Bi-Monthly Project Management Seminars

Presentation given to the Project Management Institute Japan International Committee on the business case for Project Management Seminars in English.

Introduction

The Project Management Institute Japan currently has about 3,000 members. Actually, Japan has 28,000 PMI members.  Globally, PMI has almost .5 million members. The PMIJ-International Committee exists to support PMIJ in International project management.  Of the 28,000 PMI members residing in Japan 800 are non-Japanese. We are not communicating with this existing group of Project Managers. Who are they? What do they need? We, The Project Management Japan International Committee do not know!

Why I joined PMIJ-International Committee.

I joined the PMIJ International Committee for personal reasons. One is to socialize, and communicate with other interested in similar things. I also love Japanese Business concepts and can improve my performance as a project manager.

Current Support in Japan for non-Japanese PMI members.

Currently, there is ZERO English Language communication or Support for the non-Japanese Speaking, reading community of Project Managers. There is no bridge to communicate with the 800 non-Japanese Project Mangers performing project Management in Japan.

Benefits to a community of International Project Managers.

If we can engage the 800 Project Managers living in Japan, we can create a community. A community of Project Managers in Japan will strengthen PMIJ. The more support we can provide for our Organization the more support we can get in the International Committee. As a strong community we can help each other. We can make more meaningful connections around the globe. We can solve professional problems better. We can improve as individuals.

Why are here in the International Committee?

Japanese philosophy of Takara Bune involves many different gods  all in the same boat. We are all in the same boat and by working together and helping each other we can have wisdom, happiness, long life and wealth.

Today, we are undergoing extreme data overload. There are additional layers of complexity in technology. Complexity in Projects that span decades, time zones, languages, cultures in addition to the technology. The base I am most familiar with is The PMBOK. In 2009 we are in the Fourth Edition of The PMBOK. Where are we in terms of Knowledge and the Book?

Mayan Yin Yang

I would argue that we are in the right place in time.

The PMBOK Code some would argue is preparing people the wrong way. There is some tension in the Global Project Management Community. Some argue that standards, controls, and hard systems are the wrong tools for today. The Pirates Code as set forth by Morgan and Bartholomew can be a metaphor for our dilemma.

Elizabeth Swann

wait, you have to take me to shore, according to the code of the Order of the Brethren

Captain Barbosa

first, your return to shore was not part of our negotiations nor our agreement, so it must do nothing, and secondly you must be a pirate for the Pirate’s Code to apply and you’re not, and thirdly the code is more of what you call guidelines than actual rules, welcome aboard the Black Pearl, Miss Turner

From Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

We can preserve the solid foundation of The PMBOK Guide and Develop New Frameworks at the same time. The books and organizations need to have a baseline, we have to have a control point with which to measure change. But this is not a book this is interactive social media, you are participating as a reader. What we need you to do to bring your humanity to the argument you have to tag the chaos. If you just want to read and perhaps leave a comment you don’t need to go any farther. But if you want to participate in the Revolution, Get yourself a nice cold drink and get ready to Login and Password.

In this next major revolution you are either a reader or a writer. I do not count casual comments in someone else blog as being a writer. We have to make you a writer. Luckily it is free and easy. Get yourself a nice cold drink and get ready to Login and Password.

I use Firefox as the primary work horse, I also extensively use opera, chrome, safari and iexplorer. They are cool and being web savy means that it is ok to divide your life into different applications. You can have multiple gmail accounts open in different browsers is one reason I use it. So get yourself I nice fresh gmail account, it is best to have your personal name on it. Make a photo of yourself. Now join the ecosystem.

Once you establish your accounts, You will have a powerful tool kit to collect, filter and create. Since we are focused on progressing  the Global Project Management Body of Knowledge. Where to start? Why we start with the Google of course.

Log into Google Reader. How does it work? One Way is to Copy and paste this Url into the add subscription window. You just made added a feed that will update for you. Next click on Share with note.

Now you are actually creating content. You can share this content with people.  This is part of Read/Write Culture.

Now, to Alltop this Alltop Project Management Link here, link it to your Google Reader.  Alltop is a kind of most linked blogs.  Many of the popular blogs are focusing on Fundamentals of Project Management.

Next, please go to  Yahoo pipes, I have been using this Pipe here. This will be one of our first tasks. We are going to need to make some beautiful pipes as a community. Now, since you are logged into your google account, you can easily subscribe to your Google Reader using a button on the page and presto it goes into your Google Reader.

