Dan Fitzpatrick, a Project Manager at Plum Tree, recently sat down with us to answer some key questions about his work. His responses helped us to better understand how he approaches his work, as well as what direction he sees the project management industry going in the future.

"As a project manager, it’s not so much about new and exciting technologies that I use, it’s the new and exciting technologies that the client uses. My role is one of communications, which is really the basic things: one-on-one conversations, phone conversations, emails, keeping track of all the information, making sure the communication is clear."

"It’s not any single application, it’s how they are used that fascinates me. As we’ve seen mobile devices increase and become ubiquitous across society—you know there’s more of them now than there are laptops and desktops combined—we’ve seen a whole host of new uses, and we’re going to continue to see a whole host of new uses within companies, themselves. So it could be anything from internal communications to inventory taking to other organizational uses, and I think that there’s going to be an increasing market in that area."

"At Plum Tree, from the beginning of the company, we set out to create a culture of innovation. One of the ways that we’ve done that is, when we hire new people, we make sure that they’re skilled in their field, but also that they bring in outside experiences—be it, architecture or operations management at another organization—and we try to use the skills and practices from other areas and apply them to our internal development and we’ve had great results from that."

"The project that excites me is always the next project. Every project that you get, it’s like a newborn child or an undeveloped lot; it’s nothing but potential. And it’s your job to help the client fulfill the potential, get the most out of it, get what they want out of it, and get what they need, and that’s always exciting to me."

Do you have a project management question for Dan? Leave us a comment on our Facebook page or contact us on Twitter at @PlumTreeInc.