September 14 2023 at 06:00AM
Virtual Reality for Project Visualization
Photo 1. Virtual Reality (Taken from Simplilearn website)
Have you ever tried or experienced any of the virtual reality technologies before? In this article we will try to explore virtual reality and augmented reality that can be implemented to real life projects.
We all know that we need to align our projects according to strategy of the enterprise and the technology choice according to need. These are always the first two questions to be answered at a glance. Lets consider that you have passed this stage successfully. You can use virtual reality and augmented reality for many industries as well as advancing project management tools and techniques. Before reviewing some use cases for different industries, lets review the potential implementation areas as practitioners.
One of the first areas might be in education of project management practitioners. Different use case scenarios from different industries at different levels of projects and programs can be simulated on virtual reality. Think about yourself, being a project team member, project manager, and even a stakeholder at a virtual project team of a virtually erected bridge project, or even an agile software project. You follow steps and then get result at every step of the project you manage and/or delved in as a team member. And at each step of the project, you review with a mentor about the phase and what you could have done to improve your performance. Exciting, isn’t it?
Photo 2. Virtual reality in work (Photo taken from FutureLearn website)
The second area we can implement virtual reality, in this case augmented reality, is dashboard. We are all aware as project management practitioners that we spend a lot of time at monitoring and control phase of the projects over dashboards. This might be exhaustive if you work in a few locations and/or work in several programs. Think of yourself trying to compile all the inputs manually in order to monitor and control. Instead, think of yourself wearing an augmented reality glasses with all dashboards appear in front of you. How cool to think about it, right?
Photo 3. Augmented reality illustration(Taken from Dexerto website)
On the other hand, would you want to attend to a global congress of PMI or a regional summit in VR environment? Even maybe through a Metaverse Platform in a near future? Why not? At technological level, this is not impossible anymore, but would our experience be similar compared to a face-to-face real-time interaction with other practitioners?
Apart from these examples, virtual and augmented reality can be used in a few industries: educational purposes , designing and/or validating a product(Ford Mustang Mach-E), simulating a plant(i.e. Siemens Plant Simulation VR), examining a human body by medical students (i.e. Human Anatomy Atlas), exploring a city you want to visit beforehand for touristic purposes (i.e. Google Earth VR).
What kind of technological options you would need in order to implement these use cases we mentioned? Depending on the conditions of your application, you can use virtual reality tools like Oculus Rift ( Meta Quest right now), HTC Vive, Samsung Gear VR, Google Daydream are some well-known alternatives. For augmented reality applications you can use enterpris eapplication platforms like PTC Vuforia, mobile devices as well as different headsets like Microsoft Hololens.
If you want to delve into these areas or accomplish a product, you need to recruit game developers and UX-UI designers in your project team. If any member of your team is interested to improve on this expertise, game development platforms like Unity and Unreal Engine can be a good starting point. Can you imagine or do you consider any other applications on project visualization? Your contributions are welcome.
About the author
Sources:
Photo 1. Virtual Reality (Taken from Simplilearn website)
Photo 2. Virtual reality in work (Photo taken from FutureLearn website)
Photo 3. Augmented reality illustration(Taken from Dexerto website)