Getting, a little more deeper are we? It gets better. Make sure you are logged into Google and next go to your Feedly home page. Now it should be starting to fill up and clean out.  Feedly, is very powerful.  It is compares and organizes your feeds what is also being linked to in other Social Networks For example Google Reader, Delicious, Twitter and Others.  The most popular items as commented on by actual readers is pushed up.

I hope you enjoy your ability to munge (Filter Peta bytes of Data) and incredible amount of rich information.

But if you remember we have a problem. The problem is our projects our facing intense complexity. Even though we are from all around the world separated by time, language and culture we still need to find a way to work together. The Japanese say it is ten times easier to criticize than to create a solution.

When you learn something share it. Write it down and publish your blog, take a picture make a video. Post it on twitter, our Yahoo pipe should pick it up, we can push the best content up in Friend Feed, and as a community we can improve.

By Using Yahoo pipes we can work together to study the data coming in. We can have it machine translated from many languages in real time. We can Study some wicked problem in detail, post it for peer review, we can change, we can learn. The tacit knowledge that emerges from this open mega project will be translated into actions. These actions will be evaluated for soundness and eventually they will be brought into the baseline. The PMBOK Code the path of technology.

I owe deep acknowledgment to Robert Scoble, Lawerence Lessig and many others that I have discovered over the last year.

Updated July 7, 2008.

FriendFeed offers Real Time Search, Filesharing, and Threaded Discussions.  The API is open and it may be integrated into many other powerful ways.  Imagine your favorite group in LinkedIn, but it is open search able, scalable, linkable recyclable with all of your other social networking that is open in one place.

I recommend you install the “Share of FreindFeed tool bar link”.  When you find an article that is interesting for discussion you can use the Bookmark link to select text, images and post a comment.  That comment can post in various groups, and also to Twitter in one stroke.

It provides a platform to have threaded open discussions.

Free of Advertising, free of banner ads.

Perfect for the creation of new Knowledge.  Leveraging Distributed Collaborative Communication.

The combination of social networking is very powerful.

I reserve some rights to clean this up, this post is a little messy…..

The PMBOK Guide Fourth Edition has been revised.  This is an important milestone for Project Managers around the globe.  As a Standard the PMBOK is indispensable because of its translation, wide spread global acceptance and the critical importance of providing people with a reference with which to communicate.  I always carry the localized translations when I am working on a project in China, Japan or Asia.  Having a common set of tools is the first step in a successful communication loop. Once again the PMBOK is changing.  There have been many great blog posts, conferences and lectures about the changes.  There is one change that  is critical.  The major change is the deletion of a “Create a Preliminary Scope Statement”.  This was found in the Initiate phase in the Third Edition.  Why has the global community decided to delete this?  Is this a good idea?

I think so.  There was ambiguity and confusion between 2 scope statement documents.  The Initiation  is the start it is the beginning.  Creating the Preliminary Scope Statement was Planning.  Now it is very clear.  Scope is Planning.  There is one more change that is equally critically important.  Now the first area in Planning is Collect Requirements.  This has been clarified to focus on the stakeholders.

People are what make projects work, and the lessons learned from the project management literature have shown that setting common expectations is critical. For example “Project Success: A Cultural Framework” PMI Journal Vol. 35, No1, 30-45, ISSN 8756-9728/03 Stress creating a “Project Management Subculture”.  This is the culture of common language, collaborative teams and competent project managers.  There is a wide selection of literature which talks about the complexity of communicating across time, place and culture.

PMBOK Fourth Edition has placed more emphasis on people.  People provide the requirements.  The process of discovering those requirements are soft skills.  PMBOK Fourth Edition 5.1 Collect requirements guide emphasizes creativity, collaboration and documentation.  In fact these same soft skills are repeated in managing Risk, Quality and other areas.  These skills are focused on people and creating Culture.  Project Culture is about change.  We all know that fundamental change is difficult to achieve.  Taking the time to use the PMBOK Guide to collect requirements is essential.  Fundamentally, speed and agility may not be the essence when you consider that creating Culture takes time.  Good Project Management is taking the time to communicate with each other about the Requirements beyond micro messages, and stand up meetings.

What do you think?  Does the Fourth Edition clarify Scope Management and place more emphasis on People?