PMI Global Insights

One thing that I asked the community before the conference was what would like they to see during the conference? What was the best way to share the conference with you all? The feedback and answer that came from several of you was that you wanted to see various points of the conference via video. To be able to have this in a format that could be watched by everyone, I have uploaded to Youtube all of the videos and would really appreciate your feedback.

Are these the videos that you wanted to see? Would you want to see any others/different ones?

• Interview with a first time attendee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-v9zlmVBBo
• Interview with a first time attendee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pyrDyM5nls
• Interview with Presenter Pat Lucey and Norma Lynch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csLf03KfFVI
• What to expect: Networking opportunities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7D6LYbPWys
• Offsite Visit to Teeling Distillery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-kkRyCR-Zk
• Offsite Visit: Review of Teeling Distillery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Qs8Bfi8L8s
• Interview with Dan Lefsky: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coIFN7XkZIg
• Interview with Laurel Sim: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPDiNqdtTUE
• The closing keynote finale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMTHI3oRELw

- Emily.

For the past year, PMI has been going undergoing a strategic transformation to be able to support Project Managers in every aspect of their career journey.

This has really made me think about myself and my own career journey and I've asked myself: What am I doing to invest in myself? What am I doing to become a stronger, better Project Manager? Here are a few suggestions that I'd recommend

1. Develop your career strategy

One thing that I'd recommend you start with is looking at where you want your career to go. If you can see where you want to be in 3,5,10 years then it'll help you analyse how you can get there. Do you want to move towards Program Management? Diversify your skills as a Project Manager and become an expert in a specific area (agile/ transformation etc)? 

2. Know your resources!

Your PMI membership can be a great way for you to know and utilise resources at your fingertips. Free On-Demand Webinars, Virtual conferences, in person conferences and great Career Development blogs are all available for you to be able to support and help you along the way. Don't forget that there are many Vendor offers available for you that might be useful to find available resources.

3. Plan!

When it comes to the renewal cycle for PDUs, I try to plan to achieve a minimum of 20 PDUs every year. Within that, I break it down into topic areas where I want to personally improve and then I look for resources that can support me in this area.  So it could look like this:

4. Ask the right questions:

Here's a few questions that might help you understand / learn where you want to develop/progress to:

• What is important for you in your daily job?
• What do you enjoy doing?
• How are you a champion of change?
• How are you making the Project Management world a better place?
• Where do you see yourself in 3/5/10 years?
• What do you need to achieve your career goals? (e.g. additional qualifications? more experience?)

Why is this important?

I completely agree with the PMI strategy of focusing on the individual Project Manager and their career path. It's important to remember and really look long term about our career path and how we can get there. I also think that it's important to have this discussion with your company/ manager about where you want to go and how you want to develop.

During my recent yearly discussions with my boss I discussed that my interests over this year have developed and change and this is where i'd like to move/develop towards. My company appreciates that I take control of my career path and let them know how this will link with their wider strategy/organisational goals.

Conclusion

When it comes to career planning, I think that it's important that you take the time out of your daily work to think really hard and honestly about the answers and work out what's best for you in your long term career. What does your career plan look like? How do you plan your career development? One great thing is that the PMI will be there to support you on your journey and keep providing you great opportunities to help you be the Best Project Manager that you can be!

I am back to Bollywood after spending a week in Hollywood and what a week it has been :

1. Travelling half the way across the world : a 19-hour flight from Bollywood to Hollywood
2. Participating as a “Expert” for “Ask The Expert” sessions
3. Presenting at my third PMI Congress - "Who Wants to Be a More Successful
4. Project Manager? Here's Your New Lifeline: Ask the Crowd! #askthecrowd
5. Recording live podcast for PMI on my experience as a speaker and as an attendee
6. A great support from the #crowd at the conference
7. Looking at Life as a magic along with  John Dorenbos
8. Collecting "GEMS" from 5 generations at the workplace from Cam Martson
9. Cracking Creativity with Abigail Posner
10. Finally a enjoying a cool sunset by the Pacific Ocean at the Santa Monica Pier

My takeaways ? I have noted them down as quotes that I gathered from the sessions that I attended

1. “I blamed a lot of people when I wasn’t having success, the more I blamed people around me, the more I lost myself, bit by bit, piece by piece.” – John Dorenbos – “Life is a magic” Key note day 1

2. “You will become infinitely more powerful if you can understand your preferences and set them aside and let your colleagues’ preferences shine through,” – Cam Marston

3. “The big part of the equation was to work with the community to understand what veterans wanted in their brand-new veteran’s medical center – Fernando Rivera, Director of Medical center – south Louisiana Veterans health care system, 2018, PMI Project of the year winner Do I hear “crowdsourcing ““Ask the crowd “here as well ?

