Introduction

A decade ago, I explored the subject of the impact of global trends and events on the project management profession with papers presented at PMI’s annual conferences in Long Beach (1998) [1] and Philadelphia (1999) [2], and at the PMI South Africa conference in Johannesburg, South Africa (1999) [3]. During the development of those themes, I outlined a model for systematically evaluating major developments and trends in such subject areas as wars and international relations; national and global politics; global, regional and local economies; industries, including mergers and acquisitions; technology; social changes; and natural disasters and refugee crises.

Over the last ten years, the field of business intelligence (BI) has matured, but has not yet been widely applied in the program and project management field. There is little literature on the topic. With continued globalization of economies, politics and society, and in the context of the global economic situation today, it is now time to reconsider the subject. At the same time, the pace of change seems to be accelerating in so many aspects of business and society. Futurists and those offering scenario planning to corporate and government leaders are gaining popularity. Such books as Future Shock and The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler, Mega Trends by John Naisbitt, and other similar books predicting future trends for business are no longer adequate, in my opinion, although they get us thinking in the right ways. We need a new perspective, a new way for thinking about change and the future in order to be better prepared. We also need better decision making models. This is especially true for project-oriented organizations, but also for managers of large programs and projects with multiple stakeholders located in different places.

This paper contains some of my thoughts on these topics, and why they should be taken more seriously by executives, program and project managers, and organizations. This covers such related topics as business intelligence, environmental scanning, trend analysis, scenario planning, stakeholder relations and risk management. These can all be directly related to program and project management. But this is a more advanced topic than basic project planning and scheduling; it is therefore addressed to senior executives and experienced program and project managers.

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