In today’s rapidly shifting organisational landscape, Project Managers are no longer just implementers of plans - they are navigators of uncertainty, catalysts of transformation, and anchors of stability for their teams. As Swiss organisations continue to undergo major change and restructuring, the ability to lead with clarity, resilience, and agility has become a defining professional advantage.

On 27 May, the Swiss Project Management community will gather at SIX for an interactive workshop designed to strengthen exactly these capabilities: Navigating Change: How to Thrive in Times of Uncertainty as a Project Manager. This session offers a rare opportunity to step back from day-to-day pressures and reflect on what navigating change truly means in your own professional context.

If this resonates with you, you’re warmly invited to explore the details of the workshop and secure your spot on pmi-switzerland.ch

Why This Workshop Matters Now

Across industries, from financial services to technology, FMCG, and consulting, change is no longer episodic. It is continuous. Project Managers are expected to deliver results while managing shifting priorities, evolving stakeholder expectations, and increasing organisational complexity.

This workshop creates a space to explore three themes essential for thriving in such environments:

• Change Agility - How to adapt quickly and guide others through ambiguity.
• Resilience and Wellbeing - How to sustain performance without compromising personal balance.
• Leadership Behaviours - How to show up as a steady, credible, and empowering leader during transformation.

Rather than offering generic frameworks, the session draws on the collective experience of participants Project Managers who are living these challenges every day. Through facilitated reflection and peer exchange, attendees will uncover practical insights that are directly applicable to their own roles.

What Participants Will Gain

By the end of the workshop, participants will walk away with:

• Insights: A deeper understanding of how to navigate change effectively, enriched by the diverse approaches of fellow Project Managers across the Swiss ecosystem.
• Actions: Concrete steps to strengthen personal leadership, resilience, and wellbeing in times of uncertainty.
• Connections: New relationships and a stronger professional network built through meaningful dialogue and shared experience.

This is not a lecture. It is a collaborative, energising, and highly practical learning experience.

 A special thank-you to the SIX PM Community and SIX for sponsoring the venue for this event. Your support helps make this meaningful and high-impact learning experience possible.

Meet the Facilitator: Matt Lanfear, PhD | Executive Coach to Leaders Driving Change

The workshop will be led by Matt Lanfear, PhD, an Executive Coach with extensive experience supporting leaders driving change in global financial institutions, multinational corporations, and high-growth technology startups. Matt helps leaders to accelerate business transformation, enhance financial performance and increase leadership effectiveness.

Matt brings:

• Over 25 years of experience as a Finance professional in roles spanning Business Transformation and Corporate Restructuring, M&A, and Finance and Accounting
• Professionally-trained as an Executive Coach and Leadership Team Coach and accredited with the two leading coaching bodies, the ICF and EMCC 
• A proven track record coaching leaders across the Banking, Financial Services, PE/VC, Automotive, FMCG, Consulting, and Technology sectors over the past 9 years
• Deep familiarity with the Swiss Project Management community as a PMP and Swiss Chapter member since 2004

Matt’s approach blends strategic insight with human-centred coaching, helping leaders accelerate transformation while strengthening their own effectiveness and wellbeing.

A Space to Learn, Reflect, and Grow

Whether you are leading a complex transformation, managing shifting organisational priorities, or simply seeking to strengthen your leadership in uncertain times, this workshop offers a valuable opportunity to pause, reflect, and grow.

It is an invitation to step into a community of peers, share experiences openly, and walk away with renewed clarity and confidence.

To celebrate a quarter-century of project excellence, we’ve been digging through the archives. We found 50 "flashback" photos (2x25!) that capture the incredible journey, the faces, and the milestones of our chapter’s history.

Seeing these brings back so many joyful memories. It’s a reminder that while projects have deadlines, the community we build lasts much longer.

Were you there for any of these moments? Keep an eye out—you might just spot yourself!  

Artificial Intelligence is rapidly moving from experimentation to real-world application. In sectors like healthcare and public services, however, adopting AI goes far beyond technology — it raises critical questions around governance, regulation, ethics, and data sharing.

This shift is at the heart of the upcoming event “Inside the AI Hub at Campus Biotech: Exploring AI in Highly Regulated Environments” on April 14, 2026 (Tuesday, 18:00). Hosted within Geneva’s AI Hub, the session offers a unique opportunity to explore how AI is being developed where safety, transparency, and accountability are essential.

A Collaborative AI Ecosystem in Action

The AI Hub (Pôle IA) Geneva — created by Geneva University Hospitals (HUG), the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering, and the Canton of Geneva — brings together clinicians, researchers, and AI specialists in a shared environment at Campus Biotech.

