The Critical Path

Ask the Expert is back by popular demand at PMI® Global Conference 2019! These one-on-one sessions allow you to discuss your project question or problem, get advice about navigating the project management career path, or talk through issues currently facing the profession from a trusted and established ProjectManagement.com expert.

Over the course of our annual three-day event, you'll have the opportunity to meet with experts from various industries representing a wide variety of areas of expertise to discuss all things project management. Learn more about our 2019 experts below and through their blog, PMI Global Insights.

Community experts will be available during the following times:

Saturday, 5 October
10:30AM – 11:30AM
3:00PM – 4:00PM

Sunday, 6 October
10:00AM – 10:30AM
2:30PM – 3:00PM

Monday, 7 October
10:00AM – 10:30AM
12:00PM – 1:00PM

NEW THIS YEAR! Join us for lunch time round-tables on Saturday and Sunday for group discussions about topics that affect your project management world every day. No sign up required. Just grab your lunch and come on over!

Saturday, 5 October, 12:45PM – 1:45PM EDT:
Project Recovery – Tips for Turning Around a Troubled/Failing Project!

Sunday, 6 October, 12:00PM – 1:00PM EDT:
Influencing Stakeholders in the Absence of Authority  

Meet our Experts!

Andrew Craig	Dave Maynard
David Davis	Kiron Bondale
Lorelie Kaid	Lori Wilson

Are you unsure about signing up for an Ask the Expert session at PMI® Global Conference 2019? Don't quite understand how to use the 20 minute session? Review our FAQs below to learn how you can make the most of this opportunity!

1. Why should I sign up?

Meeting one-on-one with one of our experts can help you refine your project or program implementation to better meet your requirements, serve your organization’s goals, and ultimately, make you more successful and your job easier. You may also receive advice from a peer that can help guide you as you continue on your project management career path.

2. What type of questions can I ask the experts?

Pretty much anything about planning, executing or closing your current projects is fair game. Experts are also open to discussing their experiences with career growth.

3. What questions aren’t appropriate for Ask the Expert?

Where to find your favorite restaurant in Philadelphia – While this may be a valid question, expert time is better spent discussing real project management problems and challenges.

4. What if I can’t think of a question for Ask the Expert?

You don’t want to miss this opportunity, so find a question! Open your project list for inspiration. If it helps, last year’s popular topics were starting a PMO, Agile transformations, scaling process in regulated environments, and tracking risks on active projects.

5. Who are the experts that I’d be meeting with?

It depends on your question! We have several experts lined up with expertise in nearly every area of project management. Simply click on their names above and learn more about their areas of focus.

6. What should I do to prepare?

You’ll have dedicated time with your expert focused entirely on your specific problem or question. Consider writing down the details of what you’re trying to accomplish, what you’ve tried, and prioritize your questions beforehand to be sure that you are making the most of your session.

7. How do I request an Ask the Expert session?

To start, you must attend PMI Global Conference on 5-7 October, 2019 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA to have an Ask the Expert session. If you’re not registered, what are you waiting for? Having an Ask the Expert session to discuss your business needs will help justify your attendance! Go.

Simply request an Ask the Expert session, either online using the link below or at the Ask the Experts - Community at PMI Exhibit booth in the Exhibit Hall. Provide some specifics on your question, because we’ll use those details to help prepare your expert for your session.

8. What can I expect onsite for my Ask the Expert session?

The Ask the Expert area is located at the Ask the Experts - Community at PMI Exhibit booth in the Exhibit Hall. You will meet one-on-one with your expert in a semi-private setting.

• If you already have a session scheduled: Come to Ask the Experts - Community at PMI Exhibit booth in the Exhibit Hall and we’ll guide you to your assigned table to meet with your expert.
• If you need to schedule an Ask the Expert session onsite: Stop by Ask the Experts - Community at PMI Exhibit booth and we’ll help you to fill out the request form, assign an appropriate expert, and schedule your session.

Sign up before you join us in Philadelphia to secure your spot! Onsite sign-up is also available, space permitting.

Reserve your Ask the Expert session today!

Written by Mike Griffiths

I have just returned from the first face-to-face meeting for volunteers working on the PMBOK® Guide–Seventh Edition development team. This is a personal reflection of the meeting, not an official account of what happened or planned next steps.

We met at the PMI headquarters in Philadelphia. I have visited the office before and was initially disappointed it did not look like Hogwarts or some ancient repository/font of knowledge. Instead it’s a normal, pleasant, but mostly non-descript, three-story building in a tree lined industrial estate.

