Just returned from the IQPC Project Risk Management Conference with Food for Thought and a Summary on all 4 days that I attended and participated in.



1) Masterclass by Kathleen  Kuryl

A very well conducted and facilitated Workshop by Kathy (President of the Tasmanian AIPM Chapter) and even if she was that nervous that she had to get up at 0530 in the morning you could see a thing of that . We got a lot of insights of the Project Methodology that has been put together by her and her team and is fully available on their website. The session was very much focused on the Risk Management component of the method itself. Kathy printed a lot of material and provided that as a hand out for the participants (overall around 7). The Masterclass was very intimate due to the fact that we just had a small audience like this and Kathy got a very good discussion going which helped us to understand how Risk Management is being applied by other industries. Another perception was that Government and Construction was very well represented in the Masterclass and in the overall conference. 

In the Afternoon we focused on a couple of areas. 

• How to present a risk profile to various audiences like stakeholders, steering group members, team members etc. (will have another post on that soon)?
• How to practical apply Risk Management in you day to day project management work?
• How to facilitate a risk assessment with an immature audience?

Another good point, that was raised, was that Lessons Learnt that you do after a project or a phase / stage has finished should drive and influence future risk assessments. So a two page summary of the outcome of a lessons learnt session was recommended (1. Area of project to get the reader to understand if they run a similiar project, set the context etc.; 2. Circumstances and Situation the project was running in; 3. Scope of project; 4. The Lessons Learnt summary)

2) Two days of conference

11 presentations and two interactive discussions, and each one of them scheduled for 45 minutes, plenty of time and opportunities to network was the structure for these days. Around 50 to 60 participants and everyone of them actively working in the Project Risk Management area, in one or the other role.

The three presentation highlights for me have been

1. Liam Wallace from ASC - about Comprehensive Risk Identification, Analysis and Planning
   Liam came across very knowledgeable and for sure coming out of a mature organisation where Risk Management is enforced and embraced. He has given us practical examples of risk registers, presentation options of risk profiles, their risk appetite and how they change the risk appetite according to the project. The “Heat Map” was definitely a very valuable tool that ASC is using to present risks to board members. He also referred to that how to identify risks constantly and how you can keep that simple. The slides have been great in a way they can be used for further reference, depending on how much he was allowed to put on the CD that was handed out.
    
2. Eddie Stewart from Newcastle City Council - about Applying Project Structure
   Eddie was talking about how Project Management Frameworks and Risk Management Strategies go together and his slides were just great as they provide a great reference to how the Newcastle City Council does Project Management and how they run projects and, most interesting, what projects they are running, which for somebody like me out of the private business environment was quite interesting. From an asset management side of thinks IT people often just think about PCs and Monitors and that such as assets, but for the City Council there are more than 70.000 trees and every tree is treated as an asset with additional information about size and age etc. Make sure you get a hands on the slides as they provide a good point of reference.
    
3. Rob Loader - Analysing the complexity of stakeholder management
   Rob was talking about the difficulties as well as critical success factors around Stakeholder Management in the context of risk management and was referring to the challenges how to understand your stakeholder, why you need to understand them and how. So referring to the question how you can understand a stakeholder that you never get exposed to he gave a couple of examples like waiting at the elevator until he shows up and give him the “elevator pitch” or wait for him at the car park near his car and give him the “car pitch” or just go and constantly ask for 15 minutes of his time. But clear advice was, you need to understand him and do everything to achieve that. His slides are another good point of reference. Clearly visible that Rob has done plenty of presentations in his career.

Regarding the interactive discussions about budget forecasting and software for risk management I dont know whether the delegates got much out of that. Haven’t had and heard much feedback around that area, but at least the crowd was engaged and shared experiences to the audience. Which helped for the networking as you knew whom to talk to about specific topics.

3) The Workshop - How to Identify, Measure and Manage Risk Throughout the Life Cycle of the Poject

We had a couple of cases prepared for this conference plus a short introduction of the Diamond Model based on the book “Reinventing Project Management” by Aaron J. Shenhar and Dov Dvir and how it could be used as tool to start facilitating a risk assessment and to present a risk profile of a project. A great discussion we had, around the model its use and how different industries and their projects are related to the model and how the projects could be mapped with the model. After that we had another very good discussion around how to embed a simple risk process in your day to day work and how to present risks to various audiences and several great ideas got shared between the attendees. Again, a very intimate workshop which was probably the biggest asset as this helped to facilitate a good discussion and sharing of ideas amongst the participants. The area around how to present risks created so many ideas that i need to summarize them later on in a different post.

