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7 Tips for Product Managers in Web3

by Anas Hassan January 12th, 2023

Too Long; Didn't Read

Web3 is a global trend aiming to grow new talent for efficient business digitalization that fits in. There are enough and even new roles currently and upcoming in the web3 space for project managers. You can’t get those jobs unless you understand how web3 works, the trends to focus on and how you can get them.

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No one can tell what the year will bring, but certainly, 2022 has entertained the global trend of web3, and many companies, businesses, and projects are adopting web3 very fast. Many fears might have grown in the mind of project managers about how they can keep up with the trend of changing technologies and complex approaches to solving a problem and bringing a product to life.

There’s a lot of debate that project management today looks different from how it did even five years ago. Web2 or Web3 Project management trends shape how project managers execute their work. New technology is evolving, tools, consolidation, innovation, and more.

Those who can’t adapt and keep up with the trend are more likely to lose their jobs. Due to the current state of the world economy, the recent global tech layoff affects many project managers as well, developers and project managers are now on the look for new positions.

But can web3 save them? I would say Yes, But How?

Web3, as an emerging technology, has been growing exponentially over the last two years, and despite the growth, there is still a lack of products to enhance growth and maintain standards. World tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and Facebook are also joining early adapters of web3 through different means that fit their already existing products.

Web3 has much for you:

Developing and building products that solve the current problems in web3 has become a top priority in the space. Web3 aims to grow new talent for efficient business digitalization that will bring more to web3 and work globally with builders to build products for the next billions of internet users. There are enough and even new roles currently and upcoming in the web3 space for project managers, and you can’t get those jobs unless you understand how web3 works, the trends to focus on and how you can get those jobs.

I did intensive research and wrote this complete guide for project managers looking to adopt the recent global tech trends. I gathered resources to help you understand how the systems work, the technologies involved and how to make the best out of these trends.

Before we dive into the main discussion, I felt you might be new to the world of web3. Let’s quickly explain what web3 means and why it’s a global tech trend. But if you already seem familiar with the term, you can skip to the next section.

Web3 Explained

Evolution of Web

The majority of people never imagined web could develop to this extent it today, today's Web is very different from the Web of the past. Even the original internet inventors could not predict how the web would develop.

Let’s look at the recent history of the Web—which is broadly divided into Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Web 3:

Web 1.0: Read-only web

The term Web 1 was coined by Tim Berners Lee, Which is called Berners Lee's invention in its initial form. Since users hardly ever added content, there was essentially no user interaction.

This state of the web was primarily designed for static websites owned by a small number of corporations. The term "read-only" website is frequently used for web1 because of its static characteristic. Readers/users couldn't talk about it or their personal experiences; they read there only.

Web 2.0: interact with the web and people

The web 2.0 era officially began in 2004 with the launch of social media platforms. Nowadays, people communicate online, interact with one another, and share tales. Instead of being a read-only medium, the Web evolved into a read-write one.

Businesses began providing platforms where users could chat and share user-generated content instead of providing customers with products through a static website.

Web 3.0: Control your online presence

This generated debate about possible Internet developments, which is how the idea of Web 3.0 came about. This third generation of the Internet is primarily concerned with boosting transparency and giving users back control over their private information.

It simply alludes to a future iteration of the Internet that supports decentralized protocols and aims to reduce dependency on well-known tech companies like Youtube, Netflix, and Amazon. Our Web 3.0 is capable of many duties, unlike the Internet's first and second generations. It is literate and has ownership.

Users can handle both the management and the governance of the Web. Handing up information to businesses each time you join up, visit them, etc. It's that easy—you own it, you keep it! It's not as if sharing info is prohibited, but you have the option to refuse to complete the work in any case.

Now that you understand the web's evolution and can distinguish between web2 and web3. Let’s look at the top seven global trends you should focus on as a web3 project manager.

7 Tips for Product Managers in Web3

Project management involves the planning, execution, and delivery of projects within an organization, and that doesn’t change for web3. It just requires the use of new, emerging, specific tools, techniques, and approaches to ensure that web3 projects are completed efficiently and effectively.

In today’s fast-paced business environment, it’s more important than ever for professional PMs to understand project management core principles and best practices to be a world-class project manager that keeps a balance with the trends and can be sorted for all types of projects. These are the key essential trends you should focus on in web3:

Agile Framework:

The majority of web3 companies today use an agile approach to develop products and services for this rapidly changing industry.

The Agile methodology is a way to manage a project by breaking it up into several phases. It involves constant collaboration with stakeholders and continuous improvement at every stage. Once the work begins, teams cycle through a process of planning, executing, and evaluating. Continuous cooperation is vital, both with team members and project stakeholders.

