Author: Shalini Krishnan, PMP

Dear Members and Subscribers,

2023 is shaping up to be a busy and exciting year with the first two weeks already flying by - whether that's due to a whirlwind trip around the world for family weddings, recovering from that fabulous New Year’s party, or diving headfirst into 2023 goals and new tasks.

However your new year has started, what is guaranteed are several exciting opportunities for your project management development; from exciting events to courses you can take, to ways you can volunteer your time within our community.

Read on below for some of the upcoming opportunities, and before that, I'd like to wish you a successful, healthy and happy start to the new year!

As success coach Michael Altshuler puts it "The bad news is time flies. The good news is you're the pilot."

Authors: Stephan Adler, SPC & Christoph Wolf, PMP

Bye, bye Project Manager - Is Agile Disrupting Project Management?

What happens if the world is changing faster than your project plans, if by then time a product is released, the market has made a 180-degree turn? Make the projects shorter, more releases? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.
So we embrace a digital transformation, implement Agile and self-organising teams, fire everyone with the role “Something-manager” and live happily ever after? Well, it turns out it is not quite that simple either.

The reality of many organisations, products and markets is very complex with a multitude of constraints and dependencies. Our experience shows that larger scale developments require a significant amount of coordination, change management, decision making, and other competencies that a project manager usually has - regardless of what type of development approach is. 

Focusing on the people behind the role “project manager”, here are a few insights from our experience.

• All industries are facing a digital transformation - some earlier and faster (e.g. retail), some later and slower (e.g. construction). With that we mean a shift towards the digitalisation of processes and tools (e.g. online forms and self-service), the shift towards (partly) digital products (e.g. computer guided farming equipment) and lastly a shift in the business models (e.g. monthly subscription to digital books).
  These digital products usually have a much higher pace and complexity, compared to the original product.
  Companies facing such a digital transformation in their industry must be able to continuously develop or deploy products at the pace of the market or face a loss of market share. 
• Whether you want to adopt an “agile” approach and any of the many frameworks that carry that label is secondary - the key elements that have to be in place to sustain in the evolving market are
  • Functioning fast feedback loops to understand the evolving needs of the customer
  • A high cadence to release products of the appropriate quality that can handle changing priorities
  • A motivated, qualified and empowered workforce to attract the required talent.
• Usually this leads to a shift from thinking about projects to a focus on continuous product development with decentralised decision making. Smaller projects usually have too much overhead and not enough decentralised decision making and continuity to deliver the same results.

So, what does that mean for project managers?

• Products of some complexity still require a lot of coordination between modules, hardware and software, vendors, support, … This work is now mostly done as part of a product team, technically inclined project managers usually find their skills in high demand as a member of such a team.
• Project managers that have a strong focus on the content can move into a product role, focussing only on what is to be developed, not the delivery itself. This role requires a lot of decision-making competencies and the ability to take responsibility.
• Frameworks such as the Scaled Agile Framework are designed to deliver large scale software with many teams working together. Various roles, such as the Release Train Engineer, focus on the coordination of the setup, rather than the product development.

So, nothing changes, just new roles? No - working in an agile product organisation requires lateral leadership, real delegation of decision making and lateral leadership. This is a major shift compared to the often very centralised power and responsibility in a classic project.

In our talk at the Annual Members Meeting of PMI Switzerland Chapter on 2nd February 2023 we will elaborate on these points and share examples, good practices and pitfalls to avoid.

Authors: Adi Muslic, PMP & Martin Härri, PMP, PMI-SP, PMI-ACP, DASSM

Meeting 4'000 project managers in Las Vegas – the PMI Global Summit 2022

Awesome! Americans (over-)use that term for anything, but in this case, it was absolutely appropriate. The PMI Global Summit 2022 can only be described with this term, it was really awesome.

Close to 4’000 participants and chapter representatives from countries all over the world traveled to the Caesars Palace hotel in Las Vegas for PMIs annual global conference, which – after a 2-year break due to the pandemic – finally took place again. And it was bigger and better than ever, in fact, it had the highest number of participants of any annual PMI conference.

