PMI Global Insights

I interviewed speakers who came with hot topics. Here are 8 short interviews (from 1 to 3 minutes) about things that you should hear more about in the coming months.

Mindfulness

According to George Pitagorsky, mindfulness is the capacity to be objectively aware of anything and everything that is rising in and around you.

Interview: https://youtu.be/m5UQYGfGuCA

Servant leadership: a project manager in the storm

Doug Humbert genuinely talked about servant leadership from a real case study taken from hos professional experience.

Interview: https://youtu.be/TgDm95e9GI4

Portfolio management reduces project failure

Majeed Hosseiney and Michael Frenette explain that to understand the main causes of project failure, we need to look outside of the iron triangle (cost, time, scope) and use portfolio management.

Interview: https://youtu.be/vDtjzfegCfU

Speak the language of the sponsor

Alfonso Bucero reminds us that, as project managers, we need to consider our project from a strategic perspective to better communicate with our project sponsor.

Interview: https://youtu.be/pj7EZvbW8-A

Global project communication

Mohamed Khalifa and Muhammad Ilyas shared a tool that helps understand differences between cultures so that we can better communicate with stakeholders on projects with multicultural teams.

Interview: https://youtu.be/dhg0ph04rzk

PDRI: Project Definition Rating Index

Joy Gumz presented PDRI, a tool for scope definition in large, complex, non-agile projet management.

Interview: https://youtu.be/k7Zh_v-_x4k

Handling complexity

Leon Herszon identified 15 complexity factors that have an impact of cost estimation. His tool provides guidelines based on complexity assessment.

Interview: https://youtu.be/OA30kPEN4ao

Bridge the gap between organizational silos

According to Saadi Adra, business development and project management often work in silos. He proposes a tool to increase collaboration between both.

Interview: https://youtu.be/k6Og5LAZeD4

Thanks to the community team: Kristin Jones, Laura Samso, Sarah Mersereau and Fabio Rigamonti!

So far I shared with you all several insights I got from some of the sessions I attended, but another big part of a PMI Congress is the networking fun you can have.

I reconnected with old friends and met new ones: what a great chance to establish year-long relationships!

PMI Congresses are always a great opportunity to meet practitioners outside my company, my Country and my industry.

It is also a great chance to talk to the speakers in a casual environment; below I am with Lily Murariu, Mike O'Brochta, and Frank Saladis: they all delivered awesome sessions, with takeaways I will apply to my job. 

They were so nice to answer some of my questions about their sessions!

It was also a great honour to meet again Jack Duggal, I attended his Seminar Word last year in Barcellona and it really changed the approach my Company have about our PMO.

I am also a Toastmasters and had the opportunity to talk with William who is not only passionate about ethics but...  he's also 10 times DTM (Distinguished Toastmaster). What a good surprise!

Can you believe you can even meet Jim Snyder, one of PMI Founders, having a photo and a chat with him? He is an extremely witty man, and sharing some thoughts about the future of our profession was a priceless experience!

But the most unexpected (and funny) part was meeting unknown people thanks to the PMI Event App.

Everything started with someone complaining (and making fun) about the colourful socks the keynote presenter had, stating they distracted him; therefore some people launched the hashtag #FancySocksChallenge. We had fun, we met, we talk, we created a bond.

Thank you Arlete, Mykyta and Burak for the great amusement!

It was a silly little thing that helped us to add a little fun to the learning we had, and we promised to continue our challenge next year in Berlin!

Auf wiedersehen!

Presenters: M. Khalifa and M. Ilyas

When I saw in the agenda that these two presenters were delivering two sessions at PMI EMEA, I was very excited as they are usually very informative and knowledgeable, but also entertaining and enjoyable.

PMI EMEA has 7 concurrent tracks, therefore I could attend only this session.

One of the most important pillars that must be added to the other three traditional pillars of PMO Implementation is Change Management.

Without it, the entire PMI falls down.

Then, among all the agile's enablers, they explained the importance of simplicity with the following example:

This is a bull portrayed by Picasso after several (many) steps of simplification.

In their case study, their challenge was how to move from complexity to simplicity without compromising governance and best practices. They reached that success by implementing the Picasso's approach:

• from 30 processes to 20
• from 30 steps in requirement gathering to 12

The feedback they had were supporting their approach:

And you, what experiences to you have to share in similar cases?

Presenters: N. Clarke and M. Higgs

First of all, let me tell you that the hidden word on the title is "ethical". I on purpose decided not to show it because I noticed that people tend to think "ethics is boring" or "I know it all".

Actually, there's an increasing interest in ethics due to an increase corporates scandals, so we should be much more aware of the impact of decision making.

Taking decision isn't always as easy, and we're moving from "normative" frames (we tell what is good and right) to a "descriptive" one (describe situation and scenarios).

What would you do - the presenters asked us- in the Trolley Problem (click here for the video): it isn't that easy to come to a decision, uh?

The presenters were sharing two extremely interesting studies, but I want to make sure you are aware that PMI has already provided an Ethical Decision-Making Framework (EDMF) available in 12 languages here.

The EDMF was created by PMI "to guide an individual in the project management profession through a process to make a decision when confronted with an ethical dilemma".

The presentation ended with a question I share with you start a pro-active discussion:

• Project managers need to think about how their behaviours can build high-quality relationships with stakeholders. How do you currently do this?

... and I hope next time you will see the word ethics you wouldn't run away!

PMI Congresses fuel me, inspire me. Not in the way that I come here to fine concrete or plugg & play solutions to my problems. It is rather a place where I find raw material that I (may) use to elaborate new solutions. I always fine good raw material.

R&D - Ripoff & Duplicate

This time in Rome I attended sessions on innovation. Like most (if not all), I really liked the closing keynote, Magnus Lindkvist. I thought he had both an original style and an original content. His message was: we are good at imitating and poor at innovating. Doesn't it reminds you with my post yesterday? See here Project Management is imitation, not innovation.

For Lindkvisk, R&D means for him Ripoff & Duplicate (rather than Research and Development). I love the idea. Our everyday life proove it: we all want the same jobs, the same fancy places where to live, the same cars, the same team members, the same tools, the same best practices... don't we?

Innovation is for people the fools, those who do what others don't, they go where others don't, they buy what others don't... Innovation requires that you strongly believe in your value system to continue out of the roads. 

Yeah!