PMI Global Insights

Trust your team, lead with agility, befriend the machine and be human sums up my day 3 in one sentence.

My first session was on Delivering value in consulting projects – The Agile Way: Maciej Kaniewski took us through the journey of a life cycle of consulting projects. His take on delivering value in consulting project – the agile way?

1. Be in touch with reality, be that Octopus when dealing with customers
2. Harmonize the project management and business analysis
3. Fast forward with agility

Maciej Kaniewski presented the Agile manifesto for Consulting projects as follows

So how do we measure value from consulting projects? Through outcomes, feedback, observations, measurements and decisions. 

And what about the value to the consultant? It is the experience and the learnings.

He ends with a quote from Janis Joplin Don’t compromise yourself. You are all you’ve got.

Now that I was all armed with tips for success in consulting projects I wonder “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could predict our cost overruns for our projects ?” Werner Meyer session on Beyond Humans: Using Machine Learning to Calculate Contingency for Systemic Risks introduced us to machine learning and how it can help us to improve our chances of success.  An amazing story of Man Vs Machine, where machines learns from historical data and predict the systemic risk overrun. So does this mean our jobs would be at risk? Per Werner Meyer there is a low probability for construction managers and IT managers like me. What a relief!

Later that afternoon I attended a panel discussion on Leading effective virtual teams: Fiona Charonnat, Hagit Landman, Sunday Faronbi and Ibrahim Dani.  Some tips for successfully leading virtual teams :

1. Get to know your team even before the project
2. Understand the culture of others if working in a multi-cultural team
3. Care for your team member as an individual and not as a team
4. Be flexible
5. Set expectations, agree and repeat again and again

The grand finale was the closing key note on  Developing Creative Approaches to Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace in the Times of Accelerated Digitalisation  Inma Martinez . Ms. Martinez took us through the journey of HPC to Exascale - Tianhe-3, a supercomputer which is capable of at least one exaFLOPS, or a billions and billions of calculations per second, from AR augmented reality to VR virtual reality to SR sensorial reality. So what does this mean for us human beings ? Will we be replaced by machines ?  Ms Martinez says “ Machines will always be machines, they can never outperform the human brain. Tacit knowledge cannot be put into words. That is why humans will remain relevant: ”  She adds on to say

1. Machines would do the heavy lifting like crunching the numbers
2. Use that data to pin- point a cancerous cell, or mental health
3. Data can transform our living to smart urban living e.g as in Boston, MA
4. And with all these time at our hands we will have time to be human

That wraps up #PMIEMEA18 in Berlin, the next edition of #PMIEMEA19 would be in Dublin, Ireland. Maybe we will we have some robot participants next year ? What do you think?

My day 2 at #PMIEMEA18 started with the offsite tour to the BER – Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg, originally planned to open in October 2011, the airport has encountered a series of delays and cost overruns. It was amazing to see how a team is pushing boundaries, embracing change to fix a project that is gone so wrong. “Three things that you think can contribute to the success of the project ?” asked one of our congress attendees to Thomas the project manager of the BER – airport project. The answer

1. Proper planning
2. Enforce accountability
3. Have the will to get it done

A walking tour of the BER - Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg an unique learning experience to get the feel of the project at the site. For more insights on the offsite tour to  BER airport read the blog Project Management to the Rescue

Back in Berlin convention center I attended the session “Digital Transformation: Leading Organizations to the Promise Land” by Dan Lefsky, the key to succeed in a digital transformation program is not technology, but to do with culture said Dan. Dan’s tips to a successful digital transformation were

1. Strong communication
2. To go digital be digital
3. Automate, measure and decide

Now that I have some tips to lead successful digital transformation, I wonder how the project teams of the future would look like? They would be tech savvy, would need flexibility and empowerment, value human interactions, global perspective, bite size knowledge and prefer work life balance- says Muhammad A. B. Ilyas, Mohamed Khalifa in their session Reforming Transfer of knowledge on the projects of the future. So how would be the transfer of knowledge be like for project teams of the future

This interactive and innovative session transformed us from transferring knowledge through documentation, presentations to interesting techniques like

1. Emotional seismograph
2. Celebrity interview
3. Project Archeology
4. Passive Analogy
5. Healing the wounds

Keeping with the theme with the “projects of the future” I look forward to the closing key note by   Inma Martinez - "Developing Creative Approaches to Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace in the Times of Accelerated Digitalisation" on the final day – Day 3 of the #PMIEMEA18.

