Author: Shalini Krishnan, PMP

Dear Members and Newsletter Subscribers,

And just like that we are almost halfway through 2021! 

In case you're feeling like me and have noticed that while the days are getting longer there seem to be less hours in them, I'll keep this short and sweet and share with you a few of the exciting articles we have for you this month:

- Feedback on the PMI-DASSM certification training

- Why Project Managers Should Become Better Visual Storytellers

Make sure to also check out the details of our upcoming events:

- Stakeholder and Team Management (June 15)

- Hermes - Your ticket to winning a public tender (June 22)

- Number 1 bestselling project management author of The Lazy Project Manager's take on Why Stakeholders Regulary Ignore Your Project Reports and How to Fix That (July 1)

Stay safe, and stay agile :)

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

I just had 2 intense days of training for the PMI-DASSM certification with Daniel Gagnon. The training was excellent, and I am taking this as an opportunity to recommend to my network to have a closer look at Disciplined Agile. And for dramatical purposes I am exaggerating my statements a bit – but just a little bit. 😊

2 thoughts:

• If you are a practitioner interested in taking a Scrum Master exam, and are not sure if you should take it from any of the usual providers, such as Scrum.org or SAFe, then here’s an analogy: if you take this training from the usual providers you will be like a cook that has learned to cook a great meal (and I really mean that it can be great). But you need the kitchen and the ingredients as per recipe. If you take the training from Disciplined Agile you will be able to create a great meal. You will learn about the types of ingredients, including alternatives (!), about different ways to prepare, cook, and present them, and you will be able to cook it in a kitchen with a wood-fired stove and copper pots, and in a kitchen with high-tech food processing equipment. As per DA principle #5: “Choice is good”. But be warned: the cooking instructions do not fit on the back of a food package, it’s a big book, so plan enough time for the training!

• And if you are a line manager thinking about sending a team member to a training, consider this: if you send them to one of the usual trainings they might come back as what I call “Agile Taliban”. They will see it as part of their mission to “protect the team from the outside”, which means “team = good, company = bad”. And to come back to the cooking analogy from above: you might have to redesign the kitchen, and spend a lot of money on what they perceive as “the right ingredients”. However, the mindset of DA is a more company-friendly, as DA Principle #8 is “Enterprise awareness”. Which means the Scrum Master has the role of maintaining a bridge between the company and the team. “Team = good, company = good”.

I hope you liked my analogy. For more information, check out the Disciplined Agile website.

Addendum: the standard book on DA is Choose your WoW!, which, by the way, PMI members can get a free electronic copy of. But I do not recommend to start with this one, as it is about as exciting as reading the PMBOK Guide. It is very valuable for learning, and as a reference, but as an introduction into the topic I rather recommend Introduction to Disciplined Agile Delivery: A Small Agile Team’s Journey from Scrum to Disciplined DevOps. It is the (fictional, but very realistic) story of a software development team which started with Scrum, but then by applying many of the DA principles, evolved their WoW over several iterations. That makes the whole idea of DA much more clear, and wets your appetite for then reading Choose your WoW! About 13$ for the eBook.

Author: Peter Taylor

Hello PMI Switzerland from The Lazy Project Manager,

• The #1 way to improve the success probability of your project is to nail stakeholder buy-in - but how do you do that?
• The #1 way to nail stakeholder buy-in is to give them uncomplicated visual project updates so they actually understand your project - but how do you do that? 

Hello to all of my good friends in the PMI Switzerland chapter (I can’t believe that it has been 15 months since I was last with you, and in fact, my visit to Geneva was my very last trip anywhere!). 

Crazy times indeed.

But I will be with you, remotely at least, on 1st July 2021 and talking all about project reporting and executive stakeholders, and I would really love you all to join me:

https://pmi-switzerland.ch/index.php/events/events-list/why-stakeholders-regularly-ignore-your-project-reports-and-how-to-fix-that

The Project Reporting Challenge

When I was leading some very substantial PMOs, global in nature, hundreds of project managers around the world, leading 1,000s of projects on an annual basis, we had this fundamental issue of effectively communicating to a whole range of different stakeholders, but particularly to the executives inside the organisation. All of my project managers were incredibly busy and yet they all had the challenge of how to represent the key aspects of their projects to the business executives, who in turn were busy people who did not have a lot of time and who were overseeing many, many projects at any given time.

