Author: Stefan Vesenmeier, PMP

The past year was certainly not the easiest for all of us, and it was probably not the most beautiful either. But nevertheless we made the best of it. 

Today I would like to share with you my very personal PMI-Year in review and above all show the positive that we achieved 2020 at PMI Switzerland despite or thanks to COVID-19.

Just as a great effort is required to move a rock, it sometimes needs external pressure in our lives (private as well as professional) to move us further.

My PMI year started in January with the notification that I was elected by the members to the board. After 10 years as a volunteer, a great wish has come true for me and I have taken on this opportunity with energy and a large list of visions. In addition to enhancing our successful live events, my agenda also included some innovations that I wanted to introduce together with the volunteer team.

But everything turned out differently!

Although we initially assumed a temporary and regionally limited impairment of our usual live events, we decided early on to offer online events as soon as possible. But what was initially intended to be more a supplement to our usual evening events, quickly became the only way to keep in touch with our community and to continue with sharing relevant knowledge for Project Management Professionals.

But after it started to become apparent at the beginning of March that there is a high chance of regional restrictions or even bans on live events due to Corona, I launched a call in mid-March to team interested members to help me realize my vision “PMI Switzerland goes Virtual”.

Two weeks later, I met 15 volunteers virtually to kick off the “online events” initiative. The great interest and the numerous positive responses to my appeal surprised and pleased me very much. But what followed was absolutely fantastic!

Based on the given vision and a few specifications, three teams were formed in the kickoff, each of which wanted to organize their own online event. From the beginning, each team had the freedom to work independently and open-endedly, which led to three resulting events each having a different topic and varied format.

It was really great to see how the first event was prepared, advertised and carried out within just four weeks. And I was overwhelmed by the incredible number of 250 registrations within 2 weeks.

Since this starting signal at the end of April, PMI Switzerland has now been offering an online event approximately every 2 to 3 weeks.

Also since the beginning of April, we have been offering our monthly “PMI Coffee Talks”. It is an open and freely accessible “online” coffee corner where we can meet to exchange information and ideas about current or desired topics in an informal and relaxed atmosphere (it usually takes place on the first Friday morning of the month).

The fact that, despite the general increasing Zoom-Fatigue, there is still great interest in our virtual events and that we are receiving many positive feedback, shows me that our offered events meet the needs of our community. And it also confirms to me that the way the event teams are planning and carrying out the online events is right and good.

And for that, the only ones to thank are the event volunteers!  They are not only willing to take on responsibility and ownership, but also contribute to the success of the events with their high time commitment.

And it makes me very happy to see that a large part of the volunteers involved in the three initial projects stayed at PMI Switzerland as volunteers, and actually most of them are still organizing virtual events.

There is nothing good, unless you do it.

From today's perspective, it is clear to me that PMI Switzerland will keep the virtual events as an integral part of the event calendar. And that even then, when we can finally hold in-person events again and consider the chapter Corona as closed.

At last, I would like to give a brief outlook on the coming events year.

During the planning and implementation of the events last year, many new ideas emerged, which we unfortunately were not able to implement all in 2020. The good thing is that we now have a large backlog with lots of great ideas. In the TODO column, we can find for example formats such as: virtual panels, virtual workshops, regular virtual open space sessions, community of practice, introduction of PM tools, and more. As main topics we see among others: Disciplined Agile, Career and Job Seeker Support, Leadership Skills, Power Skills, etc.

And one thing is also firmly on the agenda - my promise - as soon as the situation allows again, we will organize in-person events to meet friends and do live networking with you again. We have already scheduled the PMI Conference, which was cancelled last year, as a live event in 2021.

So much for my review of 2020 that I will not be remembered as the “corona year”, but as the year of birth of our virtual events.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to making 2020 such a good PMI Switzerland year!

Don't look back, because that is where the past lies. Look ahead, because that is where the future lies!

Stefan Vesenmeier

VP Professional Development & Events

When I hear about Artificial Intelligence, the picture that comes into my mind is “Terminator” and machines that learn by themselves and that this technology is far , far away from what I can do in everyday life.

Anna Hakobyan and Manu Reynaert have shown us that Artificial Intelligence is closer to us than we think and that it is not “a kind of magic” (like Queen said in one of its songs). First of all , it is better to set up the basis and sharing a definition of Artificial Intelligence.

 Anna and Manu showed us that we do not need to think about Super AI to obtain benefits. Narrow AI using machine learning can provide us what we need and give us time for strategic thinking and/or human interaction (do not forget human interaction in these days of pandemia and confinement!).

 One of the examples that was used to illustrate this idea was the resource allocation in the port of Montevideo.  There are 4 clear processes with lots of data collected. Using machine learning with this amount of data can provide us with the best allocation of resources.

 Have you ever seen a chat window in some websites where you can ask some questions and they provide you some answers? This is also artificial intelligence using chatbots. The technology is here , it is only a matter of defining your strategy (what do you want AI for?) and applying the different technology tools to support your strategy.

When it comes to project managers we always hear that the majority of the time is spent in communicating and so called admin tasks. 

 Can you imagine that you introduce actual data into an algorithm to provide you the best resource allocation and estimated to complete based on data from other projects as reference?

