Great Software firm, Madison PMI PDD and Teaching Updates

Smart PDF Converter Pro: I highly recommend this software and this company (SmartSoft). I was looking for software to convert a scanned PDF to an editable Word document. Long story short, I bought this software online - quick, seamless process. Turned out it did not do what I thought it did, which they quickly acknowledged, and they directed me to other software that would do what I needed - not theirs. Since I already have Adobe Acrobat Pro, I asked them for a refund, which they turned around in less than an hour.

High points - their software, although it did not meet my specific need, was great otherwise. Their tech support and customer service was great. They had no qualms pointing me to another source to get what I needed, and they issued a prompt refund, no questions asked. What a great firm! http://www.pdftodocconverterpro.com

Madison PMI PDD
So a couple of weeks ago, I attended and spoke at the Madison (WI) PMI Professional Development Day. It was held at Madison's Monona Terrace, which for those of you not familiar with Madison, is on the shore of Lake Monona and is a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed venue - neat place. They/we had some good keynotes, including the state's current CIO (Oskar Anderson) and the CEO of Tenrox, Rudolf Melik. Nice to see several old and newer colleagues including some folks who were at my talk at PMI-Milwaukee.

I also had the chance to be in Buck Joseph's morning session. Buck is an emeritus professor at UW-Madison, and for years taught the Persuasion and Influence Skills for Project Managers course in the UW-Madison Exec Ed Project Management certificate program. I was fortunate to have him as an instructor in the mid-90's in this capacity. Buck's style and reputation are well-known, and his presentation was standing room-only.

Now, had I known earlier that Buck was presenting at the same time as me in the afternoon, I would have been semi-depressed all day. Fortunately I did not realize this until after lunch. When I taught in the UW-Madison project management program's week-long, two- course sessions, I used to teach Managing Multiple Projects as the second course of the week and sometimes followed Buck. Talk about a hard act to follow. I received good evaluations, but one participant went as far as to say that no one should have to teach after Buck Joseph. He's that engaging and fun.

So, Buck's 3 PM session opposite mine was packed, and mine was a bit sparsely attended, as I suspected would be the case. At least with Buck's reputation, I can safely assume it was because so many people wanted to see Buck!

Teaching Updates
I am teaching a course in Project Quality Management for UW-Milwaukee on May 5 - 6. First time teaching this course for UW-M, and I am updating a fair amount of the material for this session.

UW-Platteville has asked me to teach in their M.S. in Project Management program this summer, and so I will be teaching a course called Interpersonal Skills for Virtual and Co-Located Teams. Since this is my first go at this in the UW-P program, Jeff Hathaway, another instructor, will be working with me. It is great to be graduating from UW-Platteville and then having the opportunity to get back into the program as an instructor.

Jim's response and other matters...

Jim Rapoza was kind enough to respond to my e-mail. He points out that for many people who need the kind of help with project management that good tool can provide, new processes introduced through these new tools can provide needed assistance.

In other news - initial feedback from PMI-Milwaukee last week was good. They had a nice crowd, and are at a new venue (Panos) since I last presented to this group. Next week is Madison PMI's Professional Development Day, where I am presenting "Losing Your Religion" again.

Gantthead is in the midst of a major push to expand their social networking capabilities. I am not a huge fan of this whole social networking deal, but within the context of a project management-specific site like Gantthead, it works for me.

March 3 issue of eWeek - Jim Rapoza's article on PM software

In the March 3 issue of eWeek, Jim Rapoza reviews some SAAS project management software, and states that "over the years, we've seem many interesting applications that have attempted to bring new methods and processes to project management..." There's more to his introductory generalizations, and I think Jim's point is that MS Project has been so dominant that not much innovation has been successful in the PM software arena.

The article prompted me to e-mail Jim, and to post here and elsewhere on one of my favorite soapboxes: Process before tools. As practitioner and academic in the PM field, I must again state to all that project management starts with development of good and repeatable process and then looks for the appropriate tools to automate and streamline a good process.

A good PM can excellently manage projects with a whiteboard and an abacus. Most PMs I know still consider Excel to be the ultimate PM tool. Many, many people make the mistake of thinking that because they have selected and implemented MS Project (or some other PM software) they are "doing project management."

My point - the article seems to infer that new PM software applications should drive change in the way projects are managed - not so. Good project management practices are independent of software. The software selected should support a PM specialization/practice area or organization's successful processes, not determine or drive them.

Jim's article talks about how one of the new programs (LiquidPlanner, which I really like the look of) addresses project management's general intolerance for uncertainty despite constant experience that the dates and estimates we PMs give with such confidence are in fact given with varying degrees of uncertainty. This is not by choice.

Project management does not generally tolerate uncertainty because the people paying for projects do not tolerate it. The key here is that there are process efforts in place, especially around software development planning, scheduling and control, that emphasize experiential estimating. These new tools seem to support this, but development of good process is still king.

Once project sponsors learn to accept some inherent uncertainty and PM processes evolve to manage and communicate this effectively, then the software can help support and streamline the management process. Software cannot and should not drive the way projects are managed.

