Here we go for the 1st day of the congress… location is great, Rome! The venue is fantastic Rome Cavalieri. This year, I will work on a daily summary and some deep dives later in the year…

The Networking

This is of course an important part of the congress and sharing with peers is vital to stay relevant as literally it is an exchange of information or services among individuals, groups, or institutions, thanks to Wikipedia for this… I have the luxury to meet great people including folks from diverse countries, industries and cultures… It will remain a fantastic environment to improve!

No you don’t dream selfies with Frank Saladis (for me a reference!)  and I wanted to highlight my selfie with PMI Founder, James R. Snyder, PMP

Opening General Session and Keynote Speaker: Gabor George Burt

Usually I am not a fan of these keynotes which are disconnected from our world BUT well done Gabor… This time you did hit the nail (at least mine) the references used talked to me and the move from the bathtub to the ocean via the lake and sea is making much sense to me. I discussed this with other participants and we were all in agreement.

I would say great job when you see the diversity in the audience!

PMI Salon – Turbulence and Uncertainty: How Organisations Are Addressing Global Challenges

Great panel for this topic highlighting that the change is inherent to our lives and all companies have to adapt or disappear… on the other hand nothing really new about this but some great points have been raised.

An interesting one for me was how PMs are considered in Financial services vs. Pharma companies…

A Project Manager’s Guide to Strategic Thinking and Business Value

PMI.org defined this session as designed to help project managers “upgrade” their position by providing suggestions and tips that will help transform the project manager from an implementer to a “business value manager.” This presentation addresses the importance of identifying the potential tangible financial benefits and the intangible benefits that actually determine project success and business value.

In reality, Frank Saladis has been fantastic with his knowledge and sense of humour… but I am not sure I did:

• get insight and skills enhancement for more effective business case assessment
• get the ability to identify the longer term financial value of a project investment
• understand how to become stronger strategic thinkers.

The concepts have indeed been approached and drawn in the PowerPoint but IMHO too many shortcuts to go through the thought process leading to some confusion… as we had no opportunity to ask questions during the session. I will re-read the deck as soon as I get it so that I can join the dots and revert back to Frank to help…

Don’t get me wrong, great material and fantastic speaker… but getting older I am getting also more difficult and my standards going up as well! 🙂

Lean Organisation, Strategy and Portfolio Management

PMI.org defined this session as: Our portfolios can be a balancing act, needing to allow for the free flow of ideas but also a measurable execution of strategy. By attending this session, you will be able to reflect on a lean approach to portfolio management, and how a different mental approach can make your portfolio more agile, from strategy formulation to execution. You will be able to reflect on and share lean concepts and how a different mental approach can be applied to portfolio management.

Here I must say that I have a more balanced view… I am surprised that the speaker was almost doing auto-promotion more than talking about the Lean concept… nevertheless he eventually moved into the meat!

But end of the day the goal was for us to understand:

• lean concepts and how they can be applied to organisations managing projects
• how bottlenecks impact project success and impede flexible processes
• how to integrate lean, agile, and strategy execution.

I am not sure that for the peers who are not LEAN literate will understand it by explaining in 2 minutes TIMWOOD and by the way forgot about Intellect plus spending 15 minutes building planes. This was really to high level to see how to integrate.

Am I right saying that AGILE has not really been considered? On the other hand I must say that the speaker was enthusiastic and the quality of the presentation was meeting my standards…

And the food of course

Not much to say here… really good, diverse and service excellent! I will spend more time on this on a later post about the Rome Cavalieri.