The Key challenge organisations are facing today is having to deal with the exponential rate of change which is happening in the external environment. The extent and pace of change is so disruptive that no organisation, regardless of age or size can take their competitive advantage or even their survival for granted.

The speaker will highlight the impact of fast paced change, and the implications for organizations. The talk will suggest practical approaches which leaders can adopt to make their organizations ready to embrace change and leverage it for creating competitive advantage.

In the next five years, the world will see more projects than ever. The reconstruction of the economy, healthcare, social care, and society at large after the devastating global pandemic crisis, will be unprecedented in human history. These are millions of projects, which will need millions of project managers. However, despite this positive outlook, significant trends will put at stake the project management profession that we have learned to know in the past 40 years. We should consider these signals as an urgent call for profound change in our practices and a much needed in our competencies.

Professor Dobson, will review the futility of current Entrepreneurship Education approaches to actually effectively develop a creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial team. Entrepreneurship is becoming increasingly viewed as a fundamental engine for increasing employment, reducing poverty, and driving economic development. Academic research institutions seek to understand and develop novel methods to effectively develop the next generation of entrepreneurs. However, there is an ever-growing supply of entrepreneurship education (EE) without a corresponding increase in student’s actually starting businesses. There is a growing body of research that identifies that part of the problem resides in the teaching methodologies that are commonly being used as a factor of the ineffectiveness of EE to actually develop entrepreneurs. The problem appears to reside in the use of teaching approaches that rely on theory/process-based approaches that depend on hypothetical business plans, models, and canvases.

Professor Dobson will contrast the fundamental epistemological differences between Management and Entrepreneurship. Identifying a way for businesses to create a creative and innovative team.

We learn to be better project managers not by attending one short classroom training, but by gradually learning and practicing new skills.

Normal project management courses have their place, but it is even more important to provide practical project management training. Attendees must gain confidence in the following project management techniques:

• Filling in a Project Description (Project Charter)
• Facilitating a Project Breakdown (Deliverable map) Extracting Requirements
• Planning / Scheduling
• Using an online application
• Day to day follow up activities
• Having a minimalist project process to follow

Frank will introduce an open-source project management system and offer the following which are free and sponsored by the EC (European Community)

• Online project management course (project simulation)
• Practical Course slides for any trainer to use.

Many PMO portfolios are over 30% Infrastructure projects. These PMOs want to use Agile for infrastructure projects and realize the benefits of waste reduction, faster turn-around, and better prioritization. This session involves examining a hospital network upgrade using a KANBAN approach. When done, you will have a new network. You will have created stories, used a product backlog, communicated status, transitioned to operations, delivered benefits, and completed a workshop retrospective.

Learning Objectives:
1) Explore several Agile tools, protocols, and principles and their compatibility with Infrastructure projects.
2) Prepare radiators and other status reporting tools to communicate the plan, the iterations, and the progress/status of the project.
3) Use a hybrid approach to upgrade a network infrastructure in a hospital including new network switches, upgrade to Medical Grade Wireless, Firewall installation, VPN access, and video clinical care service.

Truly agile organizations are hybrid in nature because they enable the teams within them to follow their own fit-for-purpose way of working (WoW). Some team WoWs will be more agile in nature, some more lean in nature, and some more serial in nature. Each team’s WoW reflects the context faced by that team and evolves over time as the team learns and their situation changes. In practice these teams typically have hybrid WoWs, comprised of agile, lean, and even serial techniques – even an “agile WoW” will have some lean aspects and some traditional aspects and that’s ok, your goal is to be effective not to be agile.

This talk explores this concept and how PMOs must evolve to operate successfully in this sort of environment.

The core message: Strategic thinking is an individual competency. Project professionals who understand and can demonstrate the ability to think strategically are more valuable to their organizations, make more impact, and are more promotable.

Short abstract: Research shows that the next generation of project leaders must be able to demonstrate their ability to think strategically.

This engaging presentation will help the audience recognize and describe the four pillars that define strategic thinking, how strategic thinking is different from strategic planning, the four DICE X-factors of strategic thinking, the Ben Franklin technique for applying the microskills of strategic thinking, and why “competent strategic thinker” ought to be part of your personal brand.

This presentation will also include how strategic thinking reinforces personal and organizational resilience. In the “great reset” of post-pandemic recovery advantage will accrue to those individuals who can bounce forward (rather than bounce back).

"How do you knuckleheads come up with strategy, anyway?"

This was a question asked by one of our project managers when I was an executive talking about a new project they were to lead. We are often assigned to lead projects with little context as to why it's important. When asked, a typical answer is "Because it aligns with strategy!" But what does that really mean?

In this session, we'll talk about what strategy is, how leadership "knuckleheads" develop organizational strategy, how it should be communicated, and how you as a project professional fit in!

1) setting the context of the company;
2) a 10-step transformation approach;
3) toolkit that the audience can use.

Very few buzzwords in recent memory have captured the hearts, minds, and conversations across corporate America’s project, product, and general managers like the buzzword ‘agile’. But what is agile? Is it a “lightweight framework” for managing projects, and if so, which types of projects? Is it an
adjective? Oh, or maybe it’s a project management methodology? Or is it a process or system? And if this all of this confusion isn’t enough, why in the world are there over three dozen flavors of it and counting! In one seasoned project manager’s mind, based on decades of experience planning and delivering projects of all sizes, in every sector of our economy, in each of the three primary project planning and delivery archetypes of predictive, agile, and hybrid: it’s really, a mindset. One that focuses on planning and delivering value in the form of the project’s product and its benefits to the project’s customers. In this highly entertaining, highly educational session, attendees of all types of project and product management experience backgrounds will discover the key words, concepts, and tenets that they can use to develop or extend their own agile mindset, which in turn increases their personal value and professional capability to their employing organization and its customers, which increases their professional stock price within their organizations.

Attendees will be able to:
1. Identify agile project management’s four values and twelve principles and how they can apply to any project.

2. Discuss the project management profession’s evolution from historical hiring and promotion conversation to today’s emerging hiring and promotion conversation.

3. Identify the six tenets necessary for today’s project or product managers to develop an agile project management mindset: 1. Include customers (agile term) and stakeholders (predictive term) in the process which is embracing change; 2. Practice Continuous Process Improvement (“CPI”) using lessons learned in a disciplined-yet-organic manner; 3. Create empowered High Performing Teams (“HPTs”) through Servant Leadership; 4. Fail fast to know what you know!; 5.
Demonstrate value often; and 6. ABC, Always Be Courageous using courageous candor and saying “no” in your conversations.

What do we say when the boss asks "This agile thing is interesting. How can I help?" What concrete steps and practices can we offer them beyond "Be a servant leader?" and what does that even mean? Even more worrying, do WE actually exhibit