Self-awareness – Best Practice in action

By William Franklin, Client Relations Director at Maven Training.

Yesterday saw 750 people register for the APM Group’s 7th annual The Best Practice Showcase. Held at the QE11 Conference Centre next to Houses of Parliament, the juxtaposition of an industry constantly seeking to evolve and adopt Best Practice in project and programme management was stark when placed alongside the current MP expenses scandals rocking UK politics.

Alan Harpham, as Chairman of the APM Group, gave the delegates and exhibitors a multi-cultural welcome that reflected some of the many countries now adopting PRINCE2® and other Best Practice products. After that, delegates entered a whirl of their own as they tried to find the first of many 'Birds of a Feather' sessions planned throughout the day. This possibly led to the early negative feeling of personal project management capabilities (see later) as many got lost and ended up in the wrong sessions. That said, the sessions themselves were well delivered on the whole with limited 'plugging' of individual organisational capabilities.

From the marketing perspective, the opportunity to hold in-depth conversations with delegates was limited as many were hurrying between Birds of a Feather sessions. Maven Training was particularly innovative in capturing delegates’ views by asking the following question: "Does your organisation run an EFFECTIVE project methodology?" with the only answers possible being YES or NO. By getting delegates to address this question up front we were then able to take the temperature of the industry. As mentioned earlier, the initial confusion over format, combined with uncertain expectations of what the day could deliver led to 67% of respondents in the morning session answering NO. After lunch we started to see a swing towards 50/50 as delegates started to see that their existing knowledge base when benchmarked against others in the industry was in fact quite strong. However, at the end of the day, the final balance of those that had confidence in their organisational methodologies was 38% with regular comments being "...but my skills and those of my team are very strong".

So what subjects were of highest concern to delegates? Interestingly enough, there was little interest in the updated PRINCE2® (2009) with many delegates recognising this was purely an evolution rather than structural change. At the top of the list of interest was a desire for implementation services from companies that had the breadth and depth of capability to deliver methodologies, irrespective of source of the method. Maven Training was therefore delighted to be able to showcase our new Wheel of Delivery (see below) where irrespective of the client maturity or project stage, they could benefit from a range of scalable implementation services.

An additional delegate request was for the three Birds of a Feather topics we spoke on to be delivered directly to clients at their offices around the country. While an unforeseen outcome from the sessions, we agreed to a small number of additional sessions to be included in our Project Health checks that clients seek from Maven Training.

Overall, the 7th Best Practice Showcase delivered what it set out to – an opportunity for experts in the industry to share experiences and learn from each other to continue the development of Best Practice with project and programme management. We look forward to seeing you all next year.

The Wheel of Delivery™
Click on the image to enlarge it

The Best Practice Showcase

We’d like to invite all of our readers, trainers, partners and clients to come and spend the day at The Best Practice Showcase on Tuesday 23rd June at the QE11 Conference Centre .

The Showcase, which is free to attend, has been going for seven years and its interactive format proves a real hit with delegates, who spend the day discussing issues, talking to experts and sharing experiences with each other.

Two of our senior personnel will be hosting Birds of a Feather sessions at the event. These sessions entail sitting round a table with around ten to fifteen other delegates and grappling with pertinent programme and project management issues – our idea of heaven!

Melanie Franklin, our CEO, will host sessions that will focus on Programme Management – where are we and where do we go next? Melanie will present a step by step guide as to how to go about establishing and implementing a programme environment in your organisation. The examples she’ll be exploring are derived from our work with public and private sector organisations. She’ll also ask delegates to share their experiences and challenges.

Susan Tuttle, Associate Trainer, will be hosting sessions on Project management – what next? Susan will discuss how project managers can get commitment from their sponsors, how to persuade line managers to release staff to work on projects, and how to engage support staff fully. The session will give those involved in project management a chance to share their experiences, and set this against our roadmap for increasing organisation wide project management capability. This is an opportunity to devise practical steps to address these issues. Using a combination of interactive examples and our in depth experience in resolving these issues, those attending this session will feel empowered to return to work and make a tangible difference.

In addition to these discussion groups, the Best Practice Showcase will also feature a full seminar programme. Emma Jones, Chief Examiner for PRINCE2® Qualifications will update delegates on the impact of the 2009 Refresh.

Emma Hilditch, the event director, says: “For the last six years 98% of delegates have left the event completely satisfied, so we are very confident of putting on an excellent day for them. They will get up-to-date news on the refreshed OGC guidance such as P3O, P3M3™ and PRINCE2. They can take active part in round table discussion sessions, with over 100 different targeted topics to choose from.”

The event is free so we’d love to see all our clients take part. Click here for details of all the sessions on offer, and to register.

The Best Practice Showcase
Tuesday 23rd June 2009
QE II Conference Centre, London
www.bestpracticeshowcase.com

BPUG Congress

Last week we attended the second annual BPUG Congress, and from the conversations we have had, we can say that there is a lot of evidence that organisations are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their approach to project management. The delegates we spoke to were of a very high calibre – and all of them had specific questions and issues which they had come to the Congress to address.

Members of our Marketing and Client Relations teams (including Craig Aldridge, Sam Tuckey, Nick Tipping and Director William Franklin), spent the two days talking to delegates and attending the sessions. William said that it was a very enjoyable couple of days and that the atmosphere was excellent because people were focused on specific questions they wanted answers to.

We had some extremely interesting conversations with delegates and were able to give help and advice to those who wanted to get on and start making a difference to their organisations by adopting Best Practice.

Our CEO Melanie Franklin found that delegates had already implemented project management and their interest had now been elevated to programme management. She said that “more senior executives are becoming aware that programme management provides a strategic route map, and they’re willing to fund programme and project offices because they realise they will achieve efficiencies that have otherwise eluded them”.


Not surprisingly, Sue Vowler’s presentation on P3O (Portfolio, Programme & Project Offices) was very well attended as delegates grappled with how to make the new guidance work in their organisations.

Perhaps the economic climate has honed the focus of board level executives to getting things done, and they want to know how initiatives such as P3O will contribute to the bottom line.

We were also delighted to meet the author of the Stepping into Project Management blog, Soma, which we all follow avidly – along with Elizabeth’s lovely PM4Girls.

BPUG and the BPUG International Congress

The Best Practice User Group is the user group for programmes, projects and risks. Their mission is “to help users adopt, use, share and shape the application of OGC Project and Programme Management Products”.

The first BPUG International Congress – which happened in February 2008 – saw over 150 delegates from nine different countries get together to discuss key programme and project management issues, as well as share experiences, ideas and success stories. Following last year’s success, the next BPUG International Congress will take place on the 10th and 11th of February 2009 at the Royal Lancaster Hotel – which overlooks London’s Hyde Park.

Once more, we are going to be attending and sponsoring this event, which focuses on the practicalities of programme and project management and provides excellent networking opportunities – thanks to its two-day format and the fun gala dinner. At last year’s BPUG Award Ceremony we won the award for “Best Demonstration of Innovation in Training” – needless to say it was a very proud moment and we look forward to cheering on the winners at this year’s ceremony (of course hoping we’ll scoop something again!).

Some of the highlights will be a session from Andy Murray on the eagerly awaited PRINCE2 2009, plus a plenary case study by Don Mason, PMO Manager, Emirates Airline Group. Don will be talking how adopting good project management governance has aided the development of Dubai’s airport.

Click here to register and we hope to see you there!