and provides change tracking and sharing options.

Basecamp 3 review: User experience

Each of these tools can be enabled or disabled for individual team and project workspaces, so if your team doesn’t need a given feature it doesn’t have to clutter up their interface.

On top of that, each user has access to the Pings private chat system; an inbox called Hey (not to be confused with Basecamp’s Hey email service spin-off) which flags up anything awaiting your attention; personal and company-wide activity summaries; quick access to your bookmarks, schedule, assignments and files, and a powerful search feature.

Because Basecamp doesn’t limit the number of users you can have, admins can add as many colleagues as they like, and give them access to whichever sections of Basecamp they need; that means even external contractors can be included without needing to provision and pay for an extra seat.

You can also invite clients to access projects they’re involved in – your teams get to set each item as viewable by the client or not, and client-accessible content is clearly marked.

Basecamp has a generally clean, pleasant UI to work with, and its web interface resizes tidily across a wide range of resolutions and window sizes. Unlike many SaaS web apps, Basecamp lets you use your browser’s back button freely and without breaking anything.

The only element that slightly interfered with our workflow was navigating back to previous pages, which is a little non-standard. When you click from, for example, your HQ or Project’s main page to its To-do lists, you get what looks like it might be a pop-up over the previous page.

In fact, this is an entirely new page with a dedicated URL, and if you go looking for an X or similar to close it, you won’t find one. Instead, the name of the previous Basecamp area can be found at the top of the page, and you click on that to return to it.

Basecamp 3 review: Apps & integrations

Mobile apps are available on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store and provide access to all the same features as the web interface. When you click into any of the company HQ, team or project areas, you’re presented with a list of all the currently enabled tools.

From there, you can access message boards, Campfire chats, project schedules and so on just as you would via the web interface. Most helpfully, you get all your Basecamp notifications on your phone.

In its vanilla state, Basecamp is better suited to communication and knowledge sharing than formal project management. However, a wealth of integrations are available to provide tools such as Gantt charts, customer support integration, time tracking and automatic cross-communication between Basecamp and widely used services such as G Suite, Outlook and Slack.

Unfortunately, many of these integrations require you to subscribe to a third-party service, which adds to the total cost of your project management toolkit. Even with integrations, some features are entirely missing, conspicuously the ability to create polls, surveys and proposals.

Basecamp 3 review: Pricing

The service’s pricing is refreshingly simple: Basecamp Business costs $99 a month. That’s regardless of how many user seats, teams, projects or external clients you have. If you have more than a few staff, that quickly starts looking very competitive compared to rivals such as Microsoft Project, which starts at $10 per seat or Facebook Workplace Advanced, which costs $4 per user.

Bear in mind, though, that Basecamp is a communications and collaboration solution as much as it is for project management, and some features that are standard in Microsoft Project, such as Gantt charts, have to be bolted on to Basecamp as extensions.

If you’re a freelancer, micro-business or other very small enterprise, then all the Basecamp Business features may feel like overkill. If so, Basecamp Personal is free, giving you three projects, 20 users and a gigabyte of shared storage. You don’t get teams, customer relations features or company-wide announcements, but it also costs zero pounds and can be upgraded later if needed.

If you’re not sure whether the service does everything you’ll need, the 30-day free trial of Basecamp Business doesn’t require a credit card. If you don’t keep the subscription, Basecamp Business downgrades itself to Basecamp Personal.

Basecamp 3 review: Verdict

Basecamp provides an excellent way of allowing colleagues to communicate both among themselves and with clients, and the fact that it’s a flat-rate service is incredibly appealing, particularly for businesses that work with a lot of external clients or contractors.

Although heavy-duty project management will still call for extra features such as time tracking and charts, Basecamp covers the basics well. Unfortunately, there are a few small quality-of-life refinements that are conspicuous by their absence, such as the ability to look at your project spreadsheets in situ or create a poll to work out the best time for a meeting.

The service is best suited to businesses with multiple small, fast-moving teams and projects whose members need to keep in touch and keep track of core documents and project milestones. It’s definitely a comfortable environment to work in, just not a particularly powerful one.

The role of a project manager is to manage business projects and make sure every objective is met on time and within the agreed budget. There are a number of frameworks that help guide the planning and strategy around delivering such projects but PRINCE2 is one of the most flexible.

