PMI Global Insights

Yes the secret is out.  #ChampionOfChange you have a new lifeline “Ask the crowd”. I led a session on day 3, on something that many of you were curious to know about – your new lifeline

#517a Who Wants to Be a More Successful Project Manager? Here's Your New Lifeline: Ask the Crowd!

I explored how crowdsourcing can be an option to solve the most complex problems in our projects and how it can improve agility and innovation.

I had a great support from the crowd at my session, both from old friends like Bruce Gay and friends that I made through my interactions last few days at the conference – at the gala dinner, on the hallway, at the breakfast, lunch tables and at the “Ask the Expert” booth. I guess that is the bonus of having your session scheduled on the last day. Thank you everyone! The feedback is captured here.

With all that great crowd support, in high spirits I headed back to the exhibit hall. On way I stopped at PMI’s Projectified live podcast booth for  a live podcast on my experience as a speaker as an attendee at #PMICON18.

1.     Be a person of vision, face your own reality and believe in magic

2.     Tap into the collective intelligence of the generations, by understanding the workplace preferences

3.     Passion is one, but that needs to be backed by project management and principles

The last key note of the conference was by Abigail Posner, she provided some amazing tips on how to be creative

1.     #seekthewhy :  Ask yourself why your clients seek your services, answers are the foundations to the creative ideas.

2.     #lookforthelinks : Ideas don't come from nowhere. Look for the links between disparate ideas.

3.     #discoveryourmission: What are you offering that is going to make lives better?

Then wrapping up with energetic Hi fives from the Los Angeles chapter members and volunteers. The moment captured well by my friend Karthik Ramamurthy here

As they call in Hollywood “that was a wrap” of   the PMI Global Congress 2018, hope to see you next time to celebrate PMIs 50^th birthday in Philadelphia. Till then let’s keep the conversation on , on  twitter , linkedIn and  Facebook .

Day 2 started with collecting the gems of generational insights of the 5 generations at the workplace.

Cam Marston walked us through the generational themes, workplace preferences and tips how to solve this puzzle of different workplace preferences of the 5 generations at the workplace.

He ends his presentation with this final note: “He gets me, She gets me.. and that is the beginning of a high-performance team “.

With all these gems of wisdom in my kitty now I head to the “Ask The Expert” booth. On my way back to the “Ask The Expert” booth I get the opportunity to collect a few more gems:

A rendezvous with the living legend – James Snyder, the founder member of PMI. James narrated his story of attaining his PMP certification. He is PMP ID # 2. The 6 months journey to be a PMP, starting with filling a hard copy form, the 2 days of pen-paper exam and 6 months wait for the result. Fast forward today, the form is digital, the exam is online, and we get the results plus the analysis within minutes of you hitting the “Finish” button. A classic case of Digital transformation

A meetup with Stephen Maye, EMCEE for this year’s Global Congress and the host of “Projectified” – the PMIs podcast channel - forward-looking series of conversations about hot topics and emerging trends impacting the world of project managers, from digital transformation to artificial intelligence to career development. Again, taking us beyond the books, putting technology to work!

Finally, a visit to the PMI book store with my another respected “Expert” fellow member PMI ID – 7055 Dave Maynard. He never fails to amaze me with his experience at NASA and beyond. Glad to know him.

Talking about Digital transformation, I engaged with some of the attendees on the hall-way at the breakfast table, at lunch and at the “Ask the expert” booth, Some salient points from my discussions:

 “We have so many disparate systems, how do we implement enterprise agility here”

Standardization is the key here, tackle one system at a time, go slow and steady. We cannot achieve enterprise agility in one leap. We can explore the opportunity of implementing the Gartner’s Bi-Modal IT strategy to innovate the newer applications and renovate the older applications

“With all this digital disruption on our way, what should we do as project managers to keep up with these emerging trends”

Project managers needs to understand the emerging trends both on technology and business front, but their primary job focus would be what PMs do best: Setting the essential criteria, integrating projects and project components, and winning over and engaging stakeholders!

 “Ours is a regulated industry, we have a lot checks and validations, how can we be agile ?”

Yes we can leverage Agile even for projects in regulated industries. Add the regulatory requirements to the DoD ( Definition of Done). This will ensure that we are complying to the regulatory requirements, and finally we can add a final sprint just for validation to ensure that the integrated product is validated and signed off.