Bottom Line

I perception is that the concept of a boutique conference style focused on niche topics really works. You find your audience (Gavin Halling for example is selling a risk management tool and he cant get a better audience than this for selling it), you find your peers to talk about issues and getting ideas how to resolve them, you build your network to be able to be more successful in your role and depending on the topics and speakers you might get great content and knowledge you can walk away with. The only downside is, that the conference has a price which some might not be willing to or even cant afford. Thats why we havent seen many people out of IT and other industries beside Construction, Engineering and Government. So here is my advice, if you have your Company paying for it -> GO, if you do not or you cant afford it your self -> PRESENT as you are able to get to the conference for free.

Just another couple of hours and i am off to the IQPC Project Risk Management Conference at Southbank in Brisbane. that i was referring to earlier already. My duties during the conference includes chairing the conference, facilitating the interactive discussions, the keynote about “The critical value of Risk Management”, a presentation about “Effective Health Checks” and facilitating a workshop together with Molli Ong on Thursday. So tomorrow i will attend the so called Master Class about “The A-Z of Project Risk Management” to get my mind in the space of where it needs to be for the next 4 days.

So what will happen over the next 4 days:

Day 1, Monday: Masterclass ”The A-Z of Project Risk Management”

According to the program, Kathleen Kuryl, a Programme Manager at the Tasmanian Department of Premier and Cabinet will talk about that the concept of managing risk within project delivery is not new in the project management field. However, it is still broadly misunderstood or ineffectively managed. We as participants will explore innovative ways to implement and/or improve your risk management frameworks in order to achieve optimum project performance.

And the bullet points sound pretty interesting and i will blog tomorrow evening about this and let you know what i got out of this.

Day 2 and 3, Tuesday - Wednesday: “The conference”

Beside speakers out of the Government and private environment that all sound very senior some good talks are on the agenda about

• how to apply the right project structure to manage your risks accordingly
• how to identify an analys your risk upfront
• the effective contigency planning and idenitify the right strategy
• strategies for effective risk governance and ongoing risk control
• turning risks into opportunities
• The correct budget forecasting
• analysing the complexity of effective stakeholder management
• managing expectations
• managing contractual relationships to optimise your risk strategy

and two interactive Discussion about

• Budget forecasting
• the role of software packages managing risks 

Day 4, Thursday “The Workshops”

Two workshops are lined up for Thursday, the first one is “How to Identify, Measure and Manage Risk Throughout the Life Cycle of the Project” talking about that risk management is a process that should last as long as the project to which it is applied. During this workshop, the participants will be able to find out how to effectively manage risk and learn how various risks affect each other throughout your whole project life cycle. And the second is called “How to Engage and Manage Stakeholders to Ensure Successful Project Delivery” talking about that successful project delivery is often dependent on the contribution of others, be it an internal or external contribution. In accordance, risk management within project delivery also requires the active involvement of various stakeholders to be successful. In this workshop, learn to develop your stakeholder management skills as a strategy for ensuring optimal management of risk throughout the life of your project. 

Bottom Line it looks like a very good 4 days with lots of opportunities to learn. How ever, i am really looking into to understand the concept and value of IQPC hosted and organised “Conferences”. Two reasons why.

1. The number of audiences doesnt really justify the term “Conference” as we expect 60 people for this one
2. How speakers are selected and quality checked before presenting
3. How the program has been compiled and changed in the last couple of days

I will talk more about this after the conference once i have a better understanding and talked to some participants and the organizer.

There three conferences coming up late September and early to mid October in Australia and New Zealand that I am currently aware of.

Brisbane, September 22nd to 25th, Project Risk Management Conference

First of all in late September the IPQC organized Project Risk Management Conference 2008 is coming up. Claimed to be the one and only Conference in Project Management focusing on Risk Management it will take place in Brisbane starting on the 22nd of September with a Master Class, 2 day conference afterwards and workshops on the 4th day.

The price ranges from $2.999+GST for the conference only to $5.995+GST for the whole lot plus another $799+GST for the DVD incl all the papers.

Canberra, October 12th to 15th, AIPM Conference 2008

Starting with a welcome reception on Sunday the 12th, leading into a packed conference program from the 13 th to the 15th. Framed into Keynotes in the morning and the afternoon an inspiring program has been put together. Keynote Speakers like Andrew Look, John Lloyd, Rodney Turner and Miriam Baltuck have been locked and the program is full of industry recognised speakers.

The price ranges from $650 for a student to $1.295 for a non AIPM member for the full conference.

