Author: Adi Muslic, PMP

Disciplined Agile (DA) has been fairly unknown so far in Switzerland. Just the fact that this is now PMI’s Disciplined Agile made it much better known. Sometime in April, I decided to look into it a bit deeper.
There have been many online events introducing DA to the wider public. I attended several of them and started digging into available online resources. Day by day, I have been more and more convinced that DA aligns well with my experience, especially with complex, cross-functional projects and projects delivering solutions to customers.

I see business agility as the flexibility to react quickly to changes affecting the business results. So the level of business agility may determine whether a company survives or not a sudden unpredictable change.

PMI recognizes that traditional structures and working practices may not always offer the level of flexibility now needed. PMI believes The Disciplined Agile Toolkit should enable businesses to find their way to overcome the new challenges.

To start with, The Disciplined Agile Toolkit is not a framework. It combines the world’s leading agile and lean practices and strategies (e.g. DevOps, Scrum, XP, SAFe, Kanban) and provides advice for when and how to apply them together. It gives you an opportunity to select the most appropriate way of working for you, your team and your organisation.

Another difference between the Disciplined Agile toolkit, and other frameworks, is that DA has always recognized fully distributed teams as one of the options that may be chosen from, or a reality of, how organizations are arranged.

It’s also about continuous improvement, and in DA there is a technique called guided continuous improvement (GCI). Running small, “safe to fail” experiments technique will work well in many situations and business effectiveness will rise faster due to more successful experiments.

Clearly, there are many similarities with existing agile frameworks. However, DA is not competing with them. It is a complimentary toolkit. It presents a bigger picture of all agile practices and strategies because it combines all the good practices and puts it into the toolkit for our benefit. So from a content perspective, DA certainly has a positive future.

WIth PMI, and everybody knows PMI, there is going to be a significant investment in promoting and improving further DA. So there will definitely be a much bigger presence in the project management industry in coming years. It is time to get on board and make the future agile.

Best regards,

Adi

Author: Geetanjali Bhat, PMP

Dear members and newsletter subscribers,

Beautiful Sunshine and Bright Skies this month, has a special message for all of us giving us more hope and courage to face the challenging times. We are able to se a great sign through hopes and smiles spread across the country. People working hard to bring back the cheerful times that we have cherished and rejoiced so far. I am certain about challenging times transforming into good times soon.

PMI Switzerland Chapter is actively working towards ground-breaking changes and setting new paths.  Online Events launched in March2020, continue to make it a successful breakthrough through varied subjects like “Achieving Discipline in Agile”, “Open Spaces”. With great subject matter expertise, PMI has been ensuring latest contents in tough times through insightful events.

Members or Non-Members participating Online events had insightful takeaways from those sessions. It’s great to see that we were able to put PMI’s structures and processes today in these challenging times into practice. With successful PMI online coffee meets and online events, I am sure there is no stopping us into learning and growing more. Change has definitely brought a newer paths and goals in all our lives.

I would like to ask you all to Stay Safe and Healthy. Let’s all think positive and keep learning ensuring for better tomorrow.

Wishing all of you Stay Safe and Healthy!

Cheers!

Geetanjali Bhat

Author: Stefania Tanasescu, PMP

Dear Project Management enthusiasts,

Do you want to learn more about Social Project Management? Are you wondering what exactly Social Project Management is? In this case, please register for the following 3h online workshop with Peter Taylor on 15th September which is published on our webpage www.pmi-switzerland.ch/events.

Social Project Management 

A project is a temporary endeavour where people come together to work towards a common

goal and purpose; it is therefore a temporary endeavour that must rely on a social system of

communication and collaboration in order to succeed.

Social project management is a non-traditional way of organising projects and managing

project performance and progress aimed at delivering, at the enterprise level, a common

goal for the business but harnessing the performance advantages of a collaborative Community.

There is a paradigm shift ongoing in many organisations that is about finding a practical

balance between the challenges to traditional project management made by Project

Management 2.0 - which encouraged a move away from centralised control of projects and

instead promoted the value of team collaboration – and the practical recognition that large

scale projects do require a stronger form of centralised control and governance.

Who should attend?

The remote workshop is directed at anyone leading projects or leads a community of project

managers, and who are keen to understand, and be prepared for, the transformation

towards Social Project Management.

Benefits

You will learn about the paradigm shift to ‘Social Project Management’ and what the benefits

are, as well as the challenges and opportunities.

At the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Clearly describe the Project Management 2.0 world and the progression towards Social Project Management
• Understand the benefits of a decentralised and collaborative project world
• Appreciate what a project manager needs to understand about harnessing this social world and what the obstacles can potentially be, and how to overcome them
• To have ‘top ten’ list of things to do and to avoid when taking your project team ‘social’

About the speaker - Peter Taylor

An experienced Change and Transformation Specialist who has operated at a global scale within many industries, for organisations ranging from small to enterprise.

Peter is the author of the number 1 bestselling project management book ‘The Lazy Project Manager’, along with many other books on Project Management, PMO development, Executive Sponsorship, Transformation Leadership, and Speaking Skills.

He has delivered over 380 lectures around the world in over 25 countries and has been described as ‘perhaps the most entertaining and inspiring speaker in the project management world today’.

www.thelazyprojectmanager.com

www.thepmtribe.com

Author: Adi Muslic, PMP

“Project Management, It’s All Bollocks!” was the 5th online event organized by PMI Switzerland on 2nd of July. If you missed it, this is a 5 minute read to learn more about it.

The presenter, Peter Taylor, is an accomplished communicator, leader, and professional speaker, popular around the world for keynotes and as an event host. He is also known as the author of "The Lazy Project Manager" book.

"Project Management, It’s all Bollocks !" is also the title of the book that Peter and Susie Palmer-Trew wrote together. It is explaining the basics of project management to new project managers, project managers revisiting those basics, and those who deliver changes as a part of their day job (but are not project managers) in their organizations that are not recognized as projects.

Peter, made the presentation quite interactive by the use of the Mentimeter tool. It helped to engage the audience right from the beginning.

Peter started by asking: What do you love about project management? On the screen we could see: people, collaboration, making a difference, bringing value, getting things done, etc.

The next question was: What do you hate about project management? Answers were: Stake-holders, politics, process, admin work, tools.

And this is, Peter told us, what the first chapter of the book is about, all annoying things in project management.

Then Peter introduced the second chapter, as the essence of project management - the Seven Cracking Ideas.

For this article, I decided to pick one of them: Communication versus Engagement!

It tells us that we have to know our project management community. We need to know their needs and expectations. We should not spend much time focusing on those who are against or unsupportive. We should make sure that those who are supportive or at least undecided receive clear and consistent communications. Steady regular communications are also important.
An engaged audience is much more responsive and active in contributing to value creation.

Peter also shared a couple of examples from his rich experience advising that we should always explain what project management is about and how to contribute to value creation.

The event ended with a Q&A session. One of the questions that attracted my attention was whether we are allowed a failure in a consultant’s role. Peter’s answer was yes. He added that we need to have an open and honest relationship built with the client. They understand that we all make mistakes, as long as you do what you can to mitigate those problems.

If you like to watch it, 1hr 15min long event recording is available on the PMI Switzerland’s YouTube channel.

Kind regards,
Adi