It seems that with every new TV commercial, automobile technology makes another huge leap. Everything from automatic parallel parking, radar-assisted cruise control, back-cameras with audio warning, blind spot detection, and foot-activated rear door openers are now available.

What dictates the direction of development? Safety, operator convenience, competitive advantages? Regardless of the motivation, if the pace continues, the next several years should prove exciting for new auto purchasers.

The innovations that most stimulate my interest involve collision avoidance. The sheer volume of attention grabbers that harangue the daily driver is overwhelming! Drivers are frequently distracted from their primary function of operating a vehicle safely. “Distracted driver” is recorded as one of the top five causes of accidents. This new technology addresses the “distracted driver” who is driving in a state of mental auto-pilot. This new collision avoidance technology immediately notifies the driver of conditions that could lead to harm. Any innovation that returns a distracted driver’s attention back to driving makes the roads safer for you and me.

Project managers, like distracted drivers, operate in an environment of “controlled chaos.” It is not uncommon for even the most seasoned professional to overlook a critical piece of data buried within the enormous volume of incoming information associated with each project. These oversights frequently lead to schedule delays and margin shrinkage.

Taking a page from the automakers, developers of project management solutions (such as us here at Spitfire Management) are making similar advancements in “exception management” technology. Like collision avoidance, this leading-edge technology combs through vast volumes of data and extracts non-conforming statistics, then notifies the project manager (like the driver) to take action before small issues become big problems.

“Exception management” allows distracted project managers to refocus specifically on those issues that could derail a project’s schedule and/or margins.

In the market for a new car? Don’t underestimate the value of all those bells and whistles–they may save your life.

In the market for a new project management system? Insist on having “exception management”–it may save your job.

For more information about the Spitfire Project Management System, visit www.spitfiremanagement.com.