Auckland, New Zealand, October 06th to 08th, PMI NZ Natyional Conference 2008

PMI NZ is well know for the conferences with a great inspiring attitude, a great social program and great speakers. This years Conference will drive that perception even further. The conference will start of on Ocotber 6th with Workshops on eXtreme Project Management, Agile Project Management and a radical Bootcamp for Project Managers, a On Site Visit Programme in the afternoon and the registration for the conference opens in the evening plus the icebreaker cocktail function. Tuesday and Wednesday are fully packed with great keynotes and presentations. Have a look at the programme.

The Social Prorgamme will focus on the “Carnival” Conference Dinner with a

superb three course dinner, interspersed with award presentations and more stunning entertainment. Following the formal part of the evening we will be dancing the night away to live music from one of New Zealand’s bands.

The price ranges from $395 to $1.325 for the conference plus $150 for the dinner function.

More on the programs to come as we are moving closer to the events.

Looking back to the PMOZ 2008 i found another interesting article / post on the web that describes a different experience around the conference.

Pat Byrne from holistech held the following presentations

• The Factors Contributing to Project Success (Presentation and Paper)

and

• Understanding the Complexity of Program Management, Co-authored with Graham Durant-Law (Presentation)

and addresses the Co-Conference approach (PMOZ and SEPG) and describes his experience in the in the following way:

Overall, I think the co-conference is a great idea. But there are a few challenges and none of them detract from the co-conference concept.

One of the challenges I suspect from my chats with a few people at the conference and from my experience at other events, is that it is an easy transition from the software/systems engineering perspective to move into a project management forum, because project management is so much a part of software/systems engineering. But the other way around is problematic. If a project manager has experience in the software, defence or aerospace industries, then software/systems engineering isn’t so foreign. But if you are a project manager in say construction or civil engineering, then going to a software/systems engineering presentation at a conference means you can be confronted with gobbledygook.

and

I suspect that PMOz/SEPG got this balance about right, particularly with some of their joint keynotes. But I also suspect that an offering of “systems engineering basics” for project managers may perhaps be useful - more so than “project management basics” for systems engineers (although I do note there were some interesting workshops suitable for either stream).

Pat is absolutely right, the combination is worth doing, but there have been far to many streams in parallel (7 streams) where the co-conference approach doesnt achieve what Pat is mentioning, you have so many topics and by far cant attend as many as you wish and want. Some times more is less what i mentioned in one of my previous posts. An Pat is referring to that as well with the following recommendation:

Perhaps a worthwhile objective would be to have a single stream for the combined conference for refereed academic papers. This might be accompanied by a properly put together electronic journal published by the combined conference. I have no doubt this would be well received and would assist in that integration of theory and practice so necessary for the professions to progress.

And as he says, may be something to consider for 2009.

via Holistech

After attending the PMOZ 2008 Conference in Melbourne for two days, I was now able to convert the recorded Video into Flash and find a service provider that is able to host presentations that are longer than 10 minutes (eg. YouTube has a limit of 10 Minutes, even if you have a “Director” or “Guru” account). The Service i am using is Viddler that I will post separately on.
The presentation took place in the 35th floor of the Sofitel Hotel (the venue of the conference) and the actual conference took place in level 2 in the ballroom and other rooms. I am happy that around 40 people attended and made their way up. The room was pretty strange as it was like 25 meters long and 6 meters wide and windows where you had a stunning view across Melbourne.
So, finally here is the video of my presentation:

Please let me know if you have any further feedback how to improve the presentation of the topic (I know that the slides need improvement as they are very much tailored to a business audience that you need to convince that Health Checks are a good thing rather than an audit.)
Below please find the slides that you can download via my profil on slideshare.

Two days of conference just passed by and i returned back from Melbourne on Wednesday evening.
Bottom Line, the conference had a greater audience than the one at the Gold Coast but couldnt reach its own set standards, set in the prior year.

So lets lets go through it in a structure way:
1) Delegates - Around 600 delegates have been attracted, these have been the unofficial numbers communicated via the Grapevines. Due to the fact that PMOZ got combined with the SEPG (Software and Systems Engineering Process Group) these numbers might be perceived far bigger than the ones from 2007. Actually, even if these were the unoffical numbers, we couldnt see them. Perceived around 300 to 400 people.

