After attending the Project Zone Congress 2013, organized by stamford global and supported by PMI Frankfurt Chapter in Frankfurt March 18th and 19th it’s time for a short feedback summary and resume.

 

Positive:

• great venue and hotel as done a fantastic job
• website, organization, speaker treatment etc. very professional
• Event itself, video recording, interviews, facilitation of panel discussion etc. was very well done.
• most of all, great international speakers which is unique and which I havent seen so far in a german or even international project management congresses through out Europe (keep that up and hand pick the speakers and masterclasses)
• Tables - very important if you sketch note and would like to write something or use your computer to reflect and document (see www.torstenkoerting.com)
• Great masterclasses with great speakers and facilitators. Worth going.
• Value for money

Negative

• walking distance between main location and the master class and leadership stream
• no feedback on each talk, would be great to have that as a speaker for yourself as well as a comparison to the average score
• marketing could be enhanced as throughout the community the congress was not mentioned well enough (at least in Germany)

Impulse: Try to use different presentations formats

1) TED/TEDx format: 18 minutes maximum, thats it. If you sit in the wrong talk, you know thats its finished after 18 min max. In the usual format it will take you 45 minutes. 

Extract:
Format: A suite of short, carefully prepared talks, demonstrations and performances on a wide range of subjects to foster learning, inspiration and wonder — and to provoke conversations that matter. (The typical presentation should be an 18-minute talk by a single presenter. No talk should exceed 18 minutes. No panels. No break-out sessions. Usually: No podium.) You may not pay your speakers to present.
see the full rules here:
http://www.ted.com/pages/view/id/493#sponsors

Projects do fail. Whether they are big or small. At some point they will go through crisis and major challenges.

During my attendance at the Project Zone 2013 Congress in Frankfurt I was also up presenting on the recent insights and realisings of my / our book project www.turnaroundpm.com

At my presentation focuses on how to recover troubled projects and answers the following questions:

• Why do projects fail?
• What are the 5 phases of a TurnAround
• What Tools / Methods / Approaches to use to help you recover
• Understand the concepts by applying them to actual living cases
• Learn how to apply them in your own environment

Content is based on the book project www.turnaroundpm.com which will be published in May / June this year.

See the presentation below, the video will be added soon. As part of the presentation I went through the 5 phases of a TurnAround myself, as the Flipper broke down. :-)

One of the last talks I would like to share is the one from Russel Archibald about ‘Leading and Managing Projects through Innovation’. 

The talk was full of content, the slides full of text and the presentation a little, lets say, colorless.

By using the sketch note technic over the last two days, i realized that structure of a presentation is a supportive element when you start sketch noting. Second, you need great talks that have an impact, and inspiring elements that resonate. The elements that resonate you put down in pictures and text and structure and let the creativity flow. And the results are inspiring pictures you are proud of and that you want to go back to.

How ever, if view things resonate, what do you do if you can’t fill the page.

My answer to that is:

Leave it half empty.

At least I got two tools out of the presentation and put them down in the sketch note.

One about Success with leaders and how to put them in quadrants based on their interest in projects and the authority they might have on the project.

And the second approach is my view which I have out beside the one from Russel,  how to put them in different quadrants based on their influence and support. An approach, which I find is far stronger and is more relevant. Especially in Turn Around Projects. And will be explained in our book www.turnaround.pm

Next day, new talks, and it was hard to get any better. Aaron Shenhar was up next. Author of the Book ‘Reinventing Project Management‘ and for an opinion leader for project managers. A person who has inspired me years ago to adapt the diamond approach for process and change projects which is now part of the ‘Kompendium für ITIL V3 Projekte‘ and in the extracted chapter version ‘Polygon für Prozess Projekte‘. It was great, and one reason why I attended the conference beside presenting, to see Aaron in action.

As one of the key notes speakers and master class facilitators there were two opportunities to see him in action. His keynote was titled ‘Leading strategic projects and still having fun’. His focus was to outline 5 pillars for successful leading strategic projects. To accomplish them he outlined to ‘Take and Make the Power’, as you, as a project manager, are a mini CEO and the leader to deliver the business results. As projects are done to deliver business results, and you in charge, you need to combine the human sides with specific goals. 

It think, this is a very strong statement, that if you do not follow that, is an obvious reason why projects fail.

Many project managers do not request the power or to be empowered. Because, if you do have the power you have the responsibility, and when you have the responsibility, you need to deliver. You are on the spot.

How ever, if you love to deliver and love to have the responsibility and power, claim it and make it happen:

Take & Make the Power.

