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 !

It's been a week since #PMIcon17 started and it's been a time to reflect on a few things that were really visible to me during the conference that I think is valuable to share with the wider community.

1. Volunteering: A really valuable way to connect with others and give back to the community is through Volunteering. Either with your local chapter or with other professional organisations.
2. Talent Management: It's vitally important to understand your own worth in your organisation and also as a Project Manager. Make sure that you understand what you're worth and also where you can still develop as a Project Manager.
3. Innovation: Be innovative, be a 'bar raiser', 'thought provoker', 'change maker' and be this not just for one day, but constantly. Analyse what you're doing and what you can do better. What can your organisation do better? Are you thinking about how Project Management could be better?
4. Collaboration: As Project Managers we can be stronger within the community if we collaborate together to give more knowledge to each other. Are you collaborating enough?
5. Generational Project Management: Project Managers seem to have a longer more valuable shelf life than other industries and roles. During the conference, there was a great combination of younger Project Managers just starting their career with other more seasoned Project Managers who had so much knowledge and information to share. As an organisation and industry we need to be aware of this and work on sharing this knowledge together.

Personally, I felt that the Conference not only highlighted the opportunities that we have as Project Managers to learn and develop as stronger Project Managers but also showing the possibilities that are available in the PM world to contribute and grow.

What next?

Where will I be going from now? I'll be continuing to connect with everyone that I met to make sure that we can continue collaborating and sharing knowledge. I'll also be making sure that my 'contribution' to the Project Management industry remains involved, active and giving back just as much as I have been learning!

What will your contribution be? How can we collaborate together?

I've finally arrived back in the Netherlands and it's been a whirlwind few days! I consider the "Ask the Expert" sessions to really be so beneficial to the wider community as well as the individuals involved. I wanted to provide a summary of the main things that really struck me over the weekend and some final thoughts about the conference.

Key elements:

This years session really had a few stand out areas of conversation:

• Career advice: A lot of people wanted to talk to us for career advice as well as knowing where to go next or issues that they had in their career
• Growth plans/ development: This was a really hot topic for a lot of people. They were struggling to know how to establish a development plan and knowing what they really wanted from their career.
• Transitioning to a Scrum Master/working in an agile environment: This came from several people who weren't sure where to start or where to go in their agile career. There seems to be a gap between when you have your training and when you really start using agile in your daily career.

Key areas of advice given:

• Your value: Spend some time understanding who you are, what talents you have and more importantly, what you want to do in your career. Then make any move that you want to make
• Investigate! Research your local job market, look at the area that you're in and see what's available and open to you. Reach out to some recruiters in your area and see what's available.
• PMI Chapters: Look at your local PMI Chapter and see what they can do to help. Network with your other Project Management colleagues and see what opportunities you can get from them.
• Talk to your HR: Ask them what's available for you at your company and tell them what/ where you want to go.

Looking forward at your career and path is the most important thing that you can do for your professional development. You need to understand and analyse within yourself what you want to do and what's important for you. 

Did you attend #PMIcon17 and did you enjoy it? Did you come to the Ask the Expert area? 

Since I retired after 26 years in one company, I have had assignments in various PMOs in different industries.  I’ve been in the energy sector, the insurance sector, credit card services, industrial/manufacturing, and now healthcare.  Every industry has struggled with the project charter.  What does baselining it mean? Does it ever get updated? Who should issue it? And the list goes on.  And while PMOs in all these industries try to invent the perfect process – we are ignoring one important aspect.

The project charter, as defined by PMI, does not meet the needs of today’s business!

Before you call me a heretic and an incompetent – hear me out.  The problem I have with the charter is it becomes a reformatting of existing information, bloated, and redundant – and it doesn’t provide the project team with the most important information it needs.  Shouldn’t the charter give the team a definition of what success looks like?

I propose the charter should be extremely streamlined.  After all, how many people, let along executives, will read a 14 page charter?  Many charter templates contain information that is already in one artifact and will no doubt be included in another.  I propose we throw away the bloated all-inclusive charter of today and replace it with a simple charter.

Project Organizational Wrapper

You need to have the organizational wrapper of project control structures.  If the project pipeline has a defined Demand Process and there is a demand id, it should be in the charter.   This should also be aligned to the business case information – what went into the approval, and other justifications.  No need to repeat them in the charter – they already exist in a corporate database of record.  If information is in two places – that doubles the risk of inconsistency, confusion, and delay.

If you have an integrated project management system (IPMS) that tracks project work in process – then that project id should be there. Projects assume titles and identify from the ideation phase through project initiation.  That title, or name, should be included in the charter because that’s the lingo that has defined the initiative.

Should be results focused

Once the project is ready to kick off, the work initiative needs to be focused on the results.  If your organization is mature enough to be doing Benefits Management Realization, the charter should map directly to the benefit register.  The next section of the charter should be:

What does success look like?

Quite simply – what is the vision in reality?  Knowing what success is far outweighs the value of several scope bullet points.  The definition of success can be expressed in several ways including:

Critical success factors

The essential areas of activity that must be performed well if you are to achieve the mission, objectives or goals for your business or project.

What can we do in the future that we can’t do now?

How do we measure success?

Not calling for specific key performance indicators here, but should have an idea of how we will measure success.  It also provides requirements for the product and what are the critical success factors.

External/legal requirements

If you are driven by a legal requirement or an industry standard (HIPPA or an ISO requirement comes to mind) than that should be identified.  The charter must identify conformation to external factors.

What benefits are being realized?

Again, if you have a mature benefits realization process, then the entire benefits quantification/qualification should be in place and your project is delivering outcomes and capabilities to realize the defined benefits.

Organizational RACI

The charter must be able to identify all the organizations that are impacted by the initiative.  After all, how did you get high level estimates for the business case if you didn’t have a means of identifying organizations involved?  This RACI should then be driven to know which groups need to receive and approve the charter. 

Time Frame

What time frame is expected for the organization to start to realize benefits?  Let’s avoid the charade of bottom up estimates and defining the schedule after you have all requirements defined etc.  We are driven by budget cycles and funding is only approved to last so long.  This isn’t to say those things can’t and shouldn’t happen, but at a Charter level – the approval has a defined end time.  This also helps define the scope.

I have purposely omitted several pieces of what is considered part of a charter.  Not that I don’t think they are important, I do, but they belong in defined sections of the project plan.  There is no need for budget as that should already be in the business case approval – and I don’t know if it directly contributes to the definition of the outcomes and capabilities.    Scope is implied in what success looks like and the Critical Success Factors.  If during requirements definition, a question is raised that doesn’t directly support the definition of success, than it is out of scope.  Assumptions, risks, issues, and constraints are all important, but they live elsewhere.  The charter should identify the future state, not dwell on the challenges of the present state.  And the charter should be a onetime document that is not modified or have addendums.  It initiates the work – other artifacts ebb and flow during the project life cycle.

In closing – the purpose of the charter is to authorize the project manager to start delivering on the project.  It is not to cut and paste from all over to make an all-inclusive summary of all business intelligence that justified the project.  I propose to make it a lean document focused on the outcomes and capabilities and the definition of success.  Items that have a workflow/life cycle (risks, assumptions, issues, etc.) do not need to be in a charter, they are taken care of elsewhere.  A lean, concise, and easy to read charter allows the team to focus on delivering within the success criteria.

Please sign up for a 1:1 with me while at the PMI Global Conference! We can talk about PMOs, healthcare project management, teaching project management, or any other topic related to project management!

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