It’s a project management process that involves constant collaboration and working in iterations. Agile project management works on the basis that a project can be continuously improved upon throughout its life cycle, with changes being made quickly and responsively.

Agile is one of the most popular approaches to project management due to its flexibility, adaptability to change, and high level of customer input. And to learn intensively about this framework, here is the link to the best and most compiled resource for learning about it from scratch to advance. The link here

Don’t limit yourself to Agile, you can also learn about Scrum and Kanban methodology and approaches in project management. Complete the guide on Scrum here. Learn about Kanban methodology here.

The Agile framework is the most used approach by web3 products due to its deep collaboration with product builders and understanding of users to the core. Web3, as a decentralized ecosystem, needs a self-guide product that would take ignorant users who don’t know anything about a product to a user that brings a friend on a tour of how the product is used.

And that leads us to the next global trend: Design thinking.

Design Thinking:

Web3 products are in high demand for the easiest and cleanest user experience and accessibility, the back root of the technology is complex enough to mess up the appearance of product outcomes, that’s why web3 UI/UX designer demand has increased massively in the last few months.

And despite that, many designers need to learn about web3 design trends and design approaches before they can get the chance to work with this technology. Not only designers but project managers who manage and control designers are also expected to be well-familiarized with the trends in other to establish a well-fitting design thinking and process that will influence the involved designers by making the process clear and concise so they can build the best for a particular problem.

User-centric design is most needed in web3 due to its decentralization and how the system is user-based only. Literally, the user does everything, users control, own, and govern themselves.

Design thinking, in a nutshell, Design Thinking refers to the structured approach to creative problem-solving. It is structured because it follows a sequence of steps and is innovative because it yields new, out-of-the-box ideas for the problems. It revolves around a deep interest in developing an understanding of the people affected by the problem. In our context here, we need to understand the ‘user’ of the project entirely, the stakeholders such as your client, sponsor, project team members, and the like.

The design thinking approach seems not to change, project managers need to make use of the approach in web3 projects and carefully take note of any slight changes or trends they should adopt to build a market-fit product.

You can learn about Design thinking here if you’re new to it.

Remote work Emphasis:

Working across remote teams is familiar, but we're now seeing larger teams that are 100% remote, typically across multiple locations and time zones. Web3 primarily promotes the exiled culture of remote work, where 90% to 99% of their work is remotely based.

Many tech employees today do their jobs from home. 40% of businesses will have more than 1000 remote workers in 2021, according to research conducted by Hubstaff on managing small projects. Its adoption will increase and keep going forward.

Prior to the Covid epidemic, businesses often only had one off-shore facility and recruited employees to work in their offices. Many companies have reduced their geographical criteria so that you may have individuals working anywhere in the nation or the world, despite the "return to the office" drive.

Working across multiple time zones creates challenges in scheduling daily stand-ups and other meetings. But there are ways to balance everything.

Remote project management form has many advantages, among which are:

It increases staff efficiency and reduces the number of business trips.
It allows workers to improve the balance between private life and work.
It reduces the project’s budget with accessible technologies that are built for virtual purposes and easy task execution.

Managing a fully remote team requires additional planning and oversight, ensuring that everyone is in-sync and has the tools necessary to be successful and dedicated to their jobs while at the same time meeting deadlines as usual. Project managers need to think about how to get the best from their teams, dealing with these cultural, language, and time zone differences.

Not only that, but you also need to maintain the balance between communication and execution because this is among the most significant disadvantages of remote work. Some employees lose motivation quickly, and they need to be regularly and adequately reached out to, there's more likely to be a slowdown in achieving your goal if it becomes a habit of theirs.

To ensure flexibility also, make use of automation and the recent trends of AI, which will lead us to the next point.

AI and Automation:

AI is already a feature in some project management tools, and automated processing will help automate routine PMO tasks. According to Deloitte, 70% of organizations are exploring or using AI.

Artificial intelligent technology is beneficial in gaining analytics that companies can use to achieve transparency and productivity — knowing which projects are more successful allows teams to accurately identify what factors are essential if the company is to cut down costs and risks.

Numerous processes become automatic, small tasks can be handled by AI, automating frequently done operations, thus making the work easier for workers. It’s all possible thanks to artificial intelligence that gradually integrates into all industries. Even the Health care, Construction works, Manufacturing, and Finance sectors have adopted the use of AI.

AI helps to manage a project, and companies implement the technology for particular tasks and routine functions. It allows for simplifying human labor. Furthermore, software and machines receive data, process it, analyze it, and enable finding out about productivity and staff efficiency with AI.

Project managers can use AI for small and complex tasks, including visualization, planning, and scheduling. The companies that have adopted AI early are winning the competitive market because they get things done faster and leave behind their competitors. Companies that use AI can automate various processes, precise data on expenses, project progress, and visualization.

