Day 3 - PMI Asia Pacific Global Conference

For me, the third and final day of the conference started with my own presentation, entitled "Losing Your Religion." This paper and presentation makes observations on the transformation of project manager to line or functional manager, and
considers the changes in attitude, management style and application of project management best practices that often occur when project managers move into line or functional management positions. Several of my new and old colleagues were in attendance, and the presentation went well, if I do say so myself (my colleagues said so, too, so I'll go with it).

I then attended a presentation by award-winning project manager Rohan J. David, PMP entitled "The Context of Project Management - Where Passion Lives." Rohan's presentation outlined several premises and approaches to project planning and execution. Most importantly, he pointed out that great projects entailed great risks, and therefore great passion for the outcome was a necessity for successful completion. Project managers must take that passion for excellence into their work in order to achieve success.

Rohan also outlined some scenarios to consider to ensure that projects were delivering on promises and also to improve on processes. Overall, an interesting presentation.

At lunch was time to connect with new friends and begin saying farewells to new friends, as Derek Walker and Paul Steinfort were headed home to Melbourne. PMI planned plenty of time over lunch and between sessions to ensure that networking opportunities were not cut too short by the need to break up developing conversations and relationships to scurry off to the sessions. This approach clearly worked well given the constant buzz of conversations and chances to meet and talk to project management practitioners and academics.

Both afternoon sessions I attended were focused on project portfolio management, which was my personal mandate for this conference. The first, presented by consultants Alex Brown and Jennifer Tharp, was called "Getting Your Projects Aligned to Strategic Goals." Overall, the presentation did not provide me a lot of new information, but the presentation style and interplay between Alex and Jennifer was great and well thought out. THey did provide a good framework for tracing and ensuring the alignment and confirming execution of strategic portfolios.

Continuing the trend I seemed to experience of "best for last", Michel Thiry and Rod Gozzard's presentation on "Successfully Implementing a Portfolio Management System in a Medium/Large Corporation" was excellent. It was so well-attended that they had to move to a bigger room. Using a case study approach and excellent interplay between them, Michel and Rod took us through a scenario in which an IT director was swamped with competing projects with limited resources and no functioning prioritization system.

Michel and Rod showed how their approach and plan led through a process that prioritized the projects based on their alignment with corporate strategy. Once this was complete, estimation of effort required to complete these projects enabled scheduling based on prioritization and available resources. Projects on the horizon enabled forecasting of resource demand and project throughput. One important point Michel and Rod made was that the foundation for this effort was good project and resource data, particularly resource time entry. This can be a sticking point for many organizations. I still do not understand why many companies and corporate cultures have issues with tracking people's time on project and non-project work for use in measuring project performance and capacity. It's not optional - it's an imperative.

The conference's closing session reminded us of the past 2.5 days and thanked the capable people from the Sydney area and PMI that made the conference happen. About 1000 people attended, making this the most well-attended Asia Pacific conference PMI has had to date. My conference is done - I'll be spending another day in Sydney to see more of the city and visit my company's Sydney office. Hopefully those of you following this have enjoyed reading.