Fully compatible with agile delivery, PRINCE2 is also one of the more versatile frameworks out there too, with the ability to be applied to projects in a range of industries and tailored to each project’s individual criteria.

Seven key principles, sometimes referred to as ‘obligations’, define a PRINCE2 project and every one must be applied at all stages throughout. Without sticking to the seven core principles of PRINCE2, you don’t have a true PRINCE2 project.

Public sector projects run by the UK government back in the 1990s are thought to have initially championed the methodology first owned and created by the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA). Since its acquisition in 1996, the PRINCE2 framework has been owned and developed further by AXELOS which also created, and still maintains, the methodology’s official documentation.

According to AXELOS, PRINCE2 is hugely popular worldwide with more than 1 million certified practitioners across more than 150 countries. It’s available to learn in 18 different languages, can be used in a number of roles and once you pass the course, PRINCE2 practitioners receive a globally recognised certification to use their skills abroad, should they wish to take their skills into their company’s global offices.

PRINCE2 Principles

Copyright 2017 AXELOS Limited. All rights reserved.

PRINCE2 is classified as a ‘principles-driven’ project management methodology, built around the idea of seven principles interacting with seven themes and seven processes. These principles are designed to be universal in their application, able to be shaped to fit any project regardless of scope, application, language, or culture.

The seven principles are:

• Business justification: the weighing of risks against potential benefits
• Learning from experiences: building upon mistakes from previous projects
• Defined roles and responsibilities: a clear organisational hierarchy - team managers that handle the day-to-day tasks, who report to project managers, who in turn report to an overriding executive board
• Managed by stages: provide control points for the board to review progress to assess justification. Authority for managing the stages is delegated to the project manager
• Managing by exception: the idea that authority should be delegated using 'tolerances' - threshold ranges for cost, time, quality, scope and benefits of a project
• Focus on products: agreement on the amount and quality of the product being delivered should form the basis of any project and its reports
• Tailor to the environment: PRINCE2 is generic by default, and needs to be tailored depending on risk, complexity, project size and importance

These form the fundamental philosophies that project managers should consider when approaching a task. However, the overall framework relies on the interaction between these principles, and what are considered 'themes' and 'processes', both of which are also split into seven elements.

PRINCE2 Themes

PRINCE2 practitioners can view the seven core themes in a similar way to the seven principles, in that each must be considered at every stage of the project. The themes represent the considerations project managers must make when choosing the optimum strategy of the project to achieve its goals most efficiently.

In fact, they help coordinate any priorities identified in the planning process as well as make sure that the team members involved all have the same idea in mind, especially when it comes to keeping deadlines and staying within budget. Simply put, themes should be interpreted as the most basic commandments for the project’s best practice.

The main themes worth considering when planning out a project are issues such as:

• Costs and benefits, which is a classic business case pitch
• Organisation (the maintenance of a clear hierarchy of reporting)
• Product quality (a focus on the product itself)
• Plans (regular reporting between team members)
• Risk (a clearly-defined plan for risk management)
• Change (a comprehensible structure for facilitating amendments to the products)
• Progress (the continued communication about the progress of the project).

PRINCE2 Processes

While we compared the above-mentioned themes to commandments that should be strictly followed, the processes function as descriptors to the particular activities and stages which comprise a project. What's more, they should also name specific persons who will be responsible for making sure that they are handled correctly and in a timely manner. These include the following:

• Starting up a project: initial information is filtered to the project executive board, so they can filter out good ideas from the bad
• Directing a project: regular points within a project for the board to decide whether it has continued business justification
• Initiating a project: this sets out the firm foundations for the project; it's when the project plan and the detailed business case are written, as well as strategies for managing risks, communication, and quality
• Controlling a stage: performed regularly by the project manager, it involves dictating the various responsibilities, including allocating work to teams, managing risks, and ensuring the subsequent stages remain within tolerances
• Managing product delivery: during this stage, all the specialist products are designed, built and checked to ensure they conform to the requirements
• Managing a stage boundary: performed by the project manager at the end of each stage, this prepares the information required by the board to help them decide whether to continue
• Closing a project: involves gaining agreement from the users and operation teams that the products are satisfactory. It is also an opportunity for the project managers to report on the achievements of the project and any follow-up actions required

The Principles, Themes, and Processes combine to form a highly structured roadmap that a project is able to follow in order to meet its goals, as well as ensuring a high level of visibility and frequent opportunities to assess progress and make changes.