Keep watching this space for insights of the final day of #PMIEMEA18, alternately keep following me and my team .@KarthikPMO, @Em_The_PM and myself @priyaPatra for more

“How do you think we achieve all these? “asked Mr. Thomas Wallenta in his opening note of the PMI EMEA Congress 2018, Berlin, Germany while introducing what PMI does and what it has achieved so far.  “With our 10,000 + volunteers” says Mr.Wallenta -  the #DifferenceMakers.

I look around the hall to see approx. 700 + #DifferenceMakers attending the opening and the key note to network, learn and share success stories- the PMI EMEA Congress 2018 in Berlin.

Rowan Gibson gave us a new perspective to manage innovation projects in his key note “Winning in an innovation economy”.  Mr. Gibson explained 5 simple steps to succeed in innovation projects

1. Frame the challenge
2. Build an innovation team, putting the right people at the right role at the right time
3. Start the discovery process
4. Look through the 4 lenses, challenging orthodox, harnessing trends, leveraging resources and understanding the needs of the customer
5. Generate ideas, plan the project and assign resources

After being all motivated and inspired to make a difference, now it was my turn to narrate my project’s success story - #B2B2BFuture “Back to the basics to build the future”.  I was welcomed by an enthusiastic group of audience eagerly awaiting for my story. I loved every moment on the stage I took them through the journey of Building the experience of the future while still sticking to the basics which are :

1. Align to a common vision
2. Focus on business problem
3. Be Agile
4. Communicate and collaborate

Post lunch I attended the session on “Augmented Project Management? Why ‘Less Is More’ When Facing Complexity in Projects” Stefano Setti provided 5 tips

1. Stop being a hero- engage stakeholders, SME and delegate
2. Be adaptive to embrace the culture of change
3. Avoid stereotypes, avoid suspects and build trust
4. Accept suboptimal
5. Let them go, trust your team and practice collective leadership

The last session for the day was “ The Impact of Digitisation on Project management and Future Skillset needs” by  John Daly.  

Take actions both on the personal and business front said John.

1. On personal front: develop and market yourself as a strategic and change leader
2. On the business front: rethink your role in terms of business, rethink how you can engage the customer and deliver and bring back those learnings to your teams.

Watch John Daly’s interview on Project Management Institute Facebook page to know more on the role and the skills of the #DifferenceMakers of the future.

 I wrap up my day 1 with the networking tour of the “Berlin Panaromic bus tour” soaking in the history of Berlin while looking forward to the future – the sessions on Day 2 on “Projects of the future”.

As always keep watching this space and keep following on twitter, linkedin and Facebook for live updates straight from #PMIEMA18 Berlin.

“Every industry and every organization will have to transform itself in the next few years. What is coming at us is bigger than the original internet and you need to understand it, get on board with it and figure out how to transform your business”

— Tim O'Reilly, Founder and CEO, O'Reilly Media

The world is transforming with light speed, it is getting better and progress is coming faster than ever, which means the quest for perfection is our projects is at it’s limit and beyond? So how would the projects of the future look like ?  What would the role of a project in this uncertain future ?

These are the questions that keep coming back to me, as I notice an evolution of a revolution around me.

Keeping the above in mind, I planned my schedule for #PMIEMEA18 congress as follows:

Key Note: Rowan Gibson - Winning in the Innovation Economy

Key Note: Inma Martinez - Developing Creative Approaches to Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace in the Times of Accelerated Digitalisation

Augmented Project Management? Why ‘Less Is More’ When Facing Complexity in Projects

Transformers: Navigating Complexity in Projects of the Future

Off-site Learning Session: Airport Berlin Brandenburg BER

Digital Transformation: Leading Organizations to the Promise Land

Reforming Transfer of Knowledge on Projects of the Future

Open Forum : Leading Effective virtual teams

Want to know more on the projects of the future?  Have any questions which I can ask on your behalf in these sessions?  Please shoot out here or direct message me. I will be there at #PMIEMEA18 Congress to share insights into the “Projects and Project management of the Future”

Follow me here, facebook, twiter and linkedin as I take you through the #PMIEMEA18 experience from May 7 – May 9 Berlin