2) Venue - The venue was in Central Melbourne with some bars around it. Acommondation, if you took the easy route which i did by booking via the registration website as they have included two hotels into the booking path, you could either choose the Sofitel or a Hotel (Appartment flat) within 15 min walking distance, which was the cheaper option. The venue suited the conference and the number of participants. What i do not understand why you would put the best pratice sessions in a weired room (lomng room with windows to the ceiling) on the 35th floor where delegates need to take an elevator to get up and no sign directs you to that room. I understand that there might not have been enough rooms at the basement but its hard to get people up there and have the delegates focused if they can enjoy a fantastic view over Melbourne

3) Streams - seemed to be reasonable (see my post here) how ever at the end it didn’t matter. Delegates focused on the presentation topic and not of the streams. I don’t know whether the stream concept is worth it, as i know presenters that have pulled out because they have been put into the wrong stream (whether by accident or because it was the only empty space left). It gets you focused, but it also limits your abilities to put presenters into the right spot if a stream is “booked out”. I thought, there were just to many streams. 6 streams for both conferences plus the workshop / case study stream is a waste. So many interesting topics across both conferences PMOZ / SEPG and so many you cant attend. And the anger is even bigger if you realize the presentation you went to is worth leaving. Sometimes less is more.

4) The Trade Show - The Trade show attracted the abvious industry candidates, like big ships like Primavera, IBM, BEA and others but also smaller sized comapnies like the reformed PMPartner Group, AIM with its great specialiced Book stand (Another post to follow on that), Mosaic Project Services, Mindavation and others. The Trade show was the perfect playground for networking and find topics to talk about. Whether it got the value for the exhbitiours, I guess so, as you get your 100% target audience. Whether they talk to you or other delegates is something different. That the food was placed in the exhibition area was definately helpfull compared to last year at the Gold Coast where the trade show was outside in a tent and hardly got any delegates especially during presentations. The only hard thing was that the trade was split in two different areas over two different levels.

5) The Food and Nibbles - this is a difficult one, as not much to talk about as not much was there, The organizers tried to split the delegates and guide them to the relevant exhibition floor to get there food by handing out green and yellow cards. How ever, one area was far easier to access and more convenient to the other so most of the people hang out there even if they should have gone to the other area. Lessons learnt, you cant manipulate a hungry and food desperate crowd. Therefore one foodarea was always empty where the other one still had some food even if you had been 5 minutes late, 10 minutes later most of the food was gone.If you got some, it was great to have, especially the fruits were fresh and not that popular.

6) The Evening / Dinner Function - Tuesday night the dinner function was on, with the theme “Bling it on” where you suppose to dress like a rapper or something similar. 90% failed, so did we. How ever, some plastic jewelery on the tables helped to at least put on a sparkling plastic ring. The awards for the prowd sponsors have been handed over and the music started playing, and of course according to the theme they played rap songs. A dance group did some warm up during and after dinner, attracted the crowd to dance and shortly into the evening it was to talk and communicate as even in the rear of the room you couldnt understand a word. The trivia for that night had the “Blues Brothers” as the topic where the people able to use a smart phone and check out wikipedia had a clear advantage. We have been good in typing but by far not good enough. Compared to the GoldCoast event and the great standard set there, this one was 2 levels below. The pirat theme, the costumes, the music, the movie “pirates of the carebean” and the dance floor have been the ingredients for a better function menue than this years on. “Bring it back”

7) Networking - Was great, as lots of spare time was granted and the trade show provided lots of reasons to talk to product and service providers across the industry. The Badges highlighted Name and Company which might always be a reason to start talking to somebody.

8) The Presentations - The program sounded spot on, even if hiped topics like “Social Project Management” and “Agile Project Management” didnt appear and some of the topics seemed familiar, whether it was stakeholder management, Communication, Virtual Teams, PMOs and benefit realisation, including my own one which was almost the same presentation i have given 2007. The feedback i was hearing wasnt the greatest and what i was seeing supported the feedbacks shared amongst the participants. Presentation time to short, 25 minutes slots is hardly enough especially for the more unexperienced speakers. Some of them took 10 minutes to get from slide 1 to slide 2, at the end they realised that they ran out of time by given the signal from the facilitator and rushed through the last 7 slides in 2 minutes or just stoped in the middle of it. I would recommend to go for 45 minutes and alow 5 to 10 Q&A at the end. Another factor was how the program was structured. 3 presentations in a row. After a Q&A session attending a presentation in room A you had to rush to room B where they already got started and you missed the introduction.

9) The Speakers / Presenters - You had all sorts of speakers, the inspiring ones (”Size matters”), the detail ones (”As you might not be able to see this on this slide”), the audience focused ones (”Please read the Case that i will hand out know”), the shy ones (”Can everybody hear me”), and so on. You cant make a call and you cant get it right for these events. You call for speakers and you sometimes get what you want and sometimes you dont, thats the risk. As a delegate you cant mitigate it, because the Plan B doesnt work, to break out of a presentation and join another one, because of the 25 minutes slot its just to late after you realised that you should leave.