PRINCE2 Certification

Since its conception almost three decades ago, PRINCE2 has grown to be one of the most widely-used project management methodologies in the world, making it an established and acclaimed certification with a multitude of benefits for its holders. Its flexibility and universal application has made it an attractive tool for companies undergoing change, particularly through businesses transformation. If you're looking to go into project management, a PRINCE2 certification looks great on a CV. But depending on the type of project you're looking to manage, you might be better served by an agile methodology. Check out our article here for how to generate buy-in for an agile approach.

AXELOS operates its own exam-based certification programme available through its website. However, there are hundreds of accredited course providers throughout the UK, offering opportunities to learn either online or through weekend classes - just be sure to look out for the AXELOS accreditation badge.

Object-oriented programming (OOP) has become one of the building blocks of programming, replacing - or working in tandem with - the concept of procedural programming. Whereas the more traditional idea of procedural programming puts action and logic at the centre, OOP utilises objects and data to produce outcomes.

On the simplest level, OOP focuses on the objects a programmer wants to change rather than the actions needed to make that change. This makes it easier for programmers to run a code analysis and also, because many of the objects are reusable for other projects, the time it takes to develop an application, for example, can be shortened significantly.

The majority of modern programming languages such as C++, Object Pascal, Java, Python use a combination of object-oriented programming, as well as procedural programming where required, meaning OOP has become a very important evolution in the world of development.

Core components of OOP

The main idea around OOP is that it's a more efficient method of software development for collaborative working because it allows developers to place in and sort objects by class, allowing them to look at the relationship between them, rather than the objects themselves.

There are four principles to OOP which are encapsulation, abstraction, inheritance and polymorphism, all of which sound more intimidating than the last but a simple explanation will surely get you on track to a full understanding.

Polymorphism is used when objects need to be used for different things in different contexts. It allows a child class to act like the parent class while also keeping its own methods as they are. Within the polymorphism bracket, there are two types of function: overriding and overloading.

Overriding (also known as run-time polymorphism) is used when two objects have the same method name and parameters (i.e. method signature), but one method is in the parent class and the other is in the child class. Overloading (compile-time polymorphism) happens when two or more methods in one class have the same method name but diverse parameters.

Encapsulation is used when objects in a project need to communicate with each other but have mutually exclusive logics that define them. Encapsulating these objects in their own states means other objects cannot change it unless it's explicitly allowed to.

Abstraction can be seen as an extension to encapsulation, its aim is to only expose the necessary information objects need to interact with it and conceal everything else. Using this principle decreases complexity and allows developers to make changes more easily.

Inheritance is used when dealing with several objects which share a lot of common logic, but each has slightly different unique logics. Using inheritance, developers can easily reuse the common logic and extract the unique logic into a different class to maintain a unique hierarchy, ensuring better accuracy.

Examples of object-oriented programming languages

There are many different languages that use object-oriented programming. Among them are Java (which was developed in 1995 by Sun Microsystems, now Oracle), Python (created in 1991 and emphasises code readability), C++ (which has imperative, object-oriented and generic programming features and is an extension of the C programming language), and Objective-C (which adds Smalltalk-style messaging to C and was the main programming language for OSX and iOS).

Gartner thinks that AI will become so powerful in the next ten years that 80% of project management tasks will happen autonomously by 2030, including tasks such as data collection, tracking and reporting.

However, Gartner notes that the automation of these tasks will not wholly replace project management roles, but rather will allow them to fulfill their duties more efficiently by eliminating the need to perform repetitive and time-consuming jobs.

"AI is going to revolutionize how program and portfolio management (PPM) leaders leverage technology to support their business goals," said Daniel Stang, research vice president at Gartner. "Right now, the tools available to them do not meet the requirements of digital business."

As is the case across the board with AI, the focus will be on generating better user experiences for project managers, helping them plan their projects with more precision.

