Author: Ka Yi Hui, PMP

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/

Author: Shalini Krishnan, PMP

Dear PMI Switzerland members and supporters,

Autumn is in full swing and just like that the last quarter of the year is coming to an end. However, PMI Switzerland's list of exciting ways to get involved is far from over! 

The November newsletter is full of information about topics such as mentoring and our upcoming Volunteer Day for PMI Switzerland volunteers.  Make sure to read on to see how to participate in our 20 years of PMI Switzerland anniversary game for the chance to win a weekend in the Swiss mountains

We also debrief for you the 3-part project management workshop that took place in September, as well as inform you about an upcoming in-person PM Masterclass that you can still register for.  

Happy (belated) Halloween and happy reading! 

Author: Martin Härri, PMP, PMI-SP, PMI-ACP, DASSM 

The main target audience of PMI and the PMI Switzerland Chapter has always been project practitioners. There are also activities for academia, schools and social good organizations, but companies have never been a main target audience of our activities, apart from the Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3), which died a quiet death some years ago.

On a global level, PMI maintains the Global Executive Council (GEC), which is composed of about 90 elite organizations, and advises PMI on its strategy. The GEC was also the inspiration for creating the PMI Swiss Corporate Networking Group (SCNG) in 2009. Here, the members are not project practitioners, but managers in charge of project management in their organizations, i.e. head of PMO, head of portfolio management, head of project community, etc. The kickoff was in January 2010 at the prestigious Swiss Re Centre for Global Dialogue near Zurich, with about a dozen participants, and since then the group has grown to 20 companies plus one university and has held more than 30 meetings all over Switzerland.

These meetings take a full day and are hosted in turn by one of the members. The topics are very different from those of a Chapter event: they focus much more on organization than on practitioner level. So, the presentations and discussions are about governance, benefits management, portfolio management, etc. Even during Covid times, the meetings continued online with the same level of engagement and participation.

Synergies between the Chapter and the SCNG however have been rather limited over the years; organizations and practitioners really seemed to be living in “separate worlds”. But finally, for the organization of the PMI Switzerland Conference, this network proved to be a huge benefit: half of the speakers are from SCNG members.

Very few other chapters have something like the SCNG. In fact, the PMI Germany Chapter is very interested in setting up a similar structure, and the model has been shared with several other European Chapters.

For more information about the PMI SCNG, please check out this new page on the Chapter website.

Martin Härri, PMP, PMI-SP, PMI-ACP, DASSM

Author: Florian Puschmann, PMP

After attending virtual events for more than a year, I was very excited when I saw the invitation to the in-person event held 31 August in Basel.

Agile - and how to make it work in different company environments, certainly relates to many project management professionals. One pain point was addressed straight at the beginning with a fitting Dilbert comic; Agile has become a hip business buzzword, but typically, not everyone involved is aware of its philosophy and methodology.

Presenters Anna Nestorova, PhD, PMP and Steffen Keller, PMP have hands-on experience at LIVEsciences AG, which focuses on helping organizations define if - and where, agile methodology implementation makes sense, followed by aiding its implementation in a tailored fashion.

Everyone very much enjoyed the interaction that followed:

• Where does Agile make sense on the Cynefin framework background that segments the work environment in clear, complicated, complex, chaotic, and confused areas?
• What does it take to build an environment that enables people to work at the intersection of autonomy, mastery, and purpose to tackle the "impossible" through intrinsically driven teams?
• What's the difference between "doing" (method) and "being" (mindset) agile?

The challenges of such self-organizing organizations were then further put in perspective with two case studies:

• Semco Partners – where a self-organized company was built in Brazil under the "leadership" of Ricardo Semler even long before the Agile Manifesto was born
• Burtzoorg – A low-cost, high profitability home nurse service that is organized through fully independent self-organized teams of nurses

Overall, I deeply enjoyed the content of this event and the vivid discussion and human connection that I was craving after the prolonged period of virtual events only. 

The best part was still to come though: A very enjoyable late summer apero with all participants! The apero was so much fun that I missed two train connections until I finally made it back to Zurich rather late. The only regret I had was not having stayed even longer.

Florian Puschmann, PhD, PMP