PMSA Transitions 2009 Thoughts
We are now T+2 days since Transactions 2009 completed (see www.pmsatransitions2009.com). As one of the core team members and attendees, I have a few project related thoughts.
- This was our first public conference and there was a lot of lessons learned. We got fantastic feedback overall and most of the major things went well. That said, the devil is in the details and there were a lot of details that we got wrong or missed. Small things, but in retrospect, more important than they seemed.
- Regarding risk management and specifically risk acceptance (saying ok, we can live with this if it happens), accepting a risk is something that you should give extreme consideration to. There is a huge difference between thinking about something that might happen and saying I will be able to live with this and actually being in the movement and having that risk almost occur. Having a room full of attendees and thinking your not going to deliver on a promise is not a place I want to be in again (note that the issue resolved it’s self in the end).
- A high performance team can make many, many things look easy. This event was so smooth (other than the early problem just referenced) that I was kind of shocked. I can’t even say we spent a lot of time ‘forming’ our team, we just all knew what to do and when to do it. I think there will be some serious discussion of this in our post mortem
- This kind of event is not worth doing if you don’t plan to do it again. The truth of the matter is that planning for next years conference began about 12 hours before this event actually executed. Most of our side conversations during and since the event have been about next year. This was the first time we did this and the first time we reached out and built relationships with the PM community, if we didn’t plan on doing this again, I think a huge amount of goodwill and credibility would be lost.
More thoughts on this event in the near future, in a less stream of consciousness tone.
A New Site
www.PMDecisionSciences.com is not yet active, but is the future home of this blog and my efforts within the PM community. Our goal is to develop a full service PM portal for the local DC Metro Area and then grow it to an international level over time. What will be there?
- Weekly career profiles on local project managers
- Examinations of projects and other efforts
- Discussion on project management theory
- White papers and more
- Local events, such as a monthly networking happy hour
- and much more!!
I will post an announcement when the site goes active and this blog is moved over there.
