by Sarah Green, Director of Pyramid Coaching & Consulting In today's fast-paced business world, organisations are constantly searching for innovative ways to elevate their value and impact while maintaining a balanced workload for their employees. An often overlooked but potent strategy to achieve this is leveraging visibility. In a recent webi...
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@Project Management UK Chapter Changemakers Toastmasters Club, is one of the fastest growing Clubs in all @Toastmasters International UK & Ireland, and is rapidly approaching its first year anniversary, going from zero to fully Chartered in just six weeks back in 2022! Today, it is celebrating having just achieved 'President's Distinguished' St...
Are you 'Tired of Teams?', feeling 'Zoomed out?' or stuck on 'Mute?' Clearly, as project professionals, we've all had to contend with new ways of working over the last couple of years. None more so than remote working and the more permanent move to the virtual world of communication. It's tough to master, energy draining and, increasingly, it's fil...
Imagine a gender-equal world. A world free of gender bias, stereotypes, and discrimination. A world that is fair and impartial and where gender differences are valued and celebrated. Together we can achieve gender equality. Collectively we can #EmbraceEquity. 2023 the Year to #EmbraceEquity As we all know, project management industries, and profess...
Celebrating United Nations International Women's Day Estelle Detrembleur reports on the recent PMI UK conference#IWD2022 #BreakTheBias "Imagine a world free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination. A world that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive. A world where difference is valued and celebrated. Together we can forge women's equa...
Tunde Ajia, Director of Operations, PMI (UK), considers the skills necessary to be a great project manager. A project manager is someone who applies knowledge, skills, tools, and procedures to project activities to satisfy project objectives and requirements. What constitutes a good project manager, on the other hand, might vary d...
The business climate has changed immeasurably, even more so since Covid and the work-from-home ethos. To optimize project results and maximize the use of available resources, it has become necessary for project managers to understand and apply the principles of Emotional Intelligence (EQ). Project managers must create a climate in which clients, te...
By Hugo Minney PhD This article focus on an important soft skill - Emotional Quotient (EQ). EQ is about understanding yourself and others - understanding the emotions that can run high, that can either get in the way of your own performance, or get in the way of the message you are trying to convey. But there's a next generation developm...
In the first part of this two part blog, Estelle Detrembleur explained the meaning of Net Zero, and why it is so important. In this second article Estelle explains what we need to do within that as a project community. Every contribution to Net Zero counts Since climate change affects all projects it is important to perform a review of its&nb...
NetZero has been the subject of much discussion. The recent UN conference on Climate Change (COP26) re-affirmed the goal of achieving 'Net Zero' by around mid-century. But what exactly does this mean, and how does this goal relate to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals? In this first of two articles Estelle Detrembleur gives us some answers. And...
On International Project Management Day, November 4th, Dr David Hillson delivered a thought provoking yet practical lecture on 'Managing Risk for Sustainable Business' at the University of Westminster. Yes, David was at the university, as was about half of his audience, this being the first hybrid event PMI ventured in after lockdown. It was great ...
One of the most encouraging aspects of the recent PMI UK Net Zero Conference was the focus on practicality: what is it that the project management community can actively do to contribute to climate action. Following on from their presentation at the conference, Amy Brereton of Enactus UK tells us more about the activities of the organisation, the i...
Would you like to know more about yourself? Would you like to know why you act and react in certain ways? Would you like to understand why change and learning is sometimes difficult, and sometimes easy? Would you like to understand and predict actions or reactions of your colleagues / stakeholders under specific conditions? If yes, then read on! Th...
By Dr Rick Graham PMP A recent article asked what COP26 (26thUN Climate Change Conference, Glasgow, Autumn 2021) has to do with project management. The clear answer: projects deliver the technology and behavioural changes necessary to meet our climate targets. 'Projects are where the rubber meets the road'. In addition to such critical value-...
By Franco Guarrella, PMI UK Chapter We are at the gates of a second epochal industrial revolution. The first started in the UK in the 18th century and was characterised by the introduction of mass production machinery and the energy needed to drive it. Energy has irreversibly transformed the way we live, both from a social and technological p...
By Franco Guarrella, PMI UK Chapter You are invited to join the the PM Book Club! This is open to all members of the projects community, but is organised and promoted by PMI UK Chapter members and has a thriving PMI UK membership. The club is a great opportunity to be actively engaged and to share the latest thinking around project management...
The Project Management Institute (PMI) is the world's leading project management organisation with almost 700,000 global members and 325 local chapters internationally. The UK chapter is entirely volunteer-led and provides a range of benefits to our 3,000 PMI UK members - as well as the wider profession and project economy. Of course we can simply ...
Following my recent PMI UK webinar Integrating Design Thinking on Your Projects, I would like to share some thoughts on Design Thinking that could be useful to project leaders when considering deploying the methodology within their teams. In today's business environment, project leaders must look beyond the foundational knowledge of managing projec...