Join me

Learn how we overcame this and join me in sharing your thoughts, challenges, and inspirations when it comes to ‘project reporting’ through an interactive presentation. All delivered in my usual fun but insightful way of course.

Book your place today: https://pmi-switzerland.ch/index.php/events/events-list/why-stakeholders-regularly-ignore-your-project-reports-and-how-to-fix-that/individual-registration.

About the Author:

Peter Taylor: Speaker, Consultant, Trainer and Coach, Peter is the author of the number 1 bestselling project management book ‘The Lazy Project Manager’. He has built and led some of the largest PMOs in the world with organisations such as Siemens, IBM, and Kronos. In 2020 he was awarded the PMO Global Alliance ‘PMO Influencer of the Year Award’. Visit him here: www.thelazyprojectmanager.com 

Author: Leandro Benda, PMP

In order to achieve the set objectives, it is essential to identify and manage the stakeholders of a project and do the team management with the right approach.

Stakeholder Management

Stakeholder management is a major challenge for the success of any project. This process is present throughout the project life cycle.

But what exactly is a stakeholder?

It is all the groups of people and all the people who have an interest in or are affected by the project in any way.

This flow starts in the initialization phase of the project with the identification of these people and concludes with the monitoring of their involvement, all the way through the planning and management of them.

Tools like brainstorming, stakeholder analysis, mapping, and meetings are key to the success of these tasks.

Key elements such as the approach, needs, influence and interest of these stakeholders are essential for this analysis.

The more stakeholders are involved, the more value they can bring to the project, support it, and increase the likelihood of achieving the goals set beforehand.

The risk of not performing these activities in an optimal way is that the stakeholders will oppose the project and consequently put the project at risk.

Team Management

The constitution, management, development and monitoring of the project team are equally important factors in maximizing the chances of success of the project.

At the beginning of a project, the project manager is often faced with a heterogeneous set of people. The task and challenge of the project manager is to weld this primary team together to form a developed and committed project team.

In order to carry out these processes in the best possible way, the project manager must have strong skills in negotiation, conflict management, listening skills, empathy, delegation, communication, integrated vision and teamwork.

The availability of resources, especially in matrix project organizations, is critical. Ensuring this throughout the project is essential because it can delay or even cause the project to fail, especially since the priority level of the project can change at any time in the various organizations.

It is common for changes to occur during the project lifecycle, managing these changes can be tricky. The project manager has a key role to play in this process with the team and stakeholders in order to find the best possible compromises, and also to maintain credibility with the team.

Project teams can have different levels of maturity and autonomy, so the project manager will have to choose the right management style depending on whether he/she is result-oriented or relationship-oriented, as well as his/her desired level of involvement.

The compatibility of the management style with the team and the context will be decisive for the success of the project.

Given everyone is different and these areas are so close to the so called ‘soft skills’ we hope to engage you in our Open Space, to give you the opportunity to participate and share experiences. So whether you want to approach this from the classic PMP areas, or an Agile approach, (e.g. we’d love to hear from some new DASM/DASSMs given some of you have taken advantage of PMI Switzerland’s offers for these trainings),  you’ll be welcome at our Open Space. Furthermore, Open Spaces are also about learning this unconventional yet powerful facilitation format. Like last time, we’d also like to hear your ideas to fuel topics for further themes to these cyclical drop-in interactive events made by PMI Switzerland for you, around classic PMP or Agile PM topics. 

So join us on the 15th June, Tuesday at  6:30 - 8:00 p.m. (CET) and make sure you attend with 2-3 things (questions/issues) you would like to discuss on Stakeholder and Team Management. We trust you’ll come out with solutions, inspiration and connections. 

Sources:

• PMBOK® Guide - Sixth Edition 
• Book  “Gestion de projet - Les étapes vers le succès du projet”, Beat Guntern, Ute G. Blasche and Thierry Bonjour, 2020