In just four years, Gartner thinks those using AI to push their project management processes forward will cause disruption of the PPM market and lead legacy providers to transform their operation.

The growing sophistication of AI-based project management tools will improve the outcomes of everyday tasks, eliminating the need for project managers to undertake such responsibilities and instead allowing them to focus on recruiting teams that can manage the AI and smart machines rather than analysing the data themselves.

"Using conversational AI and chatbots, PPM and PMO leaders can begin to use their voices to query a PPM software system and issue commands, rather than using their keyboard and mouse," Stang added.

"As AI begins to take root in the PPM software market, those PMOs that choose to embrace the technology will see a reduction in the occurrence of unforeseen project issues and risks associated with human error."

Siemens PLM Software has added support for Slack and Microsoft Teams to its Digital Innovation Platform through the Teamcenter Cloud Collaboration Hub.

The update means Slack and Microsoft Teams users are able to post messages and view their conversation history from their Active Workspace using Teamcenter.

Siemens PLM Software explained that it will enable products to be of a higher quality as engineers and other development teams can view each other's work and provide feedback in real time.

It can be used across departments, with conversations that require cross-team to be decisions easily managed. For example, if engineering and the project management team need to communicate with the supply chain team, those conversations can be open to relevant parties, without cluttering other departments' Workspace.

As well as allowing for more productive conversation streams with collaborators - whether employees, clients or partners, it also means that it will be much faster for teams to collaborate on projects, with instant communication between employees in the engineering world.

"Gaining real-time access to the information and leveraging collaborative efforts from distinct teams to drive insights from that information have become inevitably essential to design and innovative best-in-class products in today's globally distributed manufacturing environment," said Shubhang Tripathi, senior product marketing manager at Siemens PLM Software.

The Slack and Microsoft Teams integration is available across the Active Workspace environments, including in-browser and mobile, whether a smartphone or table, so employees can collaborate whether they're at their desk or in the field.

As is the case with all Active Workspace integrations, conversations can be filtered and are only presented if they're relevant to the user's job role, making it simple to find updates and act upon them quickly.

Digital transformation has become increasingly important in the world of technology, and if going digital lends itself well to any part of your business operation, it's project management and collaboration that can benefit the most.

Why? Because digitising the project management process means everyone can share information and insights for projects, tracking progress, assigning tasks and making sure projects finish on time and to budget.

Although you may already be using shared files to share the load, using spreadsheets and word processing software just isn't an effective way of managing projects anymore. They're time intense and tracking changes can become complicated.

Switching to an all-in-one project management platform can take the burden off staff - whether they're in the project team or other employees that need access to project files. With most project management software, you can add individual tasks and assign them to users, add deadlines and then move the tasks through an approval process if need be. A kanban-board style tool like Trello allows you to just drag and drop tasks from one column to another, allowing everyone to see how it's progressing.

Choosing the right project management tool for your organisation can be a burden in itself. That's why we've collated the most effective project management tools to get you started.

Zoho Projects

Zoho Projects is one of the most widely used project management platforms for small and medium-sized businesses. The premium version offers a whole spectrum of features and functionalities for users, allowing project managers to define tasks and assign them to teams and individuals, estimate project costs and follow up on tasks that haven't been completed yet.

What is excellent about Zoho is its document process automation, making it much faster to manage projects. For example, it will automatical track any changes to documents and revisions, access control and retrieval. One key feature is the built-in document sharing portal and issue management controls, so if a problem arises, it can be easily resolved by project managers before the project falls behind schedule.

There are five levels of subscription, from the free version for up to five users (with very limited functionality) up to $150 a month for an enterprise package that's suitable for up to 25 users (each extra person costs $5). This latter package adds a lot more into the mix, such as free templates, the ability to upload files of up to 120GB and lots of customisation options.

Price: From free (five users, limited functionality)

Main idea: Zoho Projects is such a popular platform because it offers lots of flexible features at a reasonable price point. Its UI is simple to use and managers have complete visibility of every project.

Wrike

Wrike is a cloud-based project management suite, which is quick to set-up and easy for everyone to use, whatever their level of project management training. Wrike is one of the more expensive project management suites we examine in this feature, but that's because it's so simple to use. It allows you to track time too, making it a perfect solution for projects that are billed per-task, for example.

