PMOZ 2009 is calling papers. PMOZ is a well established Project Management conference within Australia that will get together again in 2009 in the Australian Capital Canberra from the 10th to the 12th of of August 2009 in the National Conference Centre.
I have attended the PMOZ 2007 at the Gold Coast and and PMOZ 2008 in Melbourne and have always taken away something. I have met great people working in the same profession, learned about new trends, step deeper into existing skills and I also had a great time during the breakouts. Presenting was also a very good option to get yourself out of the comfort zone and to expose yourself to others that are interested in your topic. A great and easy way in getting known to new people as they most likely will approach you after a speech.
What we can see from the website that PMOZ got a new CI (Corporate Identity) that is now in sync with PM Global.
So the call for papers is on. Make sure you secure your spot as slots are running out quickly.
Please download the brochure here and understand what to do to be accepted.
Cornelius Fichter, The Host of the PMpodcast, is chairing the 2008 PMO Summit in Coconut Grove Florida.
As the chair he was asked to open the summit with a short keynote (Good on you, Cornelius), and he decided on the theme “The Value of PMOs”. To get an understanding about the perception out there he asked his audience to participate in a survey and to complete 5 questions.
Here is the survey and my answers.
1) Where do you think that PMOs provide the most value?
In Portfolio mgmt, Project tracking & status reporting, General PM support & training, Improved resource mgmt, Improved scope mgmt, Knowledge leverage & re usage, Projects finish on time, Reduced delivery cost, Proactive issue & risk mgmt, Company wide PM standardisation
For me its the following:
Provides Most Value - in General PM support & training
Provides Second Most Value - in for Project tracking & status reporting
Provides Third Most Value - in for Company wide PM standardisation
2) Is the value of your PMO understood by senior management?
There was the answer options “yes”, “no”, “the Company does not have a PMO”, “Other”
Everybody needs to answer that based on her / his specific situation.
3) What do you see as the latest PMO trends? (For instance a specific type of software, a management concept or PMO certification. I’d like to learn what you see at the horizon for us.)
My Answer: The trend we have seen in the past is from centralisation to decentralisation. I f a PMO is becoming to big (number of resources), strong facilitator of a specific method and stage gates etc. and is being perceived as a bottle neck for companies innovation, flexibility and time to market it will be decentralised. After some time, new PMOs show up in the company, different shapes of specific project methods get developed and worst case different Tools to support the method. The key question is, whether a PMO is an admin function (resource Facilitation & Training, Project Method & Tools provisioning) or whether it has the operational responsibility to deliver a project (profit & loss) because than governance including health checks, status reporting, Quality Management procedures and a flexible standardised approach plays a much bigger role.
4) What makes a PMO successful in it’s day to day operations?
My Answer: Effective support in benefit realisation to the business by supporting the well skilled selected PMs to apply a flexible method, supported by an easy to use Tool. Its not about strict rules and guidelines. Its about flexible application of these to be able to realise business benefits in time to market.
5) Do you have any further comments in regards to PMOs or this quick survey?
My Answer: Enjoy your keynote and the conference. Looking forward to a podcast on that experience and the lessons learnt from that conference including some new trends in that space.
It will be interesting what Cornelius is coming back with.
What are the new trends? I havent seen many new things in that space. Prince 2 is getting stronger here in Australia and PMI/PMBOK have to suffer a little bit from the Governance call to support Prince2 (The Government see it as the silver bullet
Another question would be, what happens to PMOs and PM in the current market climate (Recession or here in Australia the D-Word which means deficit)?
Are project methods been reassessed and made smaller and more effective?
Does the project register (that any PMO should have) becomes great value for transparency, re-prioritisation and re-assessment of particular projects?
Are PMs layed off?
Are PMOs decentralised and the PMs moved back into the business?
What is happening out there (Remember, we are on an island here, a BIG island, but still an island) !
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.
The number of audiences doesnt really justify the term “Conference” as we expect 60 people for this one
How speakers are selected and quality checked before presenting
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.
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 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.