 And what about having a free hands speaker that could record the meeting and write meeting minutes using NLP (Natural Language Processing)?

 This is how project could look like:

 Like all new proposals we can reach the ethical frontier when we start thinking about using sentiment analysis to identify personalities and recommend actions based on each individual personality. What if the sentiment analysis was wrong? Who will be responsible for this?

 If you want to start tomorrow here is a little roadmap

 Last but not least, let me thank Manu and Anna for sharing these concepts with us on such a special day like Thanksgiving. I hope that the turkey was not too roasted because we were keeping them busy .

You can also find the recording in the following link AI meets Project Management – How will the AI empowered PM world look like in2021 - YouTube

Author: Miguel Hurtado, CAPM

Dear newsletter friends,

2020 is going to finish in a few weeks and I need to confess it is difficult to make a review of this year. During this year we learnt about Chinese cities, virus and vaccines and we added a mask to our daily life... But I would like to tell you the positive side about this year, we learn how to be closer to our relatives and the most important people in our lives. Human history is full of challenges and full of successful stories.

Let's be optimistic, we can do it.

2021 will most probably be a better and a greater year. Dear friends, have very nice holidays, enjoy them with your family and best friends.

Stay healthy.

Authors:

Carl Johann Boucavel, PMP

Ka Yi Hui, Ph.D., PMP

Prasanth K.Nair, PMP

Sabina Tatur, Ph.D., PMP

On the 5th November 2020, the team lead by Johann collaborated with the University of Zurich, Life Science Zurich Young Scientists Network (LSZYSN) held an online Social good event called Night of the Project Management. Life Science Zurich Young Scientists Network (LSZYSN) is a non-profit organization run by graduate students & post-docs of the University of Zurich and the ETH Zurich. They aim to bridge the gap between academics and industry. Through this event, we strengthen the student’s knowledge in project management through case studies. This event is different from other previous social good events. Last year we held a PM workshop for the same organization. This year, instead of just being the participants, the students involved heavily in the event’s organization right from the beginning.

We focused on five different topics, risk management, time management, stakeholder management, communications, and quality management. In each breakout room, a PMI volunteer acted as the topic expert to guide the discussion and case study. During the event, the students rotated around different breakout rooms to discuss in-depth these topics.

Risk Management

In the Risk management room, Ka Yi has explained the best practices in planning risk management, including identifying risk, assessing risk, and action plan.

We also clarified some of the keywords and concepts. For example, when talking about risk, some students may think about the “risk” in investing. We also explored the “positive risk”, what opportunity we can find in adverse events, like COVID-19.

The most obvious one would be turning an in-person event into an online event that opened new doors to reach more audiences. In fact, at this event, all the PMI volunteers came from different parts of Switzerland, so there’s always a bright side.

Communication Management

 In the Communication management room, Prasanth explained the best practices in Communication Management.

 With the starting message that a PM spends almost 90% of the time in project communication, the importance of this knowledge area in Project Management was underlined to the participants.[b]

 Right from the beginning, Prasanth emphasized that typically Project Managers spend more than 90% of their time in communications. The message is clear to the students; Communication Management is one of the most important knowledge areas that can make or break a project.

 The discussion started with the communication channels and the formula and then went deeper into the knowledge area, focusing on its three key aspects – Planning, Managing and Monitoring.

 Identifying the Project stakeholders and using the Power-Interest grid to map them were well received by the students.

 Carefully preparing the contents, selecting the apt delivery mode, identifying the right timing, and focusing on the right target group is the successful recipe for effective communications.

 The groups further engaged in a healthy discussion around the topic, and Prasanth answered various questions that came along during the sessions.

Stakeholder Management

In the Stakeholder management room, Sabina has facilitated the discussions about identifying a stakeholder and positioning the stakeholder in the power-interest grid.

The group defined the meaning of "interest" as the project's benefit to a stakeholder and "power" as the magnitude of a stakeholder's influence in a project. We also determined that "interest" in a project can be positive or negative and that "power" can originate from the availability of resources, such as money, the position the stakeholder holds, and the capability to influence and motivate people.

Finally, we discovered that stakeholder management is a dynamic process that requires a regular revisit of the power-interest grid to update any changes in organizing, monitoring, and improving the project manager's relationship with the stakeholder.

Quality Management

In the Quality management room, Johann has explained the best practices on the seven quality tools and how the students can use these tools throughout a project.

During our sessions, the students voted Pareto Diagram and the Control Chart as their favorites. Also, a very interesting combination came into gear when the students were able to start with a Histogram to gather all the ideas of brainstorming. Then take the most relevant one and then imagine a solution by developing a Process Flow Diagram. Finally, breakdown each process within the process flow chart into a check sheet.

All the five teams which joined our meeting room were engaging; they kept Johann on his toes with all their questions. It was a tremendous opportunity for PMI to reach out to non-PMI members and give a glimpse of what project management is all about.

Testimonial from the participants:

The workshop was absolutely interesting! I appreciated very much that the coaches were so open and took the time to explain the concepts and how they applied to us. I find that in general, project management is not something that we learn even though we are scientists and we are heavily interested in the industry. Thank you for enlightening us!