May 3, 2017 • 4

Italy Rome PMI EMEA Congress 2017 Day 3

Here we go for the 3rd and last 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… If you did not check Italy Rome PMI EMEA Congress 2017 Day 1 or Italy Rome PMI EMEA Congress 2017 Day 2 yet, go for it

The Networking

Today was really more than a WOAW day in terms of networking it was really amazing… met even more new peoplee and the Twitter competition was a fantastic tool to meet even more people and share even more… this looked like being exponential! So glad I won that competiition! bur High repect to Alexandre, Omnia and Farah as we had a great time! The location and the way the sessions have been planned really helped this and I know I will miss it tomorrow…

Met great people, sharing was fantastic… new things to bring to the work place… Thanks to all for this!

Enterprise Agile Transformation: Organisational Changes and the Role of the PMO

PMI.org defined this session as: Learn how a bank underwent an enterprise-level agile transformation, which became the largest scrum organisation in Eastern Europe and the Middle East within one year. Understand the motivations underlying the transformation decision, research and examples of transformation methods, critical steps for a successful transformation, the business results, and how the organisation is sustaining agility.

The purpose of the presentation was threefold:

how to implement an enterprise-level agile transformation in their organisation, and the role of the PMO
details of different methods to enable a successful agile transformation through both literature review and practice
organisational rituals for sustaining agility

I had trouble to get focused as Burak is highly knowledgeable but does not come across as the leader who did all that and unfortunately remained up there at 36,000 feet. The presentation content was ok but as listed for intermediate level, not sure it was necessary to go back to Toyota, etc… we all heard that 1,000 times now I assume!

What annoyed me in this was that the PMO was barely mentioned and it is the title of the session… some told me they felt it was not right… I won’t go that far as the content was relevant and from an academic perspective, nothing sounded wrong but gee a bit of enthusiasm would have helped to sell the story that by the way is clearly a success story!

I don’t like talking about cosmetics but please red or yellow on black… really! It was ugly, picks show that and spelling mistakes… not at this level…

Nevertheless even if this sounds negative, it is not as Burak has nicely reacted to my comments on Twitter and accepted a selfie (here above). So I guess my frustration will stay as I still wonder how the PMO really helped on this…

Next level communication: The Integrated Life Cycle Management Framework

PMI.org defined this session as: Do you need to break down silos in your organisation? This session will offer an innovative perspective for resolving the silo phenomenon between different business units and the PMO within an organisation. Explore how the integrated life cycle management framework (IMLF) bridges the gap between different business units and functionalities, enhances synergy and collaboration, and ultimately can help the organisation increase its profits.

I had no worries about Saadi as he is an experienced speaker being able to face technical issues with a smile and also getting the attention from the audience! Anyway, he had of course to deliver per commitment… i.e. to identify six factors that support proper integration between project management and other functional units, such as marketing and business development.

He cracked it in a heartbeat as all the theory is in his back-pocket and his way of simplifying and make it instantly understandable shows not only the presentation skills but also how he masters his domain! It was like a privilege to be in that room and go through the story because the business case was obvious and the art of the win-win had been nicely exposed BUT based on academic data researches making this really solid!
Great job and looking forward to being there again!

Fostering Organisational Change by Building a PMO with an Agile Approach

PMI.org defined this session as: Using a real-world case study, this session will describe how organisational change management can be fostered by implementing a PMO using non-traditional approaches inspired from agile approaches. Attendees will be able to diagnose challenges that impede such initiatives and also learn about techniques that proved successful in meeting the objectives of organisational change management at a major public-sector organisation in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region.

Not my first time listening to the couple here 🙂 and attaining these four objectives will be piece of cake for this duo:

how to diagnose challenges which plague typical PMO implementations
principles of change management that can be applied during PMO implementations or transformations
how to use agile approach, tools and techniques to build a value based PMO
how to employ the art of simplicity, or “Picasso Approach,” in implementing PMOs to clip unnecessary details from processes and tools.

Showing here a small part of the presentation as I may make a specific post for this one… As expected they excelled in delivering this session with clear and concrete examples as they did before! You can feel the experience and the time spent rehearsing and playing the presentation…. Flawless and all objectives achieved without trouble.

On the other hand, there is no cutting edge content here and it begins now to be music to our ears instead of what you would expect i.e. new ways of thinking, new thoughts or trends!

Closing Keynote Magnus Lindkvist.

Ok talking about new ways of thinking, new thoughts or trends… this guy is your man! What a show…