The Internet of Things (IoT) is changing how we perceive the world and work within it. We went from the paper & pen Franklin organizer in the 1980’s to PDA (remember Palm and Handspring) in the 1990’s to now the ubiquitous smartphones and apps with hundreds of apps for managing one or more aspects of projects. Just twenty years ago, it was difficult to communicate with project team members on the weekend. Now, the red light of death first popularized on Blackberry is everywhere and it is very hard to go off grid.

IoT is changing our society and how we work. As project managers, my hope is that IoT will bring us higher quality information about the project status, not just faster. Here, I am referring to the new Amazon dash bottom for project status. Perhaps even more important than quality and speed is relevance. I am hopeful that IoT will make the various parts of project activities and people communicate in ways that is more effective than today. So much is lost in communication and so much can be gained.

Te Wu’s comments on the Brad Egeland article for CIO below,

Brad Egeland for CIO writes:  The Internet of Things is estimated to grow to 50 billion devices by 2020. How soon – and how – will IoT affect the tech projects we manage?

Ok, the Internet of Things (IoT) may not mean anything to your next project, but it’s coming. IoT will eventually affect you, your next project, the technology you are delivering, and your IT organization as a whole.  What is the IoT? Taking a quick trip over to Wikipedia yields this definition and description:

“The Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of physical objects or “things” embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and connectivity to enable objects to exchange data with the production, operator and/or other connected devices based on the infrastructure of International Telecommunication Union’s Global Standards Initiative. The Internet of Things allows objects to be sensed and controlled remotely across existing network infrastructure, creating opportunities for more direct integration between the physical world and computer-based systems, and resulting in improved efficiency, accuracy and economic benefit. Each thing is uniquely identifiable through its embedded computing system but is able to interoperate within the existing Internet infrastructure.”

Since Wikipedia goes on to suggest that industry experts estimate that the IoT will consist of close to 50 billion – that’s right…BILLION – objects and devices by 2020 (less than 5 years from now) you can likely expect that you will soon be managing projects that are affected by the IoT.

So what does that mean? What do we need to be looking for? What considerations do we have?  SNIP, the article continues @ CIO, click here to continue reading….