Over the past year, the Hub has focused on building infrastructure, partnerships, and early approaches to AI and data sharing. It represents one of Europe’s newest collaborative ecosystems for applied AI in healthcare, where innovation is closely tied to real clinical use. Speakers from the AI Hub — Coralie Fournier, Project Manager at the Geneva University Hospitals (HUG), and Wolf-Julian Neumann,MD, Head of AI Innovation and Therapeutic Neurotechnology at the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering in Geneva — will offer firsthand insights from within this rapidly evolving ecosystem.

Why AI Is Different in Regulated Environments

In healthcare, AI must be designed with regulation in mind from the start. Issues such as patient data protection, clinical validation, and ethical oversight are integral — not optional.

By embedding development within Geneva University Hospitals (HUG), the Hub ensures that AI solutions are shaped by real-world constraints. This makes it a powerful example of how innovation can align with governance and operational realities.

What Participants Will Gain

Hosting the event inside the Hub allows participants to experience firsthand where clinical expertise, research, and digital innovation intersect. They will gain:

• Insight into how a new AI ecosystem in healthcare is being built
• Perspectives on early challenges of AI and data sharing in regulated settings
• Reflections on collaboration between clinicians, researchers, and technology experts
• Inspiration for applying AI in other regulated sectors

Conclusion

The AI Hub Geneva illustrates a crucial point: successful AI in highly regulated environments depends not just on advanced technology, but on collaboration, trust, and integration into real systems.

For attendees, the April 14th event offers a rare chance to learn directly from this emerging ecosystem, and to understand what it truly takes to deliver AI projects where the stakes are highest. The session will be followed by a networking apéro, providing an opportunity to connect with speakers and fellow participants, exchange perspectives, and continue the conversation in an informal setting.

For more information, visit the event page and register to take part in this engaging and insightful session: Event LINK.

The aim of this article is to explain how AI is influencing project management. Although I deliver a course related to this subject, I thought preparing an article would be useful as well. 

There are two fundamentally different situations when combining AI with project management. I call them “AI-assisted project management” and “AI-creation projects.” Let’s examine these two cases:

 Case 1: AI-assisted project management

This case is about using AI tools in project management activities. Many AI tools are available to support project teams in their daily work. These tools can be used to assist with tasks such as analyzing project data, preparing reports, summarizing meetings, generating ideas, evaluating alternatives, etc. These tools can improve efficiency, reduce errors, and free up time for more strategic decision-making. Although their use may depend on organizational policies, they are a standard part of project management in many industries. However, this represents only one side of the story.

 Case 2: AI-creation projects

This case is about managing projects that create AI products. In this context, lack of knowledge and various misunderstandings are frequently encountered. Therefore, the rest of this article focuses on this case.

1. Waterfall project management 

In this approach, a detailed project plan is created. The plan is approved, establishing a baseline. Then, the project team attempts to follow this plan. On the other hand, AI development is inherently experimental and iterative. It’s more realistic to respond to changes as they occur rather than to generate a detailed plan and attempt to follow it. Therefore, relying solely on the Waterfall project management approach isn’t suitable for this case.

2. Agile project management 

In this approach, the product is delivered in small increments, which are delivered continuously. The customer and other stakeholders provide feedback continuously. Based on the feedback, the team makes small adjustments. When the project aims to create an AI product,the product is not delivered in small increments. Therefore, relying solely on the Agile project management approach isn’t suitable for this case.

3. Hybrid project management (combining Waterfall and Agile approaches) 

As explained above, trying to establish a stable baseline is unrealistic, and the product is not delivered in small increments. Therefore, combining these two approaches doesn’t provide an effective management strategy for this case. Neither approach addresses the unique characteristics of AI-creation projects.

4. Managing Artificial Intelligence (AI) projects

Projects that create AI products differ from traditional projects in an important way: the resulting solution is probabilistic rather than deterministic. It depends heavily on the available data. Therefore, we need a data-centric approach where the aim is to generate a probabilistic solution. A suitable approach is to iteratively use the CRISP-DM (CRoss-Industry Standard Process for Data Mining) framework or a modified version of it. Here, the project goes through the following phases:

a. Business Understanding

b. Data Understanding

c. Data Preparation

d. Modeling

e. Evaluation

f. Deployment

 Conclusion

AI is influencing project management in two distinct ways. First, project teams are increasingly using AI tools to support their daily work. Second, organizations are launching projects whose goal is to build AI products. When a project aims to create an AI product, traditional project management approaches, used in their standard form, are often not sufficient. We need a different approach because AI projects are data projects.

 About the author

Can Izgi, PMI-CPMAI, PMP is an instructor and consultant specializing in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and project management. Since 2005, he has been delivering professional courses and workshops on these subjects.