The development team volunteers came from Latin America, North America, Europe, Asia, and Pacific regions. We had a mix of industries including construction, government, IT, materials science, and education. We also had a diverse mix of roles including practitioners, consultants, PMO staff, and academia.

Goal

The goal for our three days together was to identify and begin to define the principles and domains that will make up the Seventh Edition. Everyone had been tasked with homework to research and consider in advance what they believed these universal project principles should be and what common domains/elements/aspects are involved in the delivery of results.

Preparation

While this was our first meeting, it is important to explain that research for the Seventh edition has been underway for over a year. PMI regularly surveys its members and partner organizations to determine how they work and what real-world guidance would be of most use to them. There have been several workshops at PMI conferences worldwide to gather information and ideas about what to include in the next edition of the guide.

The team reviewed other project management guides, standards, and frameworks to determine what principles might be inferred and commonalities across various publications. It is probably fair to say every popular, publicly available project management framework was examined and I was surprised at how just many there were – certainly more than I previously thought existed.

Outcomes

During our time together we distilled, combined and generally whittled down over 100 suggested principles to around a dozen. We likewise suggested, debated and wrestled with domain suggestions. Despite our diversity we were able to land on an initial set of principles and domains for further development. Once refined, these will go out to a similarly diverse Review team of almost 70 people.

What’s Next

If you have read this far you are probably interested enough to want to know what the new principles and domains will be. Those are still in development, but several team members will be sharing their thoughts on specific principle concepts over the next couple of months. What I can share now is that the next edition of the PMBOK® Guide will cover the entire delivery spectrum. It will be relevant for traditional, linear lifecycles and applicable to non-linear, incremental lifecycles such as Design Thinking, Lean Startup, agile, and Kanban.

I left Philadelphia excited and a little daunted by the work ahead of us all. Yet inspired by the new direction and confident in the strength of our team. The next edition will be quite different, and I am glad to see it evolve.

The profession of project management is changing quickly. All of PMI’s research and surveys have indicated people have great ideas for changes they would like to see incorporated. I am looking forward to working with the Development team, Review team, and wider project management community to help develop the next edition of the PMBOK® Guide. For updates, discussions and accounts of the journey going forward please check back.

Note: For those planning to attend PMI Global Conference in Philadelphia 5-7 October, I will be assisting with two workshops that will further explore principles of project delivery: PMBOK® Guide – The Next Generation: An Innovation Working Session (Saturday, 5 October) and Project Delivery: Evolution and Revolution (Sunday, 6 October). I hope to see you there.

As you know, last month, we announced that as part of our overall content approach, PMI launched a new initiative focusing on four industry segments this year, particularly in the fields of IT, Finance, Government and Construction. And as part of that focus, we planned to highlight some existing PM Network content on ProjectManagement.com to engage the community, and to learn more about their specific industry needs.

In addition to the IT and Construction sectors deployed last month, we selected two pieces of content from the Government sector to help launch the first discussion thread posted within the following links within Project Management Central:

We selected two pieces of content from the Government sector to help launch the first discussion thread posted within the following links within Project Management Central:

Scaling new technology across an entire city demanded agile testing and crystal-clear requirements
https://www.projectmanagement.com/discussion-topic/137614/Scaling-new-technology-across-an-entire-city-demanded-crystal-clear-requirements

When Trees are Stakeholders...
https://www.projectmanagement.com/discussion-topic/137612/When-Trees-are-Stakeholders---

We welcome you to engage in these discussions! As always, please stay tuned for forthcoming Industry Sector postings!

Enjoy!

By Mike Frenette, PMI Standards Member Advisory Group

PMI is about to update The Standard for Project Management in a major way, and a key change is that the standard will become principle based. One might say they are baking principles into standards. So, what does this mean?

Everyone enjoys a tasty, well-baked piece of cake, don’t they? I am no chef, but during my youth, my mother took it upon herself to teach me a few things about baking, such as:

1. Bring the oven up to heat at the beginning so it will be the right temperature when you are ready to put something in it.
2. Recipes are for guidance only – what is more important is that everything is the right consistency, which you can only learn from experience.
3. Once you put something in the oven, avoid opening the oven door so you don’t lose the heat
4. Avoid banging around or dropping things in the kitchen so your half-baked cake doesn’t fall.

By now, many of you are probably wondering why I am talking about baking cakes in a forum for project professionals. Let’s think about what it means when we label a statement a principle. 