There is also a load of social collaboration tools built into Wrike and users can track their own tasks from a single dashboard. Other features Wrike supports include assigning tasks, tracking deadlines and schedules so you always have a real-time overview of how a project is developing.

Price: From free (five users, limited functionality)

Main idea: A great tool for getting up and running quickly, with the ability to see an overview of a project from a single dashboard

Trello

Trello is one of the many project management tools that use a Kanban-board like drag and drop interface for managing projects. Each project has its own board, while tasks are cards, These progress across columns as the project progresses, with each column a stage in the process.

You can assign tasks to others in the team and add labels to make it clear where they fit in the project. There's a wide range of integrations in Trello, including Google Drive for document storage, Slack for instant communication and the ability and you can set deadlines for tasks too.

We use Trello on IT Pro to help manage projects and our content output and are, collectively, pretty impressed by its intuitive UI and ease of use. It really doesn't take much time at all to get up to speed with what's what and how it all works. There's also something really comforting about having a 'clear' in progress Trello list at the end of the day/week/project.

Price: From free

Main idea: A very visual project management tool that's simple to use and boasts a huge array of integrations

TeamWork Projects

The 2017 edition of TeamWork Projects comprises lots of tools for project managers and teams to keep tabs on how projects are progressing. You can create task lists, track how long it takes to complete a task, upload files for everyone to access and message other team members. Project managers are also able to assign tasks to people and track their progress from one place, while account managers can bill clients based on the time inputted by everyone involved in the project.

TeamWork Projects doesn't have the most attractive UI, but its feature set make up for this and it's now becoming one of the most widely used platforms to help organisations keep up to date with everything happening in their business.

Price: From $49/month

Main idea: With detailed time tracking features and direct client billing, TeamWork Projects is perfect for businesses that need to bill clients regularly

Workfront

Formerly AtTask, Workfront puts a focus on task prioritisation, helping businesses make sure the most important elements of a project are completed first. Everything can be presented in a visual report so everyone in a team can view the work lifecycle. Project leads can assign work, track deadlines, check status updates and approve work, with collaboration features to comment on submissions too.

It uses a drag and drop interface for assigning different team members tasks and moves the priority of tasks around, making it simple for anyone to use, whether an organisation is using Agile, Waterfall or an alternative project management methodology to complete projects.

Price: From $30/month

Main idea: An all-in-one project management tool, suitable for use with any methodology

LiquidPlanner

LiquidPlanner claims to be the only project management solution that is dynamic enough to help teams in fast-moving environments. The three main tenets of the solution are:

1. Focus on the priorities
2. Adapt to changes
3. Visualise the impact of proposed changes before rather than after the fact

It has a number of features included that are designed to deliver on its dynamic promise, including smart schedules, resource management and contextual collaboration.

The main premise of the software is the acknowledgement of the fact that projects evolve and need tools that can evolve in line with the changes and knock-on changes required.

Price: $9.99 - $69 per user/per month depending on the size of your business

Main idea: Good teams plan. Great teams execute

When ageing infrastructure was preventing Gatwick Airport's modernisation drive, it turned to HPE to help transform its entire network in just 18 months without any downtime.

The project's urgency was dictated by Gatwick's old network rapidly approaching end-of-service-life, as well as the need to upgrade cyber defences and support a denser deployment of cameras, sensors and other technologies across the airport.

An added dimension to the complexity of the rollout came from the fact that the airport couldn't afford to have its daily operations impacted by downtime, a challenge not many companies let alone airports would readily take on.

"My appetite for risk is maybe higher than [our] competitors," acknowledges Gatwick's CIO, Cathal Corcoran.

If the core functions of an airport are to ensure planes fly, passengers get where they're going, and their bags get there with them, then a modern airport also serves as a "glorified shopping mall", Corcoran contends, as well as a building site. "We're always knocking something down, we're always building something."

Gatwick required a modern foundation to support all these operations, but the trouble was that its previous network wasn't up to scratch.

"It was running well and silently but with a lot of manual intervention - it took a lot of hand-holding, it took a lot of maintenance," Corcoran tells IT Pro.