You may not know it, but you are already an expert on presentation skills. I mean, how many presentations both good, and bad, have you suffered in your time at work? Clearly you can recognise a 'good' presentation and a 'bad' presentation, but let's take a look at what makes a presentation so. More importantly let's look at what you can do to impro...
Benchmarking was the subject of a PMI Webinar in May 2019 with Tim Podesta sharing his experience and expertise of the subject. Supported by Merv Wyeth, and using Mentimeter for live interaction, the audience represented a diverse group in terms of project roles and industries - from services & software to government & construction. Looking...
Introduction A Target Operating Model (TOM) is a blueprint for an organisation's desired state after a change has taken place. An example would be where the organisation wants to understand the impacts of a structural change intended to increase efficiencies or to allow growth. Systematic use of the model gives a fuller understanding of the benefit...
Purpose of the business case The business case provides a justification for undertaking the project, providing a rationale for this solution. It assesses the benefits, cost, and risks, as well as alternative options and competing demands for scarce resource and budget. Upon approval by decision makers, the business case provides a forecast, a...
What Has COP26 Got To Do With Project Management? The Paris Agreement, adopted at the Paris climate conference (COP21) in December 2015, set out a legally binding framework to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. Some 196 countries (including th...
Following my recent PMI UK webinar Working successfully with the Indian Culture, here are some thoughts on Jugaad – a concept I mentioned during the session. 16 March 2009 – Indian Jugaad As a cross-culturalist, it is fascinating to become immersed in a less familiar culture and find out something new. It tends to happen quite quickly, as you...
In February my friend and colleague Jeremy Cassell delivered a PMI webinar on influencing and many of you attended. There are many elements of that webinar that overlap with this piece, but here my focus is on pitching. There is a curious balance that a Project Manager has to strike when pitching. Too little focus on the risks that the project enta...
On 13 January the Bournemouth University Project Management Day, an event that marks the multi-year collaboration between the Bournemouth University and the PMI UK Chapter, took place virtually because of the COVID-19 pandemic instead of the usual on-campus event. Project Management Day is dedicated to the development of the Project Management prof...
Future Proofing Your Career Through Professional Development Professional Development often tops the list for many of us when we formulate our goals - for example for the New Year. Whether you have your sights set on landing a new position, earning, or retaining a credential, or expanding your business contribution by gaining new skills, the PMI Di...
"PMI UK members/volunteers design and deliver many high-quality digital events which help project practitioners share knowledge and experience and learn and develop. Sometimes it is not possible to attend a particular event. In 2020 we tackled this issue." Our response to Covid-19 2020 was a particularly demanding year; the Covid-19 pandemic brough...
80% of the qualities required to be successful are attitude based therefore success is within your control. In the modern world a career will span a number of decades, consequently it is not unusual for individuals to have a number of different careers throughout their working lives. An individual may work in one profession, discipline or industry ...
UK Parliament's Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) has delivered a Report titled "Delivering the Government's infrastructure commitments through major projects (July 2020)" about the Government Major Project Portfolio (GMPP), of which a significant proportion of the value are related to infrastructure projects (£214b...
PMI UK, the UK chapter of the world's leading project management organisation, has seen attendance of its online webinars double during the Coronavirus lockdown. Over the last four months, over 2,500 people have taken part in 22 widely acclaimed PMI UK webinars covering topics such as the strategic/future PMO, value and benefits realisation managem...
"May you live in interesting times" is often cited as a Chinese curse. It highlights the dilemma that we prefer having interesting things going on, but perhaps not when we have no control over them. The same applies to lock-down It's great working from home because I can be flexible with my time. I can work as long as I like into th...
This article is inspired by : "The LEAN mindset : Ask the right questions.", a book written by Tom and Mary Poppendieck (ISBN 13 : 978-0-321-89690-2). All IPs are therefore acknowledged. In 1950, as George Merck, the then CEO of the pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. was retiring, he explained the underlying philosophy that drove its success : "W...
The PMP® exam format will be changing drastically on the 2nd of January 2021. It was originally scheduled to change this month (June 2020), but PMI® took the decision to extend the current format until the 31st of December 2020, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. What is changing? From next year, the 200 multiple choice questions will be grouped...
Technology trends are converging. Accelerating development, collaboration, speeding adoption, and inspiring innovation are adding to the fast pace of change in all industries. This pace of change is often affected when a technological innovation gathers critical mass in terms of distribution base, acceptances, and capability. For every technology t...
It is interesting to listen to people's perception of project management—even those within the profession, including project managers, have different perceptions and definitions of what the profession encompasses. Project management covers the development and execution of a specific project isolated from day-to-day operations. Often a project ...
We face a skills crisis across the UK technology market. Whether you believe the skills businesses need are in the wrong place, or that talent pools simply don't exist, there is huge pressure placed on the careers market. Let's take data science as an example. In the US, there are projected to be 150,000 unfilled vacancies—IBM predicts demand to gr...
In order to get the best out of any project, it is important that a clear and concise project proposal is written, and one that is personalised for each project. The key of a project proposal is to help the project manager structure documents, so that focus is on the proposed plan and its related materials. Empathy with the end user is crucial. Thi...