Železna cesta 14
1000 Ljubljana
Slovenija
Email: info@pmi-slo.org
A value-creating PMO is a business imperative, not just a PM function
Join us for the PM4Real event on Wednesday, January 29, 2025 at 5 p.m. This time's guest will be Gregor Androjna, a recognized expert in the field of project management and establishment of project offices (PMO). With more than 20 years of experience gained in the fields of energy production, mechanical systems and production line assembly, Gregor has become one of the leading consultants for organizations that want to optimize their projects, portfolios and strategic goals.
Event description: Projects are not just about meeting goals within time, scope and cost. The true value of projects only becomes apparent when their results are used and bring business benefits. However, often challenges such as overload, poor communication, resistance to change and unclear goals affect the success of projects and the satisfaction of all involved.
At this event, we will explore how to align project management with business strategy and how to use the golden triangle – project management, change management and leadership – to achieve optimal results. We will learn how a project management office (PMO) can create value for an organization, connect project teams and management, and ensure that the right things are done the right way.
About the lecturer:
Using the innovative Impact Engine System methodology developed by PMO Strategies, Gregor helps organizations identify and solve fundamental challenges and implement practices that bring measurable results. His approach involves combining technical knowledge, management skills and a human approach to overcome obstacles and achieve optimal productivity and performance.
Gregor is passionate about transforming complex processes into effective solutions that create value for both individuals and organizations. At the PM4Real event, he will share with us his experience, strategies and approaches for aligning project management with long-term business goals. Join us and gain insight into project management best practices with an appreciation for the human and business aspects of projects.
The event will take place in a hybrid format:
Schedule: 17:00 – Introduction and presentation 17:10 – Lecture by Gregor Androjna 17:50 – Discussion and questions 18:20 – Conclusion
Pridružite se nam in spoznajte, kako lahko s projekti dosežete resnično vrednost!
In a happy December atmosphere, we invite all members of PMI Slovenia, Ljubljana Chapter to the last meeting of the year in a more relaxed atmosphere - PM4Bowling. The meeting will take place on December 4 at 5 p.m. in the pleasant surroundings of Club 300, at Regentova cesta 35. Registrations are possible until December 30 at 5 p.m. This time the theme of the meeting will be focused on teamwork. Join us and let's discover useful tips together and exchange experiences in a pleasant atmosphere. See you soon!
How to successfully manage remote projects and overcome communication challenges on platforms such as Teams?
Join us for the PM4Real event on Thursday, November 21, 2024 at 5 p.m. This time's guest will be Nikolaj Candellari, an experienced project manager and leading data analyst at CyberGrid. The event, which will take place both in the premises of A1 Ameriška ulica 4, 1000 Ljubljana and via the Teams online platform, offers an opportunity to gain insight into the challenges and practices of remote project management and includes topics such as analytics, data modeling and energy. For anyone planning to attend live, parking is available in the DiVino restaurant or IKEA parking lot.
We associate project management with meetings, status updates and work on location. After the pandemic, however, the principle of remote project management is appearing more and more often, in which project managers direct their teams and check their progress only via communication platforms from the home office. At our next meeting, we will check why this form of project management is on the rise, under what conditions it is even feasible, and what are the experiences of project managers in such a position. Finally, we will compare the positive and negative sides of this type of work and open a debate about good practices.
About the lecturer:
Nikolaj Candellari is a project manager and lead data analyst at CyberGrid. His primary responsibilities include managing a commercial project in Bulgaria and the EU-funded InterSTORE research and development project. Previously, Nikolaj worked as a data analyst in the banking system, where he became interested in data modeling. This prompted him to start modeling the energy market within CyberGrid's analytics team. Nikolaj graduated in financial mathematics and recently completed a master's degree in applied statistics at the University of Ljubljana. He came into contact with PMI Slovenia - Ljubljana Chapter this year mainly because of his interest in obtaining a CAPM license.
Register for the PM4Real event and take advantage of the opportunity for new knowledge, networking and insight into the field of data modeling and project management in the energy sector.
How can project managers harness the potential of artificial intelligence?
We invite you to PM4Real, which will take place on Tuesday, October 22, 2024, at 5:00 p.m. hours in premises A1, Ameriška ulica 4, 1000 Ljubljana. The event will also be available online via Zoom, so you can participate from anywhere.
