It has been a week since I came back from the beautiful city of Amsterdam, after attending the PMI Global congress EMEA 2009.As usual, it was a great opportunity to network with project managers from 49 countries , coming from different backgrounds and industries, to share their views of this interesting profession and personal experiences. It was also a good educational experience, where well known professionals presented their knowledge and experience in different aspects of project management, ranging from sustainability( the keynote speech), Agile methodology which also had a lot of attention in this event, to interactive workshops about team building and stakeholders management. Some of the concepts presented were fairly new, or shall I say unusual, like Pecha Kucha (which I'm still wondering what could be the correct pronunciation, in Japanese of course); the lazy project manager, axiology and thought processes, which made me see things from a slightly different perspective; which is a sign of a successful educational event, for me at least. Some of the main points that I took back from the presentations I attended are:
Great project managers: The PM success definition has expanded, project complexity increased, and dependence on sponsors became more. Studies showed that planning, effective communication, user involvement, and soft skills are critical components that made successful project managers stand out among other PMs in the surveyed projects.
Portfolio Management: is not a rocket science, but needs more disciplined and structured approach, involving all key stakeholders and decision makers. The top-down dissemination of the strategic goals is crucial to all organizational divisions.
Agile project management: Trust in your project team members, strong customer focus, iterative and test-driven development, prioritization of the product backlog are the main elements of successful agile planning.
Lazy, but productive! : In complex and demanding projects, the PM should find easier ways to manage the team and the project rather than becoming stressed and overwhelmed by tasks and problems. A lazy but productive PM should relax, breath normally, plan ahead for any possible crisis, filter the issues reaching him/her, delegate as much as possible, then prioritize whatever issues remaining to deal with.
Axiology: Our thought processes are complex and involves different types of stimuli, internal and external, and a successful manager should realize those stimuli, AKA advisors, and keep them in balance as much as possible, and shift the thought to more useful thinking, rather than rationalizing and re-enforcing bad habits. Success is always a conscious thought.
At the closing session, PMI announced that the next PMI Global Congress for EMEA will be in.....Milan !
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