Upcoming Speaking Engagements

I'll be presenting "Losing Your Religion" at the Madison/South-Central Wisconsin PMI Chapter's Professional Development Day on April 18. My colleague David Antonioni will be presenting his Stakeholder Management Framework as well, so it will be a reprise of our presentations in Sydney.

I'll be presenting on "Improving Organizational Project Management" April 2 at PMI-Milwaukee. Very kind of PMI-Milwaukee to have me back - they are a great chapter with well-attended meetings.

If you are in the area, look forward to seeing you there.

My paper - PMI Asia-Pacific Global Conference

In case anyone is interested, I've posted the paper I presented at the PMI Global Conference in Sydney last week. Here's the link - it's on my website.

http://www.sdbworks.com/APGC_2008_paper.htm

I'll be delivering this same presentation in April at the Madison, WI PMI Chapter's Professional Development Day. I am currently working on paper and seminar proposals for PMI's 2009 GCs and SeminarsWorld. It would be great to get to another GC as a presenter, or as a seminar presenter.

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.

PMI Asia Pacific Global Conference - Day 2

I spent the morning in two good sessions on project portfolio management. The first, delivered by Sandeep Marthur (currently of the Commercial Bank of Australia where he is deeply involved in project portfolio management), discussed the approach used there to manage portfolios and provided a case study in which addition of two strategic projects to a scheduled release of projects within the portfolio was evaluated within the context of that portfolio's goals and constraints.

Sandeep had some interesting points with regard to portfolio management discipline. One striking point was the concept that in most companies, the senior leadership up through the board of directors generally does not know if poor portfolio management strategies or poor project execution is the reason that many firms feel they do not receive the full expected value from their portfolios. His point was that senior leadership may very well focus their energies in the wrong areas, attempting to fix execution when in fact they are selecting poor projects, or worse have no strategy and process for managing the portfolio.

Sandeep spent some time on the PMI portfolio management process groups and also reminded me of the distinction between program management and portfolio management: Program management focuses on executing the projects right, where as portfolio management focuses on ensuring the right projects are being executed.

Sandeep was followed by Stephen Gorfein, a consultant in the field of project and portfolio management with a deep background in aerospace companies, having worked at one point for Howard Hughes. Stephen's discussion of portfolio management was more focused on the executive level processes that need to be in place to ensure effective portfolio management.

Interesting points from Stephen included the concept that portfolio management failures occur at the C-level and generally not due to actions or decisions below this level. Stephan also noted (as did Sandeep) the importance of having enterprise project management systems and data to feed the portfolio management process, noting that much of what is currently in the marketplace is too complex to be usable by many of those who need to develop and manage this type of data.

Following the extended lunch break, I sat through a rather poorly delivered and uninspired presentation on stakeholder management. It looked like the pain was going to end 30 minutes early as the presenter wrapped up, but then she ended with a controversial statement about being motivated solely by reward (versus recognition) at this stage of her career. So instead of getting loose a little early, many in the audience suddely felt compelled to bat this topic around for 20 minutes. Outcomes: Most people think that recognition is at least as important a motivator as reward.

The poor early session was more than offset by SoonKheng Koor's fantastic presentaion on Program Risk Management on Asian High-Profile Mega Project Success Stories. Presented by the Information Technology and Telecommunications Special Interest Group, SK's presetation was high-energy, very humorous, and full of excellent insight into risks that can occur in various areas in large multi-national, multi-cultural projects. He used case study examples from each of five huge airport projects he's worked on since the late 1990's, walking us through the development and resolutions of risk situations from each and how they could be avoided. He closed with insight on how the good program risk manager will never be noticed due to good risk management techniques while the crisis manager will be high-profile, rescuing projects from risks that could have been avoided through better risk management.

The Taste of Australia reception at the Museum of Contemporary Art got us all quickly out of learning mode and into networking and relaxation mode. Located near the Rocks area and with a spectacular view of Sydney Harbour, the Museum served as a great location for a great reception, with what looked like nearly all of the 1000+ attendees at the reception. Conversations with people from around the Asia Pacific region were interspersed by greetings from other Wisconsinites who had somehow found their way here. I followed this with dinner at one of the Rocks great restaurants with my old friends and colleagues Tony Munos and David Antonioni from Wisconsin and the UW System and new friends and colleagues Derek Walker and Paul Steinfort of Melbourne.

As I noted in yesterday's post, the energy level and opportunities for learning here are amazing. The most interesting conversations of my day were with a woman who has spent the last several years in Australia earning her master's degree in project management and then doing project management consulting, but is planning to return to her home in Indonesia to take over her family's businesses in marine logistics, shipbuilding and seaport construction.

The interesting thing here is how her decision to do this is in part motivated by the realization that all of the project management practices she's learned and applied over the last few years can be leveraged to projectize and streamline the various businesses and ventures of her family's company, leading to efficiencies and growth that might not otherwise be possible.