Professional Development Day - Making A Difference, Transforming, Adding Value

I'm taking a small break from my normal posts of Project Management for Applications Developers to write about an all day seminar I recently attended. The South Florida Chapter of PMI put on an extremely professional event ( as they always do). No matter how much we know, or how long we've been practicing our trade, there's always something new to learn, or something old to remember.

In recent years, I've noticed a trend in Project Management towards more & more emphasis on Soft Skills & the Professional Development Day was right in line with this. Of course the morning & afternoon keynote speakers, Vicki Hitzges & Ron Black, were there to get everyone pumped up & they succeeded admirably.

Topics included "The Process & Persona of Effective Leadership", presented by Steve Hegele, "Team Building & Influencing Skills for Leaders", by Frank Saladis (PMP), "Old Dogs - New Tricks" by Vicki Hittges, "The Art of the Project Start" by Eddie Merla (PMP), "Meeting Enterprise Goals Through Project & Portfolio Management" by Steve Romero (PMP), "A Real Risk Assessment" by Rick Morris (PMP), "The Revolutionary Strategic Project Management Maturity Model" by Gary Heerkens (PMP), "Managing Multiple Small Projects" by Sandra Rowe (PMP), "The Project Manager as Strategic Leader" by Nathaniel Quintana (PMP), "Creating Transformational Performance During a Recession" by Simone Brown, & "Facilitation Essentials for Project Leaders" by Ron Black.

Of these 11 topics, 8 of them were primarily soft skills lectures & 3 were predominately hard core process presentations. This is in keeping with current trends in Project Management & in cognizance of the fact that the vast majority of the PM's time is involved with communications, whether through status reports or negotiations on changes to scope, time or cost. Most of these topics were presented twice, once in the morning & once in the afternoon. No one person could attend more than 4 sessions, so to see them all, I would have had to clone myself at least twice. Luckily all of the presentations will be made available to South Florida Chapter Members on the Chapter website in a few days, so I can catch the ones I missed. I will say that attending a hard core process session immediately after lunch is asking a lot of someone who just ate too much.

In general there are a few things about the current state of Project Management that struck me very as worthy of mention & they don't have anything to do with any particular session.

1. The principles & processes of Project Management are applicable across industries, countries & disciplines.It doesn't matter much of you are in Software Applications Development or in Construction. It doesn't matter if you come from telecoms or from health care. The basic processes & talents of PM's are of value independently of all that.
2. Project Management is Gender, Race, Language & Age blind. I don't have the exact breakdown of attendees at this PDD, but at my table there were equal numbers of men & women, at the 2 adjacent tables, 1 had 2 more women than men & the other had 1 more man than women. We ranged in age from PM's in their twenties, to PM's in their seventies. We had native speakers of English, Spanish, Creole, Hungarian & who knows what else. The only thing that matters is results.
3. Some simple old techniques can be the most effective. Checklists, checklists, checklists. Have I forgotten anything? Oh yes, checklists!

In summary, if you get a chance to attend a major event of your peers, do it. I won't say it's painless, just that it's worth it.