About the lecturer:
Our guest will be Primož Frelih, an expert with more than 20 years of experience in the field of project management and development of digital products. Copilot), NLP and machine learning. He is currently upgrading his career by incorporating new technologies into his projects, among others he has obtained the PMI certifications Data Landscape of GenAI for Project Managers and Generative AI Overview for Project Managers.
At the meeting, he will share with us his experiences on how AI is becoming a key tool for modern project managers, and present the challenges and opportunities that AI brings. At the same time, we will also discuss ethical challenges, GDPR, the protection of business information, PMI Infinity and how artificial intelligence affects the role of the project manager.
Don't miss your chance to see how AI can shape the future of project management!
To register for the event, sign up below.
We invite you to the event, which will take place on Thursday, November 21, 2024, at 6:00 p.m. hours online in cooperation with the PMI Czech chapter.
Is your team or project supposed to “be agile?” It might not feel like it if you have years of backlogs, standups are individual status reports, and everyone is still multitasking. People on a project want to do a great job. But the way you work is very similar to the "agile" death march.
There is a reason you feel this way. You are using false agility - a waterfall lifecycle masquerading as an agile approach. Worse, false agility is the norm in our industry. No one has to work like this.
Your management doesn't care about "agile" - but they do care about agile. Instead of fake agile, you can assess your culture, project and product risks to choose a different approach. You can choose how you interact so you can iterate on features and when it delivers value. When you do, you're more likely to discover real agility and an easier way to work.
Learning objectives
About the speaker:
Johanna Rothman, "pragmatic leader", she offers candid advice for your challenging problems. She works with leaders and teams to learn to see practical alternatives that could be more effective. With these choices, they can choose what and how to customize product development. As a result, its clients become more efficient and enjoy better business results. With her signature practicality and humor, Johanna is the author of 20 books, hundreds of articles and blog posts on many aspects of product development. Her latest book is Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risk, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility.
Find her monthly newsletter and blogs at jrothman.com and createadaptablelife.com. The event will represent 1 PDU. It will be held in English and is open with free entry.
Join the PMI Slovenia association for research
We invite you to the event, which will take place on Thursday, November 21, 2024, at 6:00 p.m. hours online in cooperation with the PMI Czech chapter.
Is your team or project supposed to “be agile?” It might not feel like it if you have years of backlogs, standups are individual status reports, and everyone is still multitasking. People on a project want to do a great job. But the way you work is very similar to the "agile" death march.
There is a reason you feel this way. You are using false agility - a waterfall lifecycle masquerading as an agile approach. Worse, false agility is the norm in our industry. No one has to work like this.
Your management doesn't care about "agile" - but they do care about agile. Instead of fake agile, you can assess your culture, project and product risks to choose a different approach. You can choose how you interact so you can iterate on features and when it delivers value. When you do, you're more likely to discover real agility and an easier way to work.
Learning objectives
About the speaker:
Johanna Rothman, "pragmatic leader", she offers candid advice for your challenging problems. She works with leaders and teams to learn to see practical alternatives that could be more effective. With these choices, they can choose what and how to customize product development. As a result, its clients become more efficient and enjoy better business results. With her signature practicality and humor, Johanna is the author of 20 books, hundreds of articles and blog posts on many aspects of product development. Her latest book is Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risk, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility.
Find her monthly newsletter and blogs at jrothman.com and createadaptablelife.com. The event will represent 1 PDU. It will be held in English and is open with free entry.
Join the PMI Slovenia association for research
Author: Marjana Skubic
Let’s say you would like to organize a virtual conference next year that would last 3 consecutive days and provide an unforgettable experience for the attendees. How many resources do you think you would need for organization, what would your project budget be, and when would you kick-off the project to finish preparations on time? My first guess would be forming a team of at least 3 volunteers as generalists, to arrange financing for the event by raising sponsorship money and starting no later than 1 month before the event. Being a part of the team that organized the conference TIE 2021, I can describe the behind-the-scenes experience why this thinking was a shot in the dark. By reading this article you will find out how the ideal team size of 3 grew to 10 team members, how all the sponsorship money was spent, and how the organization of the event took 4 months instead of ideally just 1.
Many readers of this article are already familiar with the annual Together in excellence conference (TIE), organized by two non-profit organizations PMI Slovenia, Ljubljana Chapter and itSMF Slovenia, IT Services Association, with the aim of propagating knowledge on the most current project management and IT service management practices. TIE conference exhibits quality multi-discipline content, presented by worldwide recognized foreign and national experts. The emphasis of this year’s conference (2021) was on the new COVID-19 reality we live in, initially driven by digital transformation and accelerated by the pandemic situation. Conference days were thematically oriented around strategy, well-established basic concepts, and good practices. The greatest takeaway from the conference was being able to answer two important questions: how to address the challenges we are facing now and in near future, and how to make the right moves and gain positive results in these kinds of difficult and unforeseen situations. Experts also provided concrete tips and practical solutions.
