It has been now 7 seven days since I returned from this Years PM Forum 2010 hosted and organized by the GPM (Gesellschaft fuer Projekt Management).

There have been some views shared on the internet already:

• Andreas Heilwagen shared his view and gives advice how to prepare for a conference (I liked his red hat)
• Susanne Bartel shared her view on the conference and reflecting on my presentation (Thanks Susanne)

Looking back its has been a great experience where not much can be enhanced. So here is my view

1) Great Keynotes

Just to give you a view examples

• Matthias Horx - Trend und Zukunftsforscher
  Key message: There is a better future after a crisis
• Volker Doekel - Project Manager for the A380 Project at Lufthansa
  Key message: More communication, less tools
• Friedrich Fuehr - Founder of the DESERTEC Foundation
  Key Message: Have a vision and be the change you want to see
• Tom De Marco (definitely another highlight) - author of “Der Termin” - “The Deadline”
  Key Message: Systems became to complex to handle
• Christian Gansch - Vom Solo zur Sinfonie
  Key message: Everybody plays an important part in a project

Just these keynotes have been worth coming to this event

2) Good exibition

Many companies have participated and have been exposed to around 900 visitors.

Definitely a great side activity and creating a creative environment for all the participants.

The food was served close to the exibition and therefore may people hang around there.

3) The speaches and presentations

It’s like with every conference. There are very good speakers, there are good speakers and there are average speakers. At this years PM Forum 2010 there was a good balance. If you were lucky picking the right presentation you could have seen quite some good presentations.

The ones I was impressed by, were the following:

• Wolfram Mueller - Great speech about his well known approach about Critical Chain Projekt Management. Based on a buffer he is adding to the project he is able to manage the portfolio and resources effectively.
• Thomas Roellecke - Talking about opportunities, threats and risks in international projects with international teams. The slides also worked like an abstract. So if you want to read through the 18 items addressed, check out the slides on the PM Forum page (as a participant your able to download them)
• Dr. Lorenz Schneider - Great presentation about the challenges by being responsible building the Shanghai Formula 1 Circuit. Freat pictures, and damm, this guy got experience. Make sure you read his abstract in the conference book.
• Tabita Armbrecht and Monika Ulmer - they gave a great insight in Project Management career development at a large health insurance company in Germany. Great stuff to develop the talent from the inside.

4) Overall

Great event, definitely worthwhile attending

The only thing from my side that was missing.

Please record the presentations and publish them as video podcasts on itunes and on your website. Would have been a great value add. (Spend less money on food and more on recording and documenting.

Next year I will be there.

Have a look at the model, the presentation and the slides used. Beside that the book is on sale at amazon for an outstanding 14.90 Euro.

The presentation on Slideshare:

In a project sometimes it might feel that your are flying with almost max G-Force and you are getting dizzy because of whatever situation and reason:
Close to go live the momentum accelerates and everybody is spinning like hell to make it.
or
In the middle of a project you have to go back from red and find mitigation measures and trying to juggle everything.
or
The team building exercises are so successful that you team feels like an unorganized ants hill
and there are many more situations you might feel dizzy
like when you forgot to drink throughout the day because you are so busy.
So here is a simulator (G-Force Trainer) to make sure you are prepared for those kind of situation and fit enough to not pass out. This simulator can be tested at Sky Club Austria in Austria close to Schladming.

Thanks Walter, for pointing this out to me and make it happen.

We have just introduced a project symnbol for the project I am working on. Several releases following another, a software project based on the water fall and SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) principal.

To show the complexity we are dealing with in our release and what the following releases have to deal with, we have chosen the Rubik’s Cube. But not the 3×3x3 Rubik’s but the 2×2x2, which is a pretty simple one, representing the functionality we have to put in place. The following releases have to build upon of us and are embedding more complex datamodels and functionality that has to integrate with various subsystems. So the following phases each get a layer more. As the most complex cube is the 7×7x7 and we have more releases than that, we had to go for even more complex models up to the 12 sided 5×5x5 Gigamix which is currently the most complex one we found.

How ever, you could argue that a Rubik’s Cube is not complex just complicated, it is a great symbol to raise awareness to team about the beast we are dealing with.

As there are various options and variations of the Rubik’s Cube approach (see the picture below, thanks to Gerwin Sturm from Scarygami) it has great potential for many releases to come.

What kind of project symbols are you using in your projects?

After being accepted for the PMforum conference (organized by GPM) later this year in Berlin (26th to 27th of October) I got asked by the organizers whether I would be willing to participate in a video to talk 10 minutes about my presentation. After accepting that, Andreas Heilwagen (Projekt Management Beratung) , one of the visible  Project Managers throughout Germany and beyond, contacted me to discuss the details.

