After almost two weeks I have returned from Kuala Lumpur attending and presenting at the PMI Global Congress for Aisa Pacific. What a great experience.

Thanks to the PMI Team putting this great Congress together. Thanks to SK for taking us on a tour, thanks to Tim for the great accompany, thanks for Robert for the great feedback on my first run of the Risk Management Workshop and thanks to everybody attending my two sessions. It has been a pleasure presenting in fron of you, it has been a pleasure to see your participation and it has been a pleasure to share so much expertise during the hours we spent together. Also thanks to everybody for their keenness to receive the slides and the templates.

First of all the slides. You can click through them right here or download them from the slideshare.net website. The templates will be emailed to the ones that have dropped me their business card. Feel free to comment in this post I like to hear your comments about this Congress.

A team, I dont know how big it is, has worked very hard on the 4th Edition on the PMBOK (Project Management Book of Knowledge. Pat Weaver covered in his blog the key aspects already. It does not seem to be the big leap, how ever, several usefull clean ups have been incorporated.

So know its time to order it as part of the Christmas rush and with a discount if you order online via PMI. So buy yourself a Christmas present. But rush, promotion ends by end of this year.

via eMail.

Now is the chance.

Just two days ago the call for nominations went out:

Do you know someone with the leadership skills, volunteer experience and passion for project management to become a leader of PMI? We encourage you to nominate individuals that you feel are ready to take on the challenge of serving on the PMI Board of Directors.

A fantastic opportunity to work on the Board of a global Project Management Organisation. The outline of the details can be looked up here. The nomination period is open until 2 February 2009.

How ever the detail about the requirements and qualifications spans over more than two pages. And, as of my knowledge, you get a lot of honour but no dime. So what is in for you? You get exposed to leaders in project management, no doubt, you will learn a lot and your network will increase and of course, some PDU’s. On the other side you will have to spend a lot of private time to make yourself successful in your role.

via eMail.

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

Wow, just came across this one. There is a PMI Chapter in Canada, Calgary, (Souther Alberta Chapter) that has just organized a Conference with more than 500 project managers to attend. Everybody who has ever organized an event or a conference does know how much efforts gos into it. Venue, Speakers, Registration, the whole caring about delegates, accommodation, sponsorships, guidelines, speakers and their papers, website, content, etc etc etc.

So these guys now managed to organize the whole conference called PMI SAC Conference. Even if the program looks great by covering all areas of leadership, coaching, influencing, self-promotion and how to create winning projects. A two day conference for less than a 1.000 Dollars.

Program packed with good stuff and great presentation on the website with all the details.

Neil Sanderson, President of the Local Chapter is reffering to the demand on well trained project managers.

There is no lack of work all over the world for professional project managers. There is always a huge demand for professionally trained project managers, and, in these uncertain economic times, the demand is even greater.

I heard these things for the last 3 month a couple of times. When the going gets rough the tough gets going. Meaning that if there is a downturn in economy, projects are getting cut and therefore he demand is slowing down the demand for training is getting higher. As the Project Manager has the time to train as well as needs to catch up with certifications and special skills and has to get ahead of the ‘competition’.

Richard Egelstaff referred to that in his presentation at the PMI Queensland Chapter in September this year and mentioned that now is the perfect time to attend training. And whether its a training course or a conference the result will put you as a potential candidate for a role ahead of your competition applying for the same role.

How ever, great example how to organize a very successful conference and how to create a great website supporting that initiative.

For everybody, like myself, who haven’ t been able to attend the PMI Global Congress in Denver, Hal Macomber who is running the Blog Reforming Project Management and Josh Nankivel running the Blog PM Student, and both members of PMI’s New Media Council are providing their view on the congress.

Hall talks in his post  about the prominent keynote speaker, Colin Powell 

Colin Powell was the keynote speaker on Sunday afternoon for a crowd of 3,000. That followed his Obama endorsement on Meet the Press Sunday morning. The general was there to speak about leadership. He challenged project managers to bring leadership to every project team. He kept our attention with one story after another and his great humor. I counted 4 standing ovations.

Josh touches on the highlights at the congress, for example meeting with Gregory Balestrero, the CEO of PMI

Greg discussed PMI’s strategy going forward and we were able to ask some questions and give some feedback.  I suggested PMI work with thought leaders of new methodologies such as Critical Chain, Lean, SCRUM and other Agile methods, etc.  It sounds like they will be doing some of this with the Virtual Communities (at least with Agile).

From what I am reading on the web and in all various blog articles, it was a great event and shame I couldn’t go. Wouldhave been a long journey from Brisbane to Denver anyway. I might join the one in Kuala Lumpur next year and facilitating a workshop. Will see.

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

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

Allright, what do we get out of this (September 2008) month PMI chapter meetings across Australia:

Perth, Western Australia, Wednesday September 10th 2008, 06:00pm: 
Speaker:
Acting Superintendent Lance Martin, Program Director - Communications Infrastructure Program, Western Australia Police
Mr Brian Considine PMP, Associate Director - (Program Manager - Communications Infrastructure Program), Fujitsu Australia Pty Ltd
Topic:
The Police Metropolitan Radio Network project was commissioned on schedule and on budget in December 2006, and has now been successfully rolled out to all police users across the 10000 km2 coverage area. The speakers will provide an overview of the project, focussing on some of the key project management challenges encountered how the challenges were overcome. In particular it will outline, how the PM team successfully incorporated the management of risk into the procurement cycle to lay the foundations for a successful implementation; provide an overview of the key lessons learnt and how they will be applied to future projects undertaken by the Program; describe how the implementation managed the business change to provide measurable benefits to WAPOL.

Adelaide, no further information on the website

Melbourne, Tuesday September 30th 2008, 06:00pm:
Speaker:
Lloyd L. Carter, Consultant, SYPAQ Systems Pty Ltd
Topic:
Development of ISO 21500 Guide to Project Management
In recent years there has been a proliferation of sector specific standards worldwide which have had no overarching standard to set the generic principles and procedures of Project Management globally. In addition these standards have had no common vocabulary or processes that could be referenced by the global project management community resulting in different definitions and interpretations. This standard will provide a common platform which will become a reference point for all project management professionals and hence facilitate knowledge transfer and the harmonization of principles, vocabulary and processes in existing and future standards.
 

Canberra, September:
Speaker:
ANAO
Topic:
Better Practice Guide 

Sydney, Wednesday September 17th, 07:30 am:
Speaker:
Eleri Morgan Thomas
Topic:
Women in Project Management
Eleri’s talk will reflect on the challenges (and excitement) of managing projects in a community services environment where every dollar spent on infrastructure is one that isn’t spent on a client. The workforce is predominantly female and their focus is primarily on the delivery of services to clients. At the end of the day, every project managed in Mission Australia has to demonstrate real value for money and value for effort across the board. 

Brisbane, Wednesday September 17th, 06:00 pm:
Speaker:
Richard Egelstaff
Topic:
A Review of Project Management Education in the UK, USA and Australia
In this presentation Richard Egelstaff will explore different levels of education relating to project management.  The presentation is designed to help anyone contemplating recognition or seeking qualification as a project manager.  Richard will explain how private providers, such as PMI or AIM compare to formal education institutions, such as TAFE and University.  He will also discuss the ideas behind competency or employment based qualifications as compared to academic qualifications.  In this respect, the qualification trends in the UK, USA and Australia with particular emphasis on project management learning and employment is explored. 
If you are thinking of gaining a formal education in project management in Australia at either an undergraduate or post graduate degree level then this presentation will save you hours of research and guide you towards the best education solutions for you.