Why the new modern IT Project Manager is evolving from a ticket-shuffler to value catalyst

By Paul Senyange

Government of Uganda is currently implementing various projects in key sectors such as energy, ICT, health, Education among others.

Implementing these projects is increasingly becoming complex due to the ever-changing dynamics. Such requires a high mindset of a modern project manager than ever before if project success is to be achieved.

The traditional IT Project Manager, once glorified for chasing Gantt charts and red-amber-green status reports, is officially dead. In its place has emerged a new breed: the Modern PM; a hybrid leader who orchestrates business value rather than merely executing tasks.

Across Government, where digital transformation is accelerating at breakneck speed, project managers are still being treated as “process police”. Those who have embraced the modern PM mindset, however, are delivering breakthroughs.

Just recently, the National Information Technology Authority Uganda (NITA-U) embarked on upgrading the UGHUB platform. The project manager didn’t just track milestones; but constantly validated that every feature directly reduced real-time data sharing cost and improved service delivery.

Similarly, SafeBoda, the ride-hailing firm, didn’t just launch a new payments platform in 2024, it completely re-imagined how project managers work.

They spent weeks riding boda-bodas with drivers and sitting in duukas with merchants before writing a single user story. The result? A wallet adoption rate that reportedly jumped from under 30 % to over 78 % in the first three months after launch.

Similarly, one of the commercial banks in Uganda undertook a complete core-banking migration; historically one of the riskiest projects in financial services.

Instead of the usual army of waterfall PMs, they deployed a small team of PMs with modern PM mindset who co-owned product backlog with business heads and ran continuous end-user testing inside branches.

Downtime during cut-over? Less than four hours. Customer complaints in the first month? Near zero. The project didn’t just finish on budget; it unlocked new digital-lending products that increased the bank’s SME portfolio by 40 % within a single quarter.

Still, at the National Information Technology Authority Uganda (NITA-U), a quiet but profound shift is taking place. Some of the country’s most successful digital projects are now being led by project managers who think less like traditional deliverers and more with modern IT project manager mindset; obsessed with the questions.

“Why are we doing this?” and “What return will taxpayers actually see?”. This is profoundly exhibited by NITA-U’s partnership with AlphaX, the technology company to design and develop the UGOV app.

The app aims to transform government-citizen interaction by providing a unified gateway to various Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs).  

The rollout process involves integrating various Government institutions and their services.

While the full range of services will expand over time as integrations are completed, the platform is designed to; unify access to various public services, enable online applications, payments, tracking, and real-time updates for government services.; integrate with national identity, registries (land, business, etc.), and a sovereign payments backbone to facilitate secure transactions.

I can confidently confirm that this project is being delivered with a modern project manager mindset. The modern project manager now operates on three critical dimensions:

1.    Thinking like a Business Analyst; relentlessly focused on “Why” and ROI

2.    Testing like an End User; obsessed with usability and real-world adoption

3.    Acting like a Product Owner; owning the vision and ruthlessly prioritizing value

The results speak for themselves. Previously, when NITA-U extended the National Backbone fibre network, most people measured success in kilometers of cable laid.

The modern IT project manager mindset measures it in dollars saved per megabit and the millions of shillings in extra GDP that cheaper internet unlocks in rural districts.

The same team that built the National Data Centre did not celebrate when the servers were switched on; they celebrated when ministries stopped paying Shs 18 billion a year renting private data centres and when online tax payments jumped because citizens no longer had to queue.

All this is evident of mindset shift. The Modern IT PM has stopped asking “Are we on schedule?” and started asking “Are we still on track to achieve our projected ROI?”

In addition, yes; the Gantt chart is still there, but the benefits tracker now sits right next to it.

Mind you, this is not theory, it is a mindset any IT project manager; be it in public or private space, can adopt today. Begin every project by asking “Why?” five times until you reach an outcome that matters to customers or citizens; translate every feature into shillings saved or taxes added; income earned, or hours returned to the public; treat benefits realization as seriously as you treat project risks and issues, and lastly, when someone demands extra scope, respond with one question: “What is the return on investment of that change?”

The same modern PM mindset is demonstrated in the current recruitment patterns, which have also evolved. Job adverts that once asked for the traditional “PMP certification and experience with MS Project” now demand “proven ability to calculate and defend ROI, strong product backlog prioritization skills, and evidence of customer adoption impact.” signaling a shift to modern PM mindset.

Seasoned project managers who refuse to evolve are finding themselves sidelined into pure coordination roles or, increasingly, out of the market altogether.

The ones who thrive have made the leap and adapted; they are embracing a culture of cancelling pointless status meetings, and are moving into the same slack channels as engineers and business sponsors, and starting to measure their own performance by business KPIs instead of percentage complete.

The message to IT project managers everywhere is clear; deliver on time and on budget if you want to be average. Relentlessly refuse to be just a mere process gatekeeper focused on just project deadlines but an IT project manager focused on business outcomes.

The age of the ticket-moving, deadline-chasing IT project manager is over! Welcome the new modern IT Project Manager.

The writer is a Project Manager-PMO at NITA-U