How has project management in IT changed over the past 20 years? OKsystem's lead project manager Jiří Horník talks about it in an interview for Hospodářské noviny.
Binders in a cupboard, printed meeting minutes, Excel as the main tool, and the idea that success equals meeting a deadline – according to Jiří Horník, all of this has gradually disappeared from a project manager's work over the past two decades. In the interview, he describes the journey from waterfall management through agile to today's hybrid approaches, along with the move to the cloud, the rise of SaaS, and the use of AI in routine tasks.
Above all, though, he talks about how OKsystem's own business model has changed: instead of one-off contracts, we now build on long-term value for the customer, looking at how customers actually use our products and whether they stay satisfied with them over the long term. As he himself says, the biggest shift lies elsewhere – project management has largely become a discipline built on psychology and working with people.
Here's an excerpt from the text:
You've been working in project management for almost 20 years. Comparing the reality back then with today, what's the biggest difference you see?
A lot has really changed. We went through digitalization, moved to the cloud, work more agilely, regardless of place and time, and today often with the support of AI. I also see a fundamental shift in the role of the project manager itself. In the past, success mainly meant keeping the brief, deadline, and budget under control. The key skill was masterful work with Excel. We spent hours preparing meeting minutes, printing them, getting them signed, and filing them away in the project binder in the office cabinet.
Today it's different. What primarily matters to us is customer satisfaction, speed of delivery, or how well people embrace change. The time saved by using AI for routine tasks can be put to more meaningful use, and project management has largely become a discipline built on psychology and working with people.
What was the toughest nut to crack for your team in this transformation?
We had to fundamentally change the way we think about our work. We've shifted from a large number of repeatable but isolated projects to managing complex changes within organizations, large programs, and personal care for premium customers. At the same time, we're working out how to provide quality care to smaller customers as well, at a competitive price. Today, for example, it looks like this: one program manager handles implementation for dozens of smaller clients collectively, in waves. We're still fine-tuning and improving this approach. Already in the first wave, we managed to sign up dozens of new customers at incomparably lower costs than with our earlier project-based approach.
How did the project managers themselves react to the change?
Managing complex programs, internal process-change projects, or product development is a different discipline than delivering traditional implementation projects. This shift requires an enormous degree of adaptability and learning new skills. We can no longer work to a single template on dozens of identical projects a year. The pressure to grow professionally and learn new things quickly has risen enormously. The vast majority of our colleagues have taken it in stride and welcomed the new space for professional growth.
You can read the full interview in Czech on the HN.cz website.