However, it couldn't support the modern technology Gatwick wanted to deploy - including 4,500 CCTV cameras and a multitude of sensors to monitor everything from bin overflows to where passengers would go while waiting for their flights.

While the airport carried out RFPs with "all of the main players", Corcoran ultimately chose HPE's Aruba network in a deal worth $15 million, as well as the giant's IT services arm, Pointnext, as its implementation partner.

"The key reason we went for it was the end-to-end offering, and by that I mean the strategy we bought was HPE kit, HPE architecture, HPE design, and it was the HPE Pointnext organisation that put it in," he says.

Moonlight maintenance

To meet the 18-month deadline, Pointnext and Gatwick's own engineers worked in four-hour windows overnight to take out between 40 and 50 switches for up to four days every week, compared to between four and six per night on a more conventional network implementation.

Making the timescale harder to stick to was the fact that Corcoran's team had to avoid bank holidays when the airport sees a spike in travel and that the four-hour window included two hours for rollbacks. The team also had to "roll with operational issues", flexing around any airfield problems the airport experienced.

The stakes were high. Any errors made in these overnight windows could impact the first wave of planes leaving Gatwick the next morning, which could create a domino effect of delayed departures almost certainly making the news headlines.

"If you get this wrong the airport is going to have a very, very bad day and that may continue into a second bad day," confirms Corcoran.

He and Gatwick's incident management team organised airport-wide "fire drills" to ensure everyone from baggage handlers to retail employees knew the manual processes in the event of a network outage, to mitigate the risk of any downtime, something he believes enabled the project to move as fast as it did.

Despite the challenges, Pointnext and Gatwick completed the deployment on time in March 2018, racking up 10,000 man hours in the process.

Marc Waters, MD of HPE UK & Ireland, tells IT Pro: "What was impressive on this was the speed. A core network refresh of a 24/7 operation delivered in 18 months... requires teamwork and courage on both sides, at all levels, from the team on the ground, the programme management team and the senior team in terms of delivering it."

Cutting down plane turnaround times

With hundreds of VPNs to support multi-tenancy, capacity for the routing of millions of IPv4 addresses, dozens of 12900E switches, and hundreds of HPE 5930 and Aruba 2930M switches, Gatwick is now realising the benefits of the Aruba network.

They range from the "less sexy" jobs like monitoring bin levels to more transformative use cases, such as adding sensors to fuel trucks, baggage transport and planes themselves to check if a plane is being fuelled on time and baggage loaded on time, removing the delay created by human input of this data.

These will help Gatwick achieve its aim of having planes ready to fly again 30 minutes after landing, Corcoran says, which is considered best-in-class.

"We're looking at how do we do that with late inbound aircraft," he says, "because aircraft can come back to you late for a multitude of reasons like being late from where they came from, bad weather, flight controller strikes."

Another goal is to analyse 'passenger flow' through the airport, and sell that data to retailers so they can better target potential customers.

Gatwick is using a third party SaaS analytics firm on top of the Aruba Wi-Fi network to look at where passengers go, down to details like "why do they turn left instead of right".

This strengthens another role the airport plays that of IT reseller. "We sell IT services off the back of this," says Corcoran. "We sell IT services to the easyJets of this world, the BAs of this world, the Jamie Olivers of this world."

"What we've been able to achieve here is pretty staggering," adds Waters. "But a lot of that comes down to Gatwick in terms of the technology department here the degree of ambition around what this airport can achieve with technology, and the degree of courage to push the boundaries and go quickly."

Picture of Gatwick Airport/Credit: HPE/J Milstein

If you are looking to become a project manager or have just started out as one, sooner or later you will likely need to have some form of qualification to further your career goals.

One such qualification, and arguably the most important one, is that of Project Management Professional (PMP). This is an internationally recognised professional certificate from the Project Management Institute.

There are over three-quarters of a million PMP certified people worldwide in over 210 countries and territories worldwide. It is one of the most demanded credentials in project management and validates a professional's education and experience in project management.

Why do you need PMP certification?

The certification is acknowledged worldwide and is necessary if you want to work as a project manager around the world. Having certification will help in demonstrating a professional's skills and expertise to potential employers.

Having PMP certification will also improve your salary. According to the PMI's Project Management Salary Survey published in July 2017, PMP certified professionals earn a mean salary of 63,563 per year in the UK.

