Again, a week ago we had our November PMI Chapter Meeting for the Queensland Chapter and again a great speaker with some new ideas. This time we didn’t focus on the classic areas of project management but looked at relationships in projects and how the could impact the success and risk of project failure.
Graham Scott, the presenter, is an Organisational Psychologist with Masters qualifications. Prior to studying Psychology Graham worked in the Construction Industry at trade and Management levels. For the past thirteen years Graham has being working in Projects mostly in recovery around “communication” and “people issues”. Graham is running the company ORG consulting and can be reached via www.orgconsulting.com.au.
Graham is such an expiring inspiring speaker and gave a lot of examples, even by looking at the NASA Columbia and Challenger disasters to talk about effective relationships and how they could impact the project.
The presentation highlighted the need for effective management of relationships in projects. It covered relationships from a risk management perspective and showed how to develop a rigorous planned approach that will impact on delivery outcomes through effective group dynamics, interface management and good leadership methodologies.

Enjoy the video

and the slides

Almost a week ago, we had our October 2008 PMI Queensland Chapter Meeting. Beside several announcements from the Board and the successful pilot of the Evening Discussion Groups we had Matthew Tati, a Project Manager at Flight Centre, talking about Project Management at Flight Centre.

Especially questions around how IT and the projects engage with the business, how they obtain the resources required as well as some interesting benchmarks around their PMO are provided.

Whatch his interesting presentation here and see the slides below

and the slides

 PMIQ Chapter Meeting - October 2008: Download

After explaining the approach and the difficulties I have faced by compiling one of my first keynotes, today it’s about to share the video and the slides for that very keynote at the IQPC Project Risk Management Conference late September 2008.

Looking back, what went well:

• The new slide concept (PresentationZen) worked out fine and was appropriate for the event. However, far more effort could have gone into it as not all the great features have been used and applied nor even tried.

• 120 slides fit into 40 minutes and still some Q&A time at the end.

• I felt very comfortable with the story line even if it is not my strongest habit.

• I loved the opportunity (Thanks to IQPC), I loved presenting in front of a great audience, I loved to take myself out of my comfort zone.

What didn’t go so well

• Even if I felt comfortable with the story line, I am not an expert in the field of why “The world is flat” and “The inconvenient truth”, therefore all the great stories that Thomas Friedman and Al Gore as the Authors of these fantastic books could and have to share are not in my repertoire and I can’t talk for years about these things. A headline, some side lines and that was it.
  Lessons learnt: You need to be ready for a topic, otherwise do not present.

• I spent a long time in front of Power Point to produce the slide set. After three days, I couldn’t see Power Point anymore.
  Lessons learnt: Take your time or delegate. Garr Reynolds (PresentationZen) says, if the presentation is important its worth doing, so go for it.

• The topic wasn’t probably the one that the crowd expected by looking at the program and the conference is a boutique conference and not a ‘real’ one with hundreds of participants.
  Lessons learnt: Do real keynotes just at a real keynote occasion.

• My conclusions “What does that mean for us as Project Managers” have been thought through, however, I could have worked more on them, but I ran out of time.
  Lessons learnt: Finish you storyline to the end and put all the effort in, don’t stop 200 meters before the finish line (if you do a marathon).

What do you think? How did I go? What would you do different?

 The Critical Value of Project Risk Management: Download

Cliftons (www.cliftons.com) is one of the known providers in training and event facilities here in Brisbane and in Australia. I took this as a reason to talk to Andrew Pierron, the Queensland and Northern Territory State Manager, to talk about Cliftons history, current service offerings and future outlook. 

Some interesting thoughts and visions as well as current service offerings have been highlighted in the talk, for example I didn’t know that Cliftons provides full equipped project bureaus to their clients. We all know how hard it is to find a lockable space for a couple of weeks or months to “lock in” a project team to do their job. Also Cliftons is partnering with other facility providers in QLD and the NT to provide quality proven services across the state. Just listen to the interview on TJTV and get the idea from somebody who migrated to Australia for quite similar reasons than I did. Enjoy.

 TJTV - Andrew Pierron: Download

Once a month we are having our PMI Queensland Chapter Meeting, at the Irish Club in Brisbane CBD. September 17th at 06pm we started of with a great presentation from Richard Egelstaff,  a practicing IT Project Manager for Thiess-Services Pty Ltd responsible for the development and implementation of enterprise IT systems. Richard was talking about Project Management Eucation in general and he is looking at all the options we might have to upskill ourselves. Questions like

• What is Project Management Education?
• How has it changed over the last decades?
• What is available out there?
• Is it about skill or about comptence?
• What recommendation to give?

will be looked at.How ever some points Richard was missing or at least missing to give an answer to. What kind of Education a full time working Project Manager should undertake without impacting his job. We will cover that within the TJTV series as part of a personal short interview. Richard has done some great research for this presentation and looked at many current options out there, so make sure you take a look.

As always, the slides can be seen below.

 PMIQ Chapter Meeting - September 2008: Download

To start of with the series “TJTV - Leaders in Project Management” I talked to Scott Spence yesterday about his background, his Company CC Consulting, their key competencies and areas of expertise. Was quite a unique environment as we have been outside of the “The vine restaurant & bar” at New Farm at his wife’s birthday. Enjoy.

 TJTV - Scott Spence: Download

I will start a new section pretty soon (today) which will cover small, with digital camera recorded, videos with “Leaders in Project Management” in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia and beyond.

These 5 to 10 minunte interviews will focus on the individual, their background, their company they own, founded, work for, their principals, the tools and bestpractices they apply aso. and all in the space of project management.

The videos will be recorded in unsual environments, on the street, in a cafe, on a deck, on a golf course, on a cruise ship, in the middle of a chapter meeting or in any other occasion where the opportunity is there to speak to a “Leader in Project Management”.

We will start of the sequence with Scott Spence, the CEO and Founder of CC Consulting shortly.

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.