After providing the details to him and some prior chats we had a one hour session recording the talk on skype. See the outcome below or on PM 10 Minutes.

What is the Polygon:

• A model to identify and visualize complexity of process projects
• A model to inherit the risk resulting out of the complexity
• A model to identify active mitigation measures to minimize the risk

All the details please find in the video as well as in the new book on that topic to be released soon.

It has been quite a while that i was presenting at a conference. February 2009 at the PMI Congress in Kuala Lumpur. Now this years first presentation is about a chapter in my new book ‘Kompendium fuer ITIL V3 Projekte‘ released as the 2nd edition in January 2010.
Within this book we are talking about a model that we have identified and developed to visualise complexity, put the complexity into context and be able to adapt measures that help you in your day to day life as a project manager.
How ever, I will talk about this Model in a future Blog Post. At this point in time I would like to refer to the video taken and the slides presented. Please see below and feel free to comment on the model and the approach itself.
To do that you need to be capable in understanding German as a language.

And here are the slides:

In projects we often to conclusions, by unconsciously making incorrect inferences based on the facts given. Making implicit information given to explicit facts.

Especially when it comes to Business Analysis and Testing this skill is essential. For these roles you need people that are making the correct inferences without any implicit assumptions that are not explicitly been given.

What I do, during the selection process I give them a little test. The test is called ‘The Uncritical Inference Test’ and was invented by William V. Haney (if I am informed correctly).

This test tries to show how we jump to conclusions, by unconsciously making incorrect inferences
based on the facts given. It will also test the ability to evaluate accurately.

The test follows these steps:

1. You read a story in which you should treat all the information in the story as true and
   accurate.
2. You need to read the statements and work out whether you find them: True, False or unsure.
   True = A definitely True statement about the information given in the story.
   False = A definitely False statement about the information given in the story.
   Unsure =  A statement that could be true or false but based on the information in the story, you
   cannot tell which, for certain. So you are unsure to some degree.
3. Once you have answered a question, please do not go back and change the answer once you see
   later questions.
4. Note: There is no time limit on this test and you may refer back to the story as often as you like.

Here is a sample test (you can find many more on the internet) to get the idea:

Story:

A white van parked in the drive of 70 Higg’s Road has “Ruddenklau Electrical Nelson Ltd” painted on the side of it in large red letters.

Statements

1. The colour of the van parked in the drive of 70 Higg’s Road is white.
2. There are no red letters painted on the side of this van.
3. An electrical appliance has broken down at 70 Higg’s Road
4. The van belongs to Mr Ruddenklau.

This test its pretty simple, but as I said, on the internet you find many more and far more complex story and statement combinations.

In assessment centre for the above mentioned roles, we used this concept a couple of times and it was great to see the difference between the applicants. The ones you found not to bad during the interview failed big time in that test and others that went through the interview quite OK have been outstanding during that test. Of course its no the only criteria you should make your selection on, but its one important item by finding the right people for the job.

What kind of tests or methods do you use to prove the inference capability?

About one and a half years back I managed a project in Australia for Virgin Blue. A vendor selection had to be undertaken and a tender process was kicked off. The objective of that project was to identify the vendor who delivers the best fit for purpose software system to replace the 8 year old legacy system managing most of the operations of that airline.

The project was staffed, executed and delivered its objective and a vendor was chosen at the end. How ever, about 50 people have been involved in that selection process and a team got formed like in any other project. A great team that went through tough times and a great experience overall.

So what I was always thinking in my career, to build a board game after the project got delivered, where all the funny moments, challenges and great achievements are incorporated. Situations like:

• The project manager misses his status meeting again. The stakeholders are upset - Go 2 steps back.
• Your team worked the whole night to meet the milestone - Go 3 steps forward.
  

So I thought about using the ‘Snake and Ladder’ Game and enhanced it with actions cards. Built a theme around it with the companies identity, poshed it up to make it look nice, thought about action cards and the rules of the game and put all this in powerpoint to print it on A3 and as PDF. A process that took me weeks at that time. So her is the result, which you can download by clicking here (PDF) or on the picture (PDF):

Virgin Blue Board Game

I think its a great way to create something that will remembered by every team member. We still play this game today and can’t stop laughing about the situations we went through.

I sent this game via email to my team mates, it got leaked to the press, the intention misinterpreted  and my name was all over the place in Australia. But that’s a different story.

So my final advice: Make sure that the companies culture is ready for it and your bud is not being kicked.