PMI’s Global Congress in North America 2006 

PMI’s Global Congress in North America was in a crisp, overcast, fall color-dotted Seattle, in the shadow of mountainous beauty at the Washington Convention Center. I arrived on Saturday, visited the location and saw some of the awards event, then went up to Redmond and checked in, spending a better part of my evening in a nice geeky bookshop.  

Sunday, I participated in a very engaging working session focused on Program Management Standards which were recently published by PMI. The session was filled with Program Managers, advanced in their practice, all of us with really strong opinions about the weaknesses in the current version of the Standards. I led a team to discuss and refine Knowledge Areas, which appeared to be simply adopted from the PMBOK, as were the 5 processes, without much attention to the fact that practicing program management has dramatically different alignments with the processes, and requires a different level of knowledge. We reviewed the 9 KAs – I, S, T, C, Q, H, C, R, P and determined that many of these receive attention at the program level, if one were to integrate them and consider them at a higher level than regular tactical project management. Other parts of the new standard drove our thinking toward considering broader aspects of the planning that needs to be done. One of the bigger issues with the published version was the inclusion of an undefined area in 1.7 hazily called “themes.”  No one could understand what “themes” were, so there was another breakout session addressing that whole thing. On our side, we considered the themes of benefit management, stakeholder management, and program governance, as well as the issue of risk as a framework for foundations or KAs themselves. Leveraging the matrix was something that suddenly occurred to me when we took a break, so I asked the rest of the team members what they thought if we designed the paradigm as a cube with the surface as the PMBOK Processes, and layered behind it were program and portfolio management. This idea was endorsed and nursed by the team as we defined KAs to include Selection & Scope Management; Integration Management ( including configuration and change); Benefit Management (including cost/benefit analysis, value definition and delivery and alignment of projects to overall portfolio vision); Interface Management (communication, stakeholder relationships, team & resources all belong here); and Milestone Management (so we go beyond simple scheduling and get deeper into the gating and delivery, status and risk framework).  We found that stakeholders and risk really are foundations that cut across all these KAs. Another weakness we found is that while there are inputs and outputs in Pgm Mgmt standards, there weren’t any tools and techniques, leaving an opportunity open to participate in the core team and continue developing these ideas, which I plan to do now.  

The sessions throughout the week were well thought-out, although, many were too full and we couldn’t squeeze in no matter what. Dozens of us were turned away from Christian Jensen’s LEEP session, as we were from the Rapid Project Rescue session. The best of the events I attended included HP’s Linda Ziman on how she helped her global enterprise adopt a risk framework in all aspects of engagement, including project management, sales and delivery. Another risk session was David Hillson’s session which thankfully encored on the last day, and it was brilliant, with his ideas paralleling Abraham Maslow’s theory of motivation as a reason for how the gap between project management and organizational vision can be bridged with Risk Management (inclusive of opportunity risk as well as threat risk). Ginger Levin’s expertise came through with her humorous and authentic approach to understanding and leveraging trends and innovations in Metrics-based Project Management. It was cute how she said years after writing questions for the PMP cert exam, she finally decided to take it and it was harder than just making up the questions! But she did join our secret clan now as a PMP and she is a delight both to listen to and to read, as I found when I visited the PMI Bookstore later. One of the most interesting for me was the Project Simulation session by Animesh Arora, prompting endless sleeplessness for me as I began to rethink how I analyze risks and plan for fail/flaw buffer. This session did get my mental faculties energized and something is likely to grow from it, probably leveraging some other tools in the near future, as long as other things don’t sidetrack me. I found that some sessions, like the Its all about ME (Managing Expectations) session was fun and cool to listen to, the content lacked actual advancement for experienced PMPs, and other sessions like Michel Thiry’s Matrix session and Neal Whitten’s speech had much in it that I and others like me disagreed with pretty strongly. As a board member on the Bay Area Agile Project Leadership Network, I have a deep dark interest in advancing the black arts of Agile in the operations environment, so I was really enthused to see so many Agile sessions. However, while I hoped the discussions on the evolving congruence between PMBOK and Agile would be maturing by now, I felt it was by far still lip-service, but that just opens the door for more of us to contribute research, tips and tools to the field.

While all this was exciting, the evenings were filled with added fun, as we headed Sunday night to the IIL sponsored Haunted Garden party, where I connected with Silicon Valley PMI President Harish Chinai, my new friend Lani from Cadence who was on my KA team in the morning, and many others as we donned masks and wigs and drank and danced till late. The same DJ carried all the events across the week, and he was fun, though fairly addicted to disco. Night 2 was a great Microsoft-sponsored party where SIGS got to hawk their wares to us, (it was really exciting meeting Risk SIG head, Tom Kendrick, whose book I totally love!) and great finger foods, beers and more dancing. The third party was themed Dancing with the Stars, and there were some PMs and professional dancers who got to heat the floor up. But by then, the networking had been so amazingly well-baked that I had a circle of friends, consultant Dana, the Frenchman Guillaume and the crazy & fun Jackie… and we headed upon advice of Guillaume to the Purple Wine Bar in the city. The bar was so beautiful, mesmerizing with its huge tree trunk spiral of wines from floor to second floor ceiling, and candle chandeliers, as well as the tres chic balcony lounge and bar. They had a great wine tasting menu and some pairs, like the goat cheese filled figs with Brut, and the peppery truffles with Malbec were remarkable. We then determined to find a dance bar on a Tuesday night, but the moral of the sad feet is after much walking, burning off all our drunkenness, we found no open dance bar, and I decided to call it a night, since I had 3 work-filled days at Red West planned. The added advantage of this year’s congress for me personally, was that now as a Microsoft Program Manager, with such proximity to the Redmond offices, I was able to take the energy and ideas straight from the PMI event, to the work halls and drive some cool efforts this week, without having to fly back, etc. I got a chance to connect with some cool Microsoft people as well. It was amazing meeting people from the PM DLs like Christian Jensen, WLO Tier 1 GPM David Morgen, and even an MS Project PG PM. It made me realize the huge value and responsibility we carry as representatives of such a highly respected innovative organization. Yeah, proud too.

Beer time!