4. “Creativity changes the world!” – Abigail Posner

My experience at the conference are captured in these blogs

Day 1: #PMICON18 – Day 1 The magic starts!

https://www.projectmanagement.com/blog-post/47192/-PMICON18---Day-1-The-magic-starts--

#PMICON18 – Day 2 Collecting the GEMS of the Generations

https://www.projectmanagement.com/blog-post/47273/-PMICON18---Day-2-Collecting-the-GEMS-of-the-Generations

Day 3: #PMICON18 – Day 3 Invest in the wisdom of the crowd and crack creativity

https://www.projectmanagement.com/blog-post/47341/-PMICON18---Day-3-Invest-in-the-wisdom-of-the-crowd-and-crack-creativity

A yearlong celebration of PMI’s 50^th birthday #PMI50 has already begun. Watch this to know more. We even created a live mosaic billboard with the moments of the #PMICON18

And yes, there is more… The experts from “Ask the Expert” group have created some exclusive content just for you.  My exclusive expert content  Projects in the Real World: Agile and Beyond is here.

With this I sign off from Bollywood. I would love to know your thoughts on the coverage. Do post your comments here, also don’t forget to follow me on  twitter , LinkedIn and  Facebook  for other exciting news from the world of agile and project management.

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 .

Ask the Experts - #PMICON18

#PMICON18 is just a week away now!   I’d like to encourage all of you to visit “Ask the experts” either by skipping a session or during a break.  You can pre-schedule time online. 

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Life after NASA

I’ve rambled on about NASA and the great things I learned while growing up there in other writings.  But, I’ve had a life after NASA too.  A group of us decided we could help troubled projects, programs and operations turn-around their troubles. So, we left NASA-Houston (and other places) and moved to Orlando, Florida (why not?) to start a company. 

Most of our work came from companies both large and small that had won US Government contracts and weren’t able to perform.  Why them?   Because there are very strict Federal procurement laws in-play that pretty much insist (legally) that for a fixed price contract, you MUST finish what you started.  It doesn’t matter what it takes, it must be finished and meet the customer’s needs.

At first, that was our niche.  We’d swoop in, understand the problems, give the poor company a bid for our services, put some of our key people in place and do our best to recover the project.  We never had one fail!  It was clear that after a few years of doing this, we saw the same reasons for failure over and over.  There were a few creative ways in which companies crashed while performing a project but not many. 

Well, word spread.  We started taking on commercial contracts (a different world from Federal contracts).  Surprise!  Commercial companies made nearly the same mistakes in their projects and programs as Government-suppliers.  There’s a continuity there, that would be an interesting study to do.  

Mistakes that stick out in my mind:

• A software company decided that no existing database application would fit their needs, so they decided they needed to write their own database system. 

• A systems integrator decided to save money off the final sale price by NOT conducting inspections of custom items that were ordered from vendors.  They just bolted things together and *knew* it would work.

• A large supplier to the project was “bankrupt and didn’t know it.”  Neither did the people that had the contract to include their product in the final deliverable.  They just couldn’t believe it when I told them.  We ended up buying the bits and pieces and hiring key employees. 

What’s common in these stories? (there are many, many  more)

1. Where is the boss?  Where is the Project Manger?  Where are the executives?  “Oh, we never talk to them except during our every 6-week review cycles. “

2. The executive desire to never hear bad news.  Or, “Don’t tell me what your problem is, tell me what your problem was.”  This is totally wrong-headed approach.  Executives exist to knock down the problems workers are having, not to shove them back at them. 

• This created a saying on our team “Bad news is good; Good news is Great" (the subject of a PMI paper I wrote years ago)
• You as the PM – NEED to hear bad news, all the bad news there is!  If you don’t hear it, you can’t do anything about it. 

3. Poor / no status tracking Many of these companies had a very high-level Gantt chart that they met once a month about and everyone said it was fine.  Risks were not discussed, budget was not discussed.  (see item one above).

The flip side of this was companies that had people planning down to the minute every action the project team should take.  Bathroom breaks, lunch… whatever.  That’s just plain silly and won’t work.

4. No or poor communication between groups working on the project.   It was common on troubled projects that one group had no idea what another group was doing.  Yet, both groups had components that needed to work together for the product of the project to work.

5. No WBS:  This used to get me very hot under the collar.  It clearly points to nearly zero project planning.

6. No cost accounting: No idea what was spent for what or when.  Overrun?  Maybe.  Funds remaining to help a failing area?  Maybe…

These are all true.  I could get a group of people on the phone to explain these and much, much more. 

I’d better stop now – I want to create a nice chart like my best buddy EM THE PM did.

-- Dave  (or DAM PM [my initials are DAM] not to be outdone by EM the PM)