I finished off my day with the networking dine around at the “Conga room” indulging in traditional Spanish flavours, contemporary American cooking ,networking and looking forward to day 3 of #PMICON18.

So as we cruise into Day 3, I all charged up for more learning, networking, wellness and fun, are you ready ? More on twitter , linkedIn or Facebook . See you there !

What a day it's been so far! I managed to arrive a little early which let me work through some notes from yesterday and connect with some of the sponsors in the exhibit hall. 

Today's consulatations have been some of the powerful ones for me yet. Here's a summary of two of them: 

- Fran was coming for some support. She had been headhunted by her old boss and was now in a brand new role, new company and it was a start up so a lot of room for creativity. It scared her. She didn't know where to turn and the best way to collaborate. We discussed the best way to work and get started in this environment and also to look at ways to work in a start up environment. We discussed what she could do to work with her team as well as how to implement a good project management strategy that would work for her industry. 

- Jason was coming for a consult about how to tap into his creativity for his future position and where to go next. We brainstormed together and came up with a plan for what he can do to think outside the box. 

I've spent time today interviewing my fellow experts and will share it here when it's uploaded (they are already on my Twitter page (@Em_The_PM)). I've also spent some time connecting with other knowledge peers who have inspired with me several ideas to progress and develop some webinar ideas.

The closing keynote was presented by: Abigail Posner. She works at Google and was inspiring the crowd with creativity and how to expand our horizons to become true #championsofchange.

Over the next week, I'll be posting more news, pictures and summary of the conference and would like to know what else you'd like to know about the conference. Let's start the discussion below.

(Please note names for consults have been changed).

Today has been quite a thrilling day at the #AskTheExperts booth. We've been quite busy with supporting various attendees with their questions and giving advice. One of my favourite discussions of the day so far has been talking to Adrian who wanted to know the best way to progress his career whilst studying for his MBA. It's really interesting to see the versatile people that we have within the Project Management community. 

I decided today to show you my day through my posts on Twitter. Feel free to follow me for the latest information.

1) Doing some drop in sessions on the couch with Dave Maynard.

2) Having some fun with some of the experts in our booth

3) Heading to the Wellness pavillion to have a foot massage and relax on the gym ball whilst learning how to do some valuable mindfulness.

4) Using the selfie booth and getting a lovely memory of the day

5) Spending time with the projectified podcast to produce some content that we'll be displaying here in a few days.

6) T-Shirt pick up with 3 great designs

7) Looking at the wellness pavillion 

8) Lunch time for our PMI colleagues!

9) Spending time with the other colleagues from PMI

10) Snack time!

11) LinkedIn review corner

12) It's also been the final for PM Wars and it was a thrilling Semi Final and Final.

Has this been useful? or would you like to see something else/different?

“Abigail” popped by the Ask the Expert booth to see me yesterday (day 1). Abigail is a fairly new project manager; she has worked on a number of project teams – but only recently was put in charge of a project with all remote team members.

On a team meeting call last week, Abigail and two team members called in from one location while four other team members called in from two other locations. The team was trying to solve a particularly knotty problem and were pretty vocal about how the problem occurred and the best way to solve it. Abigail shortly lost control of the meeting. It got contentious and there were arguments, blaming, and side conversations going on – not just in Abigail’s location but also another location where three members were calling in. One poor team member calling in from her home office was very quiet (probably because, as Abigail noted, she couldn’t get a word in edgewise!) Abigail never got control of the meeting and it ended within 45 minutes with no decision made on solving the problem and no plan to move forward.  Since then, the problem has been solved by the sponsor who gave the team a solution to implement.

Abigail asked how she could have managed the situation.

What Could Abigail Have Done?

Abigail could have started with her own location and asked everyone to stop the side conversation and remain quiet. She then could stop the meeting and ask everyone to minimize the side conversations as they are distracting and don’t enable for full participation. She should also remind them that they are a team and pushing blame back and forth would not solve the problem.

Once she got everyone quieted down, Abigail can “reset” the meeting, ensure understanding of the problem and reiterate the goal to solve it in a collaborative way for the good of the project.  She might use a “round robin” approach, calling on each individual to share their thoughts on the problem. By using a “round robin” approach, each team member will be able to share their ideas and thoughts and then more easily come to a collaborative solution.

What are your challenges? Stop by the PMI Ask the Expert booth in the Exhibit Hall at the Congress and meet with one of the experts. #PMICON18