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Event report on the 3-part project management workshop series in collaboration with Girls in Tech Switzerland 

Author: Ka Yi Hui, PMP

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In September 2021, the Social Good team (Benoîte Grisouard, PhD, PMP, Enrico Bornisacci, PMP, Johana Ten Hove, PMP, Saul Figueroa, PMP) in collaboration with Girls in Tech Switzerland held a 3-part series of workshops. This project aims to 1) introduce project management concepts in the Girls in Tech community, and 2) raise the awareness of gender equality in Switzerland within our project management professional community. 

 

Before we started each workshop, the event co-organizers from Girls in Tech, Anne-Sophie Scharff and Laura Bourne-branchu, talked about the gender equality situation in the tech sector in Switzerland. These numbers showed we still have a long way to go, but the first step is to recognize and understand the problem and then take action to improve it.

During the first workshop, Benoîte led the presentation on Project Management fundamentals. The participants learned the project management vocabularies, worked on hands-on exercises such as a project charter and a work breakdown structure in breakout rooms using miro boards. Specially, they focused on a real-life example, organizing a wedding celebration. At the end of the workshop, Benoîte was very impressed by our participants' plan and would love to be invited to some of those wedding celebrations!

"Change is the only constant in life.", nobody can predict the future. Enrico led the second workshop, which discussed risk and change management. Following up with the wedding planning, we worked together with the participants to analyze risk and make the risk management plan accordingly. After the workshop, no matter if it's new COVID restrictions or a rainy day, the wedding celebration was well prepared for any risk that may come up!

 

Last but not least, in the third workshop, I talked about communication, leadership, and stakeholder management. One cannot learn to ride a bike by reading books. That's why I designed a few active listening exercises for the participants to practice with each other. We created a safe space by not recording the session and set a few ground rules. The participants and the event organizers openly shared their thoughts and attentively listened to each other. After the workshop, we were delighted that some participants said they would use and practice what they learned in their everyday lives. 

 

In summary, it is a fruitful exchange with Girls in Tech Switzerland! And we are excited to have more different collaborations in the future.  

Learn more about the PMI “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion” initiative 

https://www.pmi.org/membership/volunteer/pmimpact/diversity-equity-and-inclusion

 

GirlsInTech Global

https://girlsintech.org

 

Follow GirlsInTech Switzerland on their social media:

https://switzerland.girlsintech.org

https://www.linkedin.com/company/girls-in-tech-switzerland/

https://www.instagram.com/girlsintechswitzerland/

PM Master Class: Become your own chairperson and set boundaries

Author: Monika Keller, PMP

Monika Keller

Dear members and friends of the PMI Switzerland Chapter

 

In the last weeks, I had more than a handful of highly qualified professionals and managers in my 1:1 coachings and they all had more or less the same problem: They have difficulties setting healthy boundaries at work, advocating for their needs (what needs?), which resulted in high-levels of stress, dissatisfaction and poor sleep quality. Together we looked at their situation (not just work, but also their private situation including dreams and desires which usually had no room for consideration at that moment). They got clarity on their situation and inputs to improve it in the direction that they want to go.

 

One of the first things we did together was to help them find strategies to take “me time” in their busy days to be able to reflect on their needs - it doesn’t happen naturally - and then help them find strategies to start advocating for their needs by (re)prioritizing tasks and setting healthy boundaries at work.

 

Their call for support comes as no surprise to me and shows great bravery: There is so much uncertainty around us with the ongoing pandemic. People are losing their jobs or fear they may lose it, they don’t know when and if they will see their parents and friends again who may be living abroad. They feel trapped by the Covid certificate or may like or dislike staying in the home office… The list of stressors is long.

 

Not everyone can afford a 1:1 coaching to talk about their individual situation. That is why we decided to offer a PMI Master Class on “How to become your own chairperson, set healthy boundaries at work and advocate for your needs”. It is a class-room based full-day course that will take place on Saturday, 26 March 2022, in Zurich and you will be able to exchange with others and reflect your own situation in a familiar environment. The course will be a blended learning experience, so you will receive some assignments before it starts in order to save us time and make more out of the one day. Would you like to know more? Then check the link here. Enroll soon as places are limited.

 

Best

Monika, your trainer & coach for this session

P.S. If you want to learn more about me and my business, visit my website at www.3c-keller.com or get connected via LinkedIn at Monika (Krähenbühl) Keller, PMP | LinkedIn

I look forward to meeting you.

Editorial PMI Switzerland Newsletter October 2021

Author: Philip Springuel, PMP

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Once again, your newsletter is full of helpful articles, event information and much to convince you to be involved, contribute and volunteer with your PMI Switzerland Chapter.