In regards of my current book project ‘Turn Around - Wenn Projekte kopfstehen und klassisches Projekt Management versagt‘, he mentioned some other interesting topics. He outlined, why in his opinion projects do fail. From my perspective projects do fail. They fail big or small and they are going through crisis. Full stop. So be ready. How ever, here are his reasons:

1. scope creep 
2. underestimated the effort
3. unexpected problems
4. weak communication, collaboration, motivation
5. fail to meet business requirements

From his perspective it could be comined in the level of uncertainty that he is trying to capture and identify before hand in his diamond approach.

In every project the knowledge curve is going up during the journey, and there for the higher the level of uncertainty you need to revise prior phases in your projects (Initiation, Planning and Execution) to reflect the better knowledge you have. The number of specification and design phases. Very interesting approach as in projects in my world you do not see that very often.

Just some thoughts from my view. Here are the sketch notes:

The last and final talk, brought to us by Peter Beck, a non native Story teller, talking about short stories that help scrum teams to perform better.

He has good a four point principal which he tells us after he created a fireplace atmosphere:

1. Be clear about your message
2. Have a true story about yourself
3. Prepare it well
4. Deliver it well

He took us through several exercises that were going though the following items. He talked for about 2 minutes, he asked us to think about a story for 1-2 minutes and then tell it to our neighbor. While he was talking he was giving us examples. How ever, how do you do that, if you are just not a good story teller in a foreign language.

How ever, I think that the approach at least was something for me and sharpens the approach how I will think about stories.

Sketch notes attached.

The next talk up that afternoon, March 18th, as part of the project zone congress, is another one by Lars Sudmann, who already gave an inspirational keynote this morning. So worth going.

He was talking about ten ideas how to engage and manage virtual teams.

Co-Located teams are outperformed by virtual teams.

but … this needs specific arguments and measures to apply. Lars speaks about ideas to make that statement happen.

In the area of Virtual Management, the overall management of virtual teams working in a virtual environment can be brought down to the following 5 ‘ideas’:

1. Proactive interaction - by having virtual coffees for example. To plan and structure communication that usually happens as part of a coincident, in the coffee area for example.
2. Reflect on your virtual image - How are you being perceived, are you eating, are you typing or otherwise distracted ?
3. Over-sahre with your virtual team - Share more than you usually would.
4. Performance Management - Measure the performance
5. Virtual Team Building - for example yearbook yourself (a website where you can do that online and create your personal yearbook of your team, have virtual kick offs or christmas parties if you want to drive it to the extreme.

In the area of Virtual meetings, the following ideas yould apply according to Lars:

1. Over Visualize - by using net meeting or other tools, draw pictures to support your message and share them, create your project logo together and so on.
2. Make Mini Movies - Use state of the art technology to share stuff and information in a different format
3. Speak like a Radio DJ - by standing up for example while you are in a telefon conference (higher your table, have a headset and speak free standing. You will realize that there will be a different attitude that you are getting across.
4. Interact - aks questions to engage your team and draw pictures together
5. Co-Create - whatever can be co-created have it co-created by the virtual team

and there is one final note he is giving:

Bring in the human side by ‘Sing Happy Birthday to Robert’

All this can or could be applied to your virtual team to make them work together more efficiently and outpace the co-located workers. Go an enjoy if you have the opportunity.

and enjoy the sketch note for the stuff that resonated:

Change is key, this is the title of a presentation by the current PMI Frankfurt Chapter President. Based on his experience he is giving us 10 Impressions what for him is important and gave him a balance between that ‘hard job’ project management and his overall life.

Under the term Project Management an Zen these are the 10 Impressions:

1. Identity - Who am I ? and Who are you?
2. Timeliness - What to DO at the right TIME?
3. Vision - Visualize your FUTURE?
4. Simplicity - What is Priority -> Focus on the Top 3?
5. Overcoming Worries - Accept Responsibility and Relax!
6. Hierarchy and Individualism -> You own your career!
7. Team Play - Players win Games and Teams win Championships
8. Missed number 8
9. Motiviation
10. Passion

Bottom Line for him its about the inner Balance, Know your Destination by looking at your way down and going back home.

Projects are people.

His last words in an engaging presentation. Thanks.

Resonate here:

Airbus, as a global organization, building, selling and delivering 600 airplanes a year, with a sales backlog of more than 4.600 planes to be delivered, and an additional 1.608 aircrafts sold in 2012 and building up their backlog by another 1.000 in on year, this is definitely a company that requires a great project management culture.

