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]]>“pm-volunteers.org and LIFT Philanthropy Partners share a similar vision: to build strong, healthy communities by building capability and capacity in the not-for-profit sector,” explained Bob Prenovost, program director, pm-volunteers.org. “We look forward to working with LIFT to continue to generate high-value project management advisory services for the not-for-profit community to enhance its ability to deliver projects on time, on budget, on scope, while minimizing risk.”
pm-volunteers.org joins LIFT’s partner network of businesses and professionals that offer pro bono services to not-for-profit organizations to build capacity and improve operations. As part of this partnership, pm-volunteers.org will connect experienced volunteer project management professionals with LIFT’s not-for-profit organizations to support a variety of projects, such as information technology, construction, human resources, and other projects.
“LIFT Philanthropy Partners welcomes pm-volunteers.org to our pro bono partner network and we look forward to connecting with its highly skilled volunteer project managers to improve the capacity, skills and impact of our not-for-profit partners,” said Bruce Dewar, chief executive officer, LIFT Philanthropy Partners.
Learn more
Visit: pm-volunteers.org, liftpartners.ca
Follow: @pmvolunteersorg, @pm-volunteers.org on LinkedIn, @liftpartners
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Visit their website for more information and registration.
]]>]]>How many PMs can honestly say that they wouldn’t make any major changes if they had the opportunity to do the project again? If you can, please share your experience via the comments below – I’d be interested to hear about them as I’m sure many of your chapter peers would be too.
Carol McLean can make that claim and was pleasantly surprised that she could. When I asked her if she would do anything differently on the ICBC Intersection Safety Camera Upgrade project her response was, “I don’t think so, usually there’s something, but I can’t think of anything major.”
So what was different about this project? Carol made a conscious effort to instil a sense of partnership between ICBC and the vendor. At every decision point and interaction her approach was ‘how can we work with them, how can we help them?’ I suspect that recognition that failure by the vendor was actually an ICBC failure would have gone a long way towards motivating a collaborative approach as well.
Even though ICBC is a mature project management organisation and encourages collaboration, Carol found that her major challenge with the project team as a whole was keeping the motivation going to stick with the partnership approach. After all, it is very easy to fall back on your learned responses when you are fatigued and trying to find a solution. Carol did sing the praises of her executive sponsor in the success of the project. His supportive and open attitude and ability to think strategically whilst delving into the details were crucial to the success of the project. Now there’s a topic for another blog – the role of the Sponsor.
There were times when the project team had to be creative in making things work. A partnership approach was not conventional from an external viewpoint. These creative efforts extended to assisting the vendor to come up with solutions rather than pushback and instruction to figure it out yourselves that would not be uncommon in any standard customer-vendor relationship - something that would no doubt cause many PMs to wonder or even say 'what are we paying you for?'
I am impressed by Carol’s approach, as she took many of the concepts of an Alliance style contract without any of the contractual support. I’m not sure if Alliancing is common in Canada, but I’ve just come off of two Alliance projects in Australia, where essentially the parties involved form an alliance, they share the gains, but they also share the pains. As a team member I found it to be a refreshing environment to work in. The contract was left to the side and the environment to get things done was created, this of course takes the right kind of people to head up the team. It strikes me that Carol is the right kind of person.
If you’d like to hear more about Carol’s lessons learned from this project, come to the Four Seasons on 15 August for the monthly CWCC event.
]]>Robert Goatham says that becoming a project manager was a natural progression for him. He’s passionate about understanding people and about expanding our Body of Knowledge. After twenty years as a project manager he made the conscious decision to move towards education. His “in the trenches” experience across the world has lead him to believe that more effective training programs can be produced through a comparative analysis of successful and failed projects.
This analysis has lead Robert to the conclusion that most projects don’t fail on the process side of things alone. He’s hinted at 6 dimensions that effect a project, one of them being process. I’m guessing that another of those is decision-making. Perhaps there’ll be a dimensions matrix in PMBOK 5?
Robert wants us to have higher levels of situational awareness after attending his session. He sees projects as a series of decision-points, where those decisions aren’t just a moment in time; they are influenced by many factors. In the hurly burly of project management we often rush our decisions - perhaps confusing being decisive with making good decisions? If we take a little more time and explore our options we’ll be aware of the bigger picture and be better informed when we make our decisions.
Thinking on my discussion with Robert, the usual bugbear in project management comes to mind - planning. Many inexperienced project managers want to jump into the doing without really thinking about what we’re actually doing - I can say ‘we’ as I’ve certainly been guilty of this.
If you want to find out about these other dimensions and how to have more successful project outcomes, come to the Four Seasons on July 18th for the monthly chapter event.
Our own chapter volunteer blogger Brooke Ferguson interviewed our annual conference keynote speaker Ken Hanley and discovered some fascinating facts about him and gained some insight into his wealth of knowledge. More importantly, Brooke has given us a good idea of what to expect from his keynote address.
Read Brooke's interview with Ken Hanley here.
Learn more about the annual conference and career fair agenda here.
]]>This year's theme will be "Leadership in action". Visit our dedicated conference and career fair page for more detailed information on the agenda, speakers and registration.
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