The summit started with a welcome by the new PMI President & CEO, Pierre Le Manh, who then handed over to Amy Webb whose presentation was entitled “Think like a Futurist”. Now you might think: “why invite a futurist to a conference on project management?” Well, projects are always about creating something for the future, but Amy explained that there is no such thing as “the” future. In fact, we pms need to learn to understand trends, and based on those understand what potential “futures” might be, so rather think in scenarios. Little fun fact: Amy distinguished between “trends” and “trendy”, and guess where she sees the much hyped “metaverse”? Right, trendy, but not a trend.

During the almost 3 days, about 140 presentations were offered on absolutely everything you can think of when it comes to project management: ESG, artificial intelligence, PMOs, Earned Value, Power Skills, stakeholder management, chapter topics, you name it. The only problems were to choose from that enormous selection, and to find your way from one room to the next one because the Caesars Palace conference center is awesomely huge.

But that was by far not all: there was also a large exhibition hall with various organizations active in the project management space, such as universities, training companies, tool providers, and of course PMI, which presented its various products, such as certifications, trainings, Disciplined Agile, Wicked Problem Solving, Organizational Transformation, Citizen Development, etc. Good news for the Switzerland Chapter: we used the opportunity to establish contacts with some key PMI people which committed to coming to Switzerland in 2023, so stay tuned!

Thursday the PMI Awards took place, which unfortunately had to be moved from the fantastic pool area to a conference room due to strong wind (there are some factors that even Las Vegas with all it’s artificialness cannot control), and Friday afternoon some offsite learning excursions (e.g. to the Hoover dam) were offered.

On Friday, we enjoyed a very inspiring keynote session by Beatie Wolfe, a PMI Future 50 honoree,  who is Translating Data into Impact and Art. Beatie is a great musician, behind a number of sustainable future oriented projects and innovations, such as the world’s first bioplastic record or the raw space beam. At the summit she presented her stirring environmental art piece about human impact on the planet, built using 800,000 years of historic NASA data, “From Green to Red”, it's a must see.

The conference closed with an inspiring interview of Jessica O. Matthews, Founder and CEO of Uncharted, a sustainable infrastructure company with her father, who both created successful companies against many odds. A very inspiring conversation highlighting the impact that can be made when ideas, leadership, and empowerment of others come together.

Even though there were gambling opportunities everywhere we used the free time after the conference for a walk up and down the “strip”, the main street of Las Vegas, here are some impressions.

For anybody who is passionate about project management (and which PMI member isn’t), participating in a PMI Global Summit at least once in a lifetime should be on the “bucket list”. If you don’t want to travel so far, there are rumors that the European version of the annual conferences will soon start again. And if you cannot wait, the opening presentation and 11 educational sessions are available on demand for $165 from the Summit’s website.

Author: Marco Chiletti, PMP

As a for-purpose organization, PMI is dedicated to enabling changemakers worldwide to elevate their positive impact on society. Protecting our planet and improving the lives of people worldwide is essential for creating peace and prosperity. Hours for Impact supports the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to better people’s lives and the planet, now and in the future.

PMI Switzerland Chapter - with the PMI Switzerland Chapter Positive Impact program - is determined to contribute by partnering with no-profit organizations to create together a positive impact in the society worldwide.

TOGETHER WITH WE-BUILDING WE WANT TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE, AND YOU ARE THE ONE WHO CAN CONTRIBUTE!

We are looking for a volunteer project management professional to help We-Building with projects for the construction of educational infrastructures (schools, etc.) in the Global South.

PROJECT(S) STATUS

• The projects are already set up, contracts signed and milestones agreed upon.

MAIN PROJECT MANAGEMENT GOALS

• Project planning and control of deliverables to be achieved at every milestone, as per deadlines agreed.
• Collaborate with local organization filing photo documentation and submitting reports for funding requests.

 REQUIREMENTS

• Project Management Experience
• On average 3-4 hours/week 
• Min. 6 months commitment

We-Building is a non-profit organization founded in 2015 by an international group of architects and powered by committed and highly-qualified volunteers.

We want to do our part to make this world a better place. Most of us at We-Building were lucky to have had access to a good education and we feel it is our duty to pay it forward. That’s why many of the projects we do are actually schools where we support local initiatives that are fighting for a higher quality of education. https://we-building.org/

TO APPLY FOR THIS GREAT OPPORTUNITY, PLEASE CLICK HERE: https://forms.gle/QcJ12WVJT4vS9vug6