Due to the pandemic situation, the TIE conference was held virtually for the second year in a row. And hosting a virtual conference can be more challenging than hosting an in-person event in several respects. Virtual events might save a lot of time and factor out most of the presenter’s costs like travel and accommodation, and other conference costs like venue, catering, additional staff, printing branded elements, etc. But this new reality brought up new concerns about how to stand out in the flood of other free virtual events, and how to make networking even better than if it were in-person. With that in mind, there were some key questions to be answered before the work started: What is the best on-line event hosting platform currently available on the market that meets our needs, and is the price of that service a deal-breaking expense? Is technical support available? What is the expected number of attendees, will tickets be free or paid, how will it be paid, how will attendees receive notifications, and conference links? There were other questions too, but one was already answered. We could not do the conference without including sponsors. By doing that, the conference is not just about the conference's program or attendee experience, but also the best possible virtual promotion of sponsors.
Why start with organization early, 4 months before the event, and not only 1? When the event goes live, the conference program and timing must be followed, and technical interruptions and other risks associated with this must be considered, in addition to the time needed to raise as much sponsorship funding and sell as many tickets as possible. Managing these risks means forming a cross-functional team with expertise in project management, marketing, IT support, graphic design, finance, research, etc. in a way that at least two team members would take care of key operations in case something goes wrong. To wrap up the answer, adding members to a team, adding new technical and marketing tools in operations, having less control over the agile work done and dealing with ad hoc responses to risk all adds up to the complexity of work. As much as it may seem, no two conferences are the same, and there are processes that you just can't speed up. Furthermore, the team mainly consisted of volunteers, so it is quite important that team members enjoy working with each other, to receive the maximum great working experience, make new professional connections, to share positive orientation, and are proud of work done for all stakeholders involved.
How can you size up a team from starting 3 to 10 members at the time of event? You can say, »Having such great working experience, many would like to join? « Answering this question is not easy. As mentioned before, the organization of the conference required many cross-functional experts, and some were narrowly oriented. Because PMI Slovenia and itSMF Slovenia gained supporters and lessons learned from previous TIE conferences, it was not hard to get the required resources on a necessity basis. Some good examples of that practice were tasks of preparing the contracts for sponsors, moderating speakers at the event, communicating with world known keynote speakers and lecturers like Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, Dr. Don Page, Charles Aruajo, David Cannon, Priya Patra and many more. The marketing and IT support team covered most of the operational work with a self-organizing, overall transparent, and collaborative approach. After initiation and planning processes, some roles were transformed when needed, in principle “if you are free, you can at least do the testing part”. On operational meetings the project manager was not needed but appeared during test exercises, the graphic designer joined the meetings at the end, just to receive further instructions, and the contracted video production specialist joined just two weeks before the event for pre-production. As the conference date was approaching, meetings were daily and fully present. The last team member was added for IT support on the event not long before the start. On D Day the team saw very little of the conference. The team had to support the on-line event platform, communicate with speakers and moderator behind the stage, support latecomers, engage with the attendees to fire up chat discussion and provide schedule orientation, make sure everything runs smoothly and end with a virtual after party.
In terms of the cost of an in-person event, the presenter and conferences costs were lower, but the ticket price for a virtual event was also not as high, which was made very affordable with a special discount for members of PMI and itSMF and a free pass for students. Although income was lower, the conference program was excellent as always, with appealing presentations and even sponsors did not miss the opportunity to stand out. The conference was sponsored by 1 golden sponsor, 5 silver sponsors, 4 bronze sponsors, 1 partner, 2 PMI collaborating chapters, 1 media partner, and conference's organizers. Direct costs included the on-line event hosting platform service, the ticketing system, speakers, video production contract services, marketing contract services, and moderator fees. The total expenditure came very close to budget, but the money was spent.
It was an exciting and fun event and participants were very satisfied with the presenters and the experience shared. The sponsors should be out as key supporters. The conference survey responses were unanimous - everyone wants an event in 2022, so see you at the next Together In Excellence conference! Please join as PMI volunteers to discover the behind the scene activities and gain a greater perspective on project management. You can read more about the past conferences here: https://togetherinexcellence.si/