A principle is usually defined as a statement of:

• moral or ethical value;
• agreed conduct; or,
• an underlying law or assumption

Elements of each of these are present in PMI’s use of the word “principle,” but the third is the dominant concept. Therefore, PMI’s guiding definition of a principle is:  A statement that captures and summarizes a generally accepted objective for the practice of the disciplines and functions of portfolio, program, and project management.

If we look at the cake-baking list above, and try to convert each to a principle, we might come up with something like this:

1. Match the oven temperature to the type of cake
2. Tailor the recipe for the desired outcome
3. Retain oven temperature during baking
4. Ensure a vibration-free environment

So how does this apply to PMI standards?

When standards are developed, the applicable principles must first be laid out. Just as the rails in a bowling alley for beginners avoids balls rolling into the gutters, principles define the boundaries of the standard. The development of principles up front lets those with a stake in the standard agree to the underlying principles before work begins. For example, some might state a principle as “Never spend a lot of your client’s money”. Others might argue that there are times when it is important to spend “a lot” of money to ensure project success, and so the principle might become “Spend only as much of your client’s money as is necessary to ensure project objectives are met.”

Some PMI standards are already principle-based. For example, the recently released Benefits Realization Management: A Practice Guide lists principles, such as:

• Net benefits justify the use of invested resources
• Benefits realization is holistically planned and managed

The Standard for Risk Management principles include:

• Strive for excellence in the practice of risk management
• Align risk management with the organizational strategy and governance practices

You probably noticed that some of these principles can apply across several standards. For example, one might argue that you should strive for excellence in any discipline related to managing a project  just as one could say that bringing the oven to the correct temperature probably applies to any recipe that calls for something to be baked in an oven.

So, today we are learning about the principles of baking a cake. Next, maybe it will be the principles of riding a bike – or not.

Your comments are most welcome, but please refrain from complaining about cake failures based on my decades-old, perhaps incorrect, memories of my dear Mom’s cake mentoring.

There – standards principles explained. It was a piece of cake!

Stay tuned to The Critical Path blog for further updates as we continue this journey.

Here at PMI, we can’t believe that Summer is almost over! The days have flown by, as we prepare for all of the exciting events and endeavors taking place this Fall – and beyond!  We so look forward to further engaging with the community and sharing in all of the excitement.

On the Critical Path, we provide a look at what’s currently happening around the community in your August Community News You Can Use:

Register for PMI® Organizational Agility Conference 2019: This year, the PMI® Organizational Agility Conference will examine Evolving Approaches to Resilient Value Delivery on Thursday, September 12^th. This year, the following speakers will be joining us:

• Josh Seiden – Sense & Respond: Principles for the Next Century of Work
• Tony Maughan – Adopting New Ways of Working: ANZ's Delivery Transformation
• Johanna Rothman – The 3 Principles of Organizational Agility
• Mike Griffiths – The Change Resilient Professional
• Michel Biedermann – Lessons Learned in Hybrid Agile/Waterfall Delivery
• John Medcof – Reinventing the Playbook: Driving Change in the Canadian Federal Government

The virtual conference will explore the concept of change resilience with professionals who are driving it within their organizations—and those who are living it as part of their own development. Register today!

Discover PMI - Ask Us Anything! Series: The next session will be held on September 19^th! Join Ansley Stauffer as she discusses Powering Your Career with PMI: Explore the PMI Job Board to Power You Career. For those who cannot attend the live webinar, the session will be posted on-demand.  

100,000 Volunteer Hours Reached!: In celebration of PMI’s 50^th anniversary, Project Managers around the world have risen to the challenge of pledging 100,000 hours to advancing the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals. PMI announced that the pledge goal (doubled from the original goal) was reached on August 13^th. Thank you to everyone who has taken part in the Global Celebration of Service and demonstrated the many ways in which Project Managers have a positive impact in their communities! Read more here.

Community Central: Join the conversation on our new Discussion Forum, Community Central. This is the place for all community talk – site news, announcements, questions regarding ProjectManagement.com. Get started by responding to one of the August Hot Topics!

PMI Standards: PMI is in the midst of a transformation, and as PMI Standards begin to reflect this transformation, we will be engaging with the community through the Critical Path blog.  Going forward, you can check-in here for updates and opportunities to share your thoughts and reactions around how we are progressing on our journey.  Read more about A Systems Approach to Project Management and The Continuing Evolution of the PMBOK® Guide.

Peerspective: A reminder to check out the Peerspective blog to get to know your fellow Project Managers and community members a little better. Learn from each other’s experiences, challenges, achievements, and insights!

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to a member of the Community Engagement team – we’re happy to help you. As always, stay tuned to the Critical Path for your community news!