According to the project management institute, 81% of experts know that AI influences their companies. Recently, web3 startups began to implement AI to manage projects efficiently and reduce time spent on it. AI could help with the management of tasks like performance data collection, support for all stages of the decision-making process, estimating and forecasting, planning optimization, information visualization, and risk analysis. etc.

With AI, bots and other software will do all manual work, while project managers and the team can be more productive. For instance, the bots help to plan meetings, collect information, analyze it, and send the results as notifications.

While AI is very useful, it has some significant drawbacks that project managers should avoid while building an early product. When building a new product, speak more with your users, understand them and empathize with them, don't leave the job to an AI that can only perceive humans but not understand humans. So speak more with your users and don't let AI give you sophisticated reports which might be so close to accurate but sometimes wrong.

Cybersecurity requirement:

Web3 is self-secured if we check it as an entity, but some sectors in web3 are still lacking security, that's why project managers should always be vigilant of any suspicious activity going on on their products.

Attacks are still threatening the financial sector of web3; some were successful, while others caused enormous damage. The worries of data leaks have also increased, although it was said before that Blockchain is immutable that it cannot be penetrated. So many web3-based platforms use Zero-knowledge proofs to get information from their users and store it on Blockchain.

As technologies and digitalization develop, data leaks occur more frequently. This aspect generally requires storing and protecting information at a higher level of security.

Regardless of the project management software, the main functionality plays a significant part in preventing data leaks. The teams must estimate the software policy for physical security, networks, and systems and protect application and confidentiality.

According to statistics, 85% of hacks concern the human factor, and 61% with account data. These events confirm the necessity of cybersecurity. Also, companies must keep a balance and allow easy access for approved users. Although KYC is still a big issue currently in the web3 sphere, there is a way to regulate that through Zero-knowledge proofs.

Managers must prepare a separate response plan if a system is compromised. From time to time, it is essential to evaluate and compare it with the previous indicators on security. Any project employees need to be trained to understand possible risks and security threats.

Crypto Payment:

Crypto has been dominating the web3 space, and it has become more likely to be the currency of web3 because it has outperformed the traditional currency in the digital world. Many tech and finance Giants are now accepting cryptocurrency.

Brands like Mastercard, VISA, Apple, and Tesla are now accepting cryptocurrency payment for their services, and there's a higher rate for mass adoption before the end of 2023, so project managers should make crypto payment system has a space in their product if they're looking to enter the global market.

And project managers can also contribute to the mass adoption by paying employees through cryptocurrency, which has a lot of advantages that will give your employees full control over their earnings and not the hand of traditional systems that govern them on their own entitlement.

Although crypto has its own big downside, which is the volatility, it has always been regulated, and once the system becomes globally adopted, the market will favor and reward everyone.

Advance Resource Management:

Resource Management (RM) techniques are quickly advancing, and there is more automation and sophistication in the tools for securing and organizing resources.

Web3 has brought the most interoperable technology that will help in advanced resource management, and that's Blockchain. Blockchain is immutable and interoperable, making resource management very easy to secure and maintain.

Project managers should also adopt the way of resource management through the use of advanced RM tools and well-defined contractor processes. Skills tracker integration and so many other advanced methods of resource management.

But for web3 precisely, using Blockchain for storage of confidential or open source resources is best done on it. And so, any project manager looking to make use of this technology has to learn some critical things about it.

But no worries below is a list of the resources I gathered for anyone looking to be a world-class web3 project manager. Either you want to start your journey now, or you're already in, or you want to move into web3. This information will help you understand the technical concept of the technologies behind web3 and provide a complete guide to project management:

100% free Resources to make you a world-class web3 project manager in 2023

Project Management Free Courses

Top web3 jobs website to get hired as a web3 project manager

Join other 25k+ people who receive daily resources that can make you a world-class PM:

Join PrMaB (Project Management Books) here

Final thoughts

After some weeks of intensive research, I gathered the best of the resources I could lay my hand on and made them available so project managers looking to enter web3 and make their way through it could quickly get their hands on information that will guide them through and make them job-ready.

Presently the demand for web3 project managers is high, and it will increase by more than 30% in the coming month because many products are coming in web3, and it is also calling for problem solvers and entrepreneurs to go and solve problems within the space. And also, well-known world tech giants are building new products around web3 so they won't be left out. So you're currently in high demand, and there are always more jobs for you in web3.

Lastly, if you found this article helpful, share it with those you know might be of help to them as it has been to you. I would have tried to make this reach every single project manager striving out there, but the best I can do is to make it open source here so anyone can find it anywhere in the world.