Kevin Baker shares some insights.

By looking at their projects, A&D Projects do fail in time and budget, that was the overall situation a couple of years ago. Different drivers have been identified:

• Project Management Challenges
• Technical Complexity
• Talent Shortage
• Supply Chain Challenges
• Politics

Looking at some of them AIRBUS defined a new Culture for Project Management:

A set of shared P&PM visions, behaviours, values, and practices that characterizes an organization.

5 Steps have been taken to implement that:

1. Creating a PM Referential - A Book of PM Guidelines, Tools and Templates
2. A ‘Community of Practice‘ has been build around that to have a cycle of influence
3. A Common Tool set has been created
4. And Project Categorization and Tailoring  hast been implemented and applied by asking 16 questions in 3 different fields like Complexity, Risk, and Challenge.
5. Competency Development is key, as projects are about people by looking at E-Learning, Certification Process and and a specific Career Path, all aligned to the Categorization and overall Portfolio

Great insights about a company that should and has embraced Project Management into their overall Culture. 

From Project Management definitely a place to work at.

So look at the sketch note to get even more impulses.

Dry, very technical, how ever, an engaging speaker, Ricardo Vargas, with lots of knowledge and surviving the middle east (Iran and Afghanistan).

Taking us through a 10 step process how to measure an d calculate the Return of Investment of a Project Management Office across a Portfolio of Projects.

Look up all his details, slides and templates at www.rvarf.as/roi.

1. Create Portfolio of Projects by putting the following elements in a table: ID, Project, Duration, Budget, Area, Risk, Complexity and may more if you want to :-)
2. Calculate the financial return of projects in portfolio, by using the AHP ‘Analytical Hierarchy Process and looking at the simple calculation ‘Investment’ - ‘Benefit’ = ‘ROI’
3. Categorize the Projects and add the categories to Portfolio
4. Determine (Optimistic / Most Likely / Pessimistic) Profile on Complexity (With PMO vs. Without PMO)
5. Simulate Portfolio of Projects by applying the ‘Monte Carlo Analysis’ - this is where I got lost :-)
6. Identify Gains obtained
7. Calculate Investment an Opperational Costs of PMO
8. Determine Influence of PMO for and on the Results
9. Calculate  the ROI of the Project Management Office
10. Analyze the Final Results

Good, this was complicated. The management I have been exposed to over the last 24 years in various organizations and industries would have kicked me out, how ever, if they want numbers, this is a process to get to numbers. Whether they are right or wrong is up to the simulation and the parameters and Mind-Set you apply to it :-) Have a go and give it a try.

And of course, please find below the reflection (Sort of shows what I got out of it …. text …. text …. text ….)

Third keynote coming up on ‘High Performance Leadership’ by Lars Sudmann. Lots of stuff has been written and talked about leadership in the last decades. How ever, its always good to get new perspectives and impulses to reflect that topic in a different way.

Lars gave us 5 plus 1 principals on Leadership and he started with the last on, Number 6, the Fundamentals:

6) ‘The 21st century is a very bad time to be a Control Freak’, supported by arguments like social networking and Tablets and Smart Phones as the media types in our hand, its hard to control people because they work with the power of the masses. Its on against all.

1) Envision - To show people the target and to highly motivate them (this is another principal as such)  you have to show them whats possible. To Do that, he reflected on the Story telling principal and gave us the 6 steps to story telling used by PIXAR:

• Once upon a time there was …
• Every day …
• One day …
• Because of that …
• Because of that …
• Until finally …

Powerful and true. And supports the key argument -> ‘Start with Why !”

2) Enroll - To get others buy in into the process or project you should or have to use and get 21st century communication feedback, whether its by email, Phone, Blog or Video. How ever, for me its the personal reflection on the vision to engage. And 21st century feedback for me is still personal one not via a media.

3) Enabling - Be a coach to others and to your team, by asking two simple questions:
- What could you do?
- What else?

Thats what its all about :-) So praise often and be good to your people.

4) Motivate - ‘Good attitude spreads as well as bad -> Keep it good’. Be role model in what you do and how you do it. By acting with a good attitude (how you define that is up to you) your attitude will spread :-)

5) Implement - Key projects do fail because of decisions not been taken, so you need to work on your decision making process by ‘Installing the Devil’s advocate position’. Somebody in your team has to be the ‘Neee’ candidate, the one that is asking the hard questions and could be negative about several topics.

Interesting and very engaging talk, new impulses and of course a lesson in sketch note taking :-)