10) Organisation - Just one word, phantastic. Not a single issue not a single glitch. Susan Hobbs and Cecilia O’Grady plus Tye Hillam, did a great job to hold everything together. What you could do better, is to skill your reception staff a little better around common questions around accomodation and other areas outside the conference that delegates might ask. But from the whole planning via execution and closure of the conference it was great.

11) The Conference Workbook - There was none last year (at least i do not remember) and this years one has been great to read through and even check it out later after the conference. All the information was in there, around speakers and the abstracts of their presentations, the exhibitours and other important event information. Well done, as its very hard to put this together especially when the time is getting tight and last minute program changes have to be incorporated. The CD as part of the conference pack had all the papers and presentations on it, which is a great service that ou have to pay for extra with other conferences.

12) The Website and Booking / Registration - The website held all the information that was required for the conference and the registration process did its duty. How ever, the Internet capabilities and standards have moved on and it feels a little outdated. No Communication layour for participants, no interaction, prior, during and after the conference. The website didnt seemed to be very changing and the usability and look and feel needs improvement. Look at the USA and how conferences are supported by new webtechnologies (Blogs, Wikis, Twitter, Social Networks and Groups, Video Streams, etc.) and let the delegates take even more benefits by being able to interact for closer with their peers than today.

14) What was missing - Beside all the stuff i mentioned earlier, free Wireless LAN access for all delegates. Just check how many delegates have a laptop in front of them at conferences in the USA (almost every second).

Bottom Line - What went well
- Organisation. Handclaps for eventcorp and its team
- Number of delegates
- Trade show and networking opportunity
- Topics picked
- Workbook and CD

Bottom Line - What to change / needs improvement
- more time for each presentation
- Quality Check on speakers and develop “Green” list with the ones to attract next time
- Dinner Function according to feedback above
- Provide enough Food

I am looking forward to 2009 (Canberra) and 2010 (Brisbane). See you there.

Enjoy the ride and improve on the trivia you might have missed:

Tomorrow Morning i am heading of to the PMOZ 2008 Conference, that will happen this year in Melbourne. The benchmark that has been set by the conference in 2007 while it happened at the Gold Coast in a very inspiring and great location, the Conrad Jupiters, with a great dinner function, valuable workshops and speaker topics is very high.

The conference is definitely one that atracts the market across all different Project Management approaches as it try’s to pitch it that way. So we see all the different organisations and best pratices represented on these days, whether its Prince2, PMI (Project Management Institute) or AIPM (Australian Institute of Project Management) or even AIM (Australian Institute of Management). Another benefit is, that the Participants are not just across the different approaches but also across the different industries.

Abstract out of the PMOZ pitch:

The Project Management Australia Conference (PMOZ), is the leading Project Management Conference in Australia and is managed by PMGlobal. PMGlobal through the PMOZ, World Project Management Week Conference and PMASIA brands have a long term commitment to advancing Project Management skills in Australia and around the world.

Now in its fouth year PMOZ will once again offer a range of dynamic and exciting presentations encompassing all aspects of “creating success” from the high level concepts of translating strategy into action through the tools and techniques employed at the coalface to make individual projects a success.

Beside the participants and the speakers, the program does look very attractive.

7 Streams

• Business and ICT
• Corporate and Governance
• Construction, Mining and Engineering
• Transformation
• PMO Session
• Soft Skills for Project Managers
• Case Studies

and speaker program spread over 2 days.

Presentations that i will definitely attend:

• Graham Scott - Relationships As Risk and the need for there effective management in projects
• Robert Hall PMP® - Delivering significant business benefit through targeted minor projects
• Khaled Hamdy PMP® - Program Management Office Maturity in a Large Government Organization
• Alam Nur - UIAchieving Project Management success in a large organisation with virtual teams
• Anastasia Dzenowagi - What will be the future of the PMO in a Complex World?
• Pat Byrne - Understanding the complexity of Program Management
• Kersti Nogeste PMP® - Start from the very beginning: Define expected benefits in the Project Business ase
• Geoffrey Ball - Project Management Practices for successfully delivering radical business change
• Scott Spence - Business As Usual vs Projects – the organisational dilemma

So whoever else is coming, i will see you there. Feel free to join my presentation on “Effective Project Health Check” which i will record and publish after the event including the slides that you will be able to view here and download on slideshare.