Friday, January 30, 2015

Uberize the project team

To add to the lexicon of project management we now have:
  • To be uber'ed
  • To uberize
  • Uberization
Say what?

In an interesting essay, we can now see ahead to the uberization of many technical tasks, to wit: any time work can be put in finish-to-start segments, we can hire the expert-of-the-moment to do them. It's much more flexible than contracting for an independent for an extended term, like life-of-the-project.

Oops! Did someone say 'finish-to-start'? Isn't that what project schedules are all about?

Is this the uber'ed PMO:
"Just as Uber is doing for taxis, new technologies have the potential to chop up a broad array of traditional jobs into discrete tasks that can be assigned to people just when they’re needed, with wages set by a dynamic measurement of supply and demand, and every worker’s performance constantly tracked, reviewed and subject to the sometimes harsh light of customer satisfaction"
Farhad Manjoo

OMG! We're just getting around to figuring out where robots fit into the project, and now comes uberization. One can only wonder how the PMBOK of 10 years hence (10 years? perhaps five!) will be written.