To project the future of our profession, we need to reclaim its past

There is a widespread assumption that the project profession was founded in the middle of the last century. Much of the established project management toolkit was indeed developed during that period, although the Gantt chart originated much earlier. But if we step back, a rather different history emerges.

Projects have been central to the development of the modern world, and if we are to project the future of our profession, we need to reclaim that significant past. This article seeks to reclaim the rich legacy of projecting, emphasising its vital historical role in shaping economy and society, and to suggest the contribution our profession can make to our collective future.

You can read more in the Projecting for the Future report, published by APM.

Reclaiming our past

The idea that we are living in a fourth industrial revolution is now widely shared, and we turn below to how the project profession is central to that socio‑economic transformation. This idea immediately begs the question of what happened during the three previous industrial revolutions.

We start our story even earlier than the first industrial revolution, though, and turn to Daniel Defoe’s seminal An Essay Upon Projects (1697). Prior to the 17th century, major projects were promoted by the church or state; Defoe identified the role of “projectors” in using private enterprise to develop the infrastructure of early modern England, such as the Stour Navigation (1705) and London’s New River (1604).

Projectors such as Brassey and Brunel played a remarkable role in the first industrial revolution, delivering the canals and railways that enabled the profound transformations of the early 19th century, based on coal as an energy source. Larger corporations were required to exploit the new technologies of electricity and the internal combustion engine during the second industrial revolution, and the profile of the entrepreneurial projector declined.

This dominance of the large corporation continued during the third industrial revolution, based on computing and nuclear power, as the toolkit of our profession was formalised. As we enter the fourth industrial revolution and the twin transformations of digital and net zero, we need to return to celebrating the role of the entrepreneurial projector in our profession.

Projecting our future

APM’s The Golden Thread study highlights the extensive socio‑economic contributions of the project profession, asserting its centrality to the fourth industrial revolution. We reinforce that claim by identifying several opportunities for the profession:

The digital revolution and ‘Project Management 4.0’; this stresses the importance of project data analytics; generative AI; and the delivery of cyber‑physical systems.
The challenge of the transition to net zero and meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals stresses the opportunities for interventions in existing systems of systems and the potential for a new, mission level of project organising.
The lessons from the remarkable response to the COVID‑19 pandemic, which, for instance, mobilised new ways of projecting to radically compress vaccine development schedules through innovative commercial arrangements.

This will require new ways of thinking about project leadership focused on what project leaders do rather than a psychometric approach to who they are.

What do we need to do?

By reclaiming our past, we can cultivate a deeper understanding of our future potential. A commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion in project teams and organisations underpins our ability to seize the opportunities of the fourth industrial revolution, and it is essential for assuring psychological safety and fostering innovation to address complex societal challenges.

The profession needs to rethink collectively some of its established principles and stake its claim as the convening profession, addressing the challenges ahead. This debate needs your participation, and there will be opportunities to engage coming up.

Read APM’s Projecting for the Future report here. Listen to two of the report’s co-authors in conversation with APM Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.