Claudia Rassalski, the Chapter's VP Finance, shares valuable advice to remind us of the critical importance of Project Status Reports. We’re also delighted to bring you an update from past President Martin Härri about our Chapter’s Swiss Corporate Networking Group.

With two articles this month we offer a focus on Open Spaces, PMI Switzerland’s unique online knowledge sharing platform, highly valued by participants for its innovative format for answering key questions collectively. With in person meetings now also reappearing on our schedules, this month’s newsletter offers a retrospective for a groundbreaking Basel event on the subject of Agility.

Don’t miss six profiles of new members, and if you always wanted to write an article in our Newsletter, read our call for submissions that opens the door with guidelines and suggestions.

Enjoy your October Newsletter and don’t forget to connect with your peers on our PMI Switzerland social media channels to keep up with all of our highlights about the Chapter.

Philip Springuel, PMP

PMI Switzerland Copy Editor

A gift from ALVISSION for PMI Switzerland members and volunteers

Author: Frank Tassone, ALVISSION

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Hello dear volunteers and members of PMI Switzerland,

Unfortunately we could not be present at the 20 Anniversary Celebration on 5 September 2021 in Bern, but we have a great surprise to offer as a present!

We send you our best wishes for the 20th Anniversary and thank all volunteers for the countless hours of voluntary work and the development of PMI Switzerland.

As an authorised training partner of PMI and the PMI Switzerland Chapter, we have reserved a limited number of places in our open Live Online Classroom trainings for PMI Switzerland members at very special rates.

"For your 20th anniversary, we are giving PMI Switzerland members a 20% discount on our open ALVISSION trainings until 31 December 2021 (click here). As the only provider of Disciplined Agile Training in Central Europe, we are looking forward to the next 20 years of PM Switzerland and continued great cooperation.”

Customer-specific in-house training programs, classroom training and coaching in German, English and French are offered in Switzerland with our long-term PMI ATP partner STS.ch.

Secure your place by contacting us directly and registering without obligation for your selected training dates at the following link: Nonbinding registration. We are happy to answer your questions by email or phone. Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

We offer our open trainings mainly in English or German. Please contact us directly for special dates of French language trainings (minimum 6 participants).

With best wishes,

Frank Tassone, ALVISSION

Call for PMI Switzerland Newsletter and website contributions

Authors:

Daniel Rodellar, PMP

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Shalini Krishnan, PMP

Shalini Krishnan

Philip Springuel, PMP

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We are collecting articles, pictures, audio and video submissions for upcoming PMI Switzerland Newsletters and the website. Content we favour must be original, relevant to the PMI community, ideally addressing the Swiss context, and should be authored by recognised project management practitioners commenting on their own behalf or authorised to publish for the organisations they represent.

Newsletters are published at the start of each month (typically the first Monday of each month). The deadline for submissions is 10 days before pubication. Contributions may be sent and will be reviewed for potential publication on a rolling basis.

This is a great opportunity to share your thoughts on a topic of interest with the chapter community and earn up to 1.5PDUs for any articles which are published.

To submit a contribution, please fill out the following form at this link.

Here are a few categories and ideas that may help you determine what subjects you could write about:

1) Your Project Management case studies relevant to PMI Switzerland

2) Relevant Swiss Project Management news and critical implementations

3) PMI Switzerland events

- Announcements for future PMI Switzerland events (proposals also welcome)

- Summary retrospectives of past PMI Switzerland events

4) Social Good news, events, case studies relevant to Switzerland

5) PMI Swiss Corporate Networking Group activity reports and announcements

6) PMI global and affiliate chapter news, with relevance for Switzerland

7) Focus on statistics and data trends

- Your research

- Your comments, criticisms, predictions on any data sets you have a passion for, that are relevant to the PMI community

- Links to active data visualisations of relevance to the PMI Switzerland community

8) About Current Events

- Your commentary, opinion about current events affecting Project Management generally and/or Switzerland specifically.

PMI Switzerland is your connection to 20 years of working together, bringing you events, training, networking and knowledge sharing. Your PMI Switzerland Newsletter is the link that keeps you connected and informed. Join the well established tradition dating nearly 20 years of exchanges by becoming a newsletter and website contributor too.

We will be glad to answer any questions and assist you in any way we can to help you produce high quality knowledge to share through your PMI Switzerland newsletter.

 

Daniel Rodellar, PMP, Shalini Krishnan, PMP, Philip Springuel, PMP

Newsletter editors, PMI Switzerland Chapter

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