Having a PMP certification offering better career advancement and job opportunities. According to the PMI Pulse of the Profession study, when more than one-third of their project managers are PMP-certified, organisations finished more of their projects on time, on budget and meeting original goals.

The certification is also applicable to most industries including IT, telecoms, finance and more.

How do you get PMP certified?

Before you get certified as a Project Management Professional you should check you are eligible. This means holding a Bachelor's degree, 4,500 hours leading and directing projects over 36 months and taking 35 hours of project management training.

If you don't have a degree, but have something such as a high school diploma, associate's degree or the global equivalent, then you will need 7,500 hours of project management experience over 60 months as well as going through the 35-hour project management training.

Once you meet these criteria, you can then become a member of PMI and fill in the form for taking the examination. With membership, you can download "A Guide to the Project Management Body Of Knowledge", the book on which the entire exam is based.

Before any exam, you will need to have at least 35 hours of education on project management. Without this, you cannot take the exam.

Next, you have to sign up for the PMP exam. This involves filling out the PMP Credential Application and submitting it to the PMI. You can apply online at http://www.pmi.org. Once the application is approved you will receive a letter from the PMI. PMI doesn't carry out the test, this is done by external testing companies.

Before the exam, you will need to undertake a lot of studying, as the PMP exam is four hours long. The exam consists of 200 multiple-choice questions. Out of 200, only 175 questions are actually scored.

Once you see "Passed" on the screen you will have earned the PMP certification. In order to keep certification active, you will need to collect and claim 60 Professional Development Units (PDUs) every three years.

Image Source: Bigstock

As project-based work becomes the norm for businesses seeking digital transformation, it's becoming vital for staff to expand their skillset with formal project management training.

Even if the projects don't seem as if they'll be a huge part of what your company's about at the moment, it will become an essential part of everyday working life.

It's likely that if you are preparing for project-based work, you'd have appointed project managers to deal with the day-to-day undertakings of new

What is project management training?

Project management training seeks to offer individuals the skills they need to understand the principles of project management. Usually, foundation courses will teach the basics so those involved can follow the project's progress and understand the stages required in any project a business is undertaking.

However, if someone is leading - or is heavily involved in a project - they will need to complete more advanced certifications to ensure they can manage teams to success.

Project Management training is available across the entire spectrum of project management methodologies, including DevOps, PRINCE3, Lean, Agile and the more traditional Waterfall approach. Before deciding which project management training is best for your organisation, it's important to ascertain which type of project management methodology suits your project best.

Why everyone should undertake project management training

If a project is to run smoothly, it's important everyone in an organisation knows the stages of a project and how the different pieces to the puzzle interconnect. Whether teams are dealing with BAU tasks while the project happens in the background or if employees are working on the project directly, it's likely parts of their everyday life will cross over.

Additionally, projects tend to creep outside just the direct project team. For example, management will need to be aware of what's happening in the entire organisation, HR will need to keep on top of what's happening with either consultants drafted in to help on a short-term basis, the finance team will likely be involved in costs associated with transformation and even end-users will need to keep tabs on the progress if they're eagerly awaiting the arrival of software the project team is developing.

Another reason to ensure everyone has been trained up to at least foundation standards will ensure your organisation is prepared for changes in future. If the company needs to make quick changes, at least anyone will have the basic knowledge of project management so they can help get the project off the ground if you don't have time to appoint project-specific staff.

How to choose a training partner

Like any specialist training, you'll need appoint a company to help you train your staff the skills they need to help project run smoothly. Although many companies claim to offer all-in-one project management training, you should choose a company that specialises in the type of project management methodology you're planning to use - or are already using - in your business.

For example, find a PRINCE2 specialist if that's the route you want to go down, or a DevOps-based training programme run by a company that specialises in that specific skillset. Otherwise, there's the potential for too much confusion between teams.

The best place to find a business that can help you teach your teams the skills they need is by using recommendations from official project management bodies such as Scrum, Prince2 or the DevOps Institute.

You can also seek recommendations from others in the industry or talk to your existing training provider to find out if they offer what you require and if they don't ask their advice.

How much does project management training cost?

The cost of project management training will vary according to the level required in your company and the detail you need. For example, a foundation course in PRINCE2 costs from 315+VAT for one person, while the practitioner course will cost another 315+VAT after the foundation has been completed.

An online-only DevOps course will cost around 600, which includes online classes as well as the exam, while a face-to-face course will cost a lot more, but you'll have the added bonus of being able to contact the tutor whenever you need support.

It's important to research into different options to ensure any project management training will result in knowledgeable and trained staff, ready to kick your project off in a successful way.

Project management happens across all industries. Usually used to complete projects rather than business as usual (BAU) work, it comprises a number of stages, from developing the initial idea, to planning, implementing and analysing success of a project.

However, it is a pretty complicated process and here are lots of different ways of completing a project. Although most organisations use formal methodologies' to complete projects, some have their own way of working, which can further complicate matters.

We'll talk through the different methodologies common in the IT industry, stages and some tools to help manage projects without formal qualifications.

Types of project management

Waterfall

As the name would suggest, the waterfall method is a sequential project management technique, with stages that flow downwards, just like a waterfall. Stages include conception, initiation, analysis, design, construction, testing, production/implementation and maintenance, with each stage being fully completed before the next starts. It originated in manufacturing, but has since moved on to cover software development, although because it wasn't specifically designed for software development, it's not really the most effective.

PRINCE2

Projects IN Controlled Environments (PRINCE2) is a qualification-led project management methodology, which takes a project and organises it into manageable chunks and controllable stages. It was developed by the government for IT systems projects and because it's been designed specifically for that, it's more effective than Waterfall project management techniques for software and app design. It's led by principles and processes, making it an extremely structured way of managing a project. Processes are Starting up a Project, Initiating a Project, Directing a Project, Controlling a Stage, Managing Product Delivery, Managing a Stage Boundary, Closing a Project.

Agile (Scrum)

Agile is a much more team-based project management methodology, with collaboration and communication forming the basis of everything. Processes and tools are replaced by individuals and interactions, working software is more important than the documentation issued alongside it and everything is built around responding to change rather than following a plan. It's a much more evolutionary way of working, making it more flexible for projects that are likely to adapt over time.

Lean

Lean is a way of developing products fast. It's very responsive to change like Agile and, as its name suggests, aims to be the most efficient way of developing as possible, eliminating waste, sharing learning with flexibility built in its core. Although it goes as far against one of the formal project management principles as it possibly can, by ruling decisions should be made as late as possible, this makes it super-adaptable, although does put some organisations off using it.

DevOps

DevOps combines elements of Agile project management and lean methodologies and is increasingly the most favoured on technical, such as application development and digital transformation projects, because it's so flexible. It dictates that software and developers should work collaboratively with IT departments, through streamlined communications - the Agile element, but concentrates on getting products and services to market fast - the lean project management philosophy. It's a relatively new practice in comparison with the older methodologies, but is rapidly being adopted in cloud-forward organisations because of its flexibility and room for scale.

The process of a project

What's clear from breaking down the main project management methodologies is that they all comprise similar elements, which is the key to successfully managing a project.

Breaking it down into identifying the goal or problem (initiation), planning the steps to carry out the objective (planning stage), executing the project to meet the deliverables set in the initiation stage (while all the time monitoring and controlling the scope of the project) and finally, closing the project to ensure it's met its objectives, is crucial.

This last stage will also include handing over the project to the operations team, so it can be integrated into the BAU environment, so t can continually evolve if it needs to, making it fit for purpose. Obviously if there is a major update needed that doesn't fit into BAU, it will then need to be handed back to the project management team for the process to start again.

Best tools to help with project management

Although onboarding a project manager is the most effective way of ensuring projects get off on the right foot and are managed successfully throughout, if you're not ready to commit to a formal project management methodology to help plan and execute projects, there are lots of project management tools to help you management one-off projects.

Many of these are free and take the drag and drop approach, enabling you to assign and set tasks, moving them across columns as they progress. Others allow you to track progress to share with the board, if they're all about numbers, data visualisations and ROI.

Although project management requires investment to make it run smoothly, it's worth the outlay, speeding up the time it takes to get products and services to market, while also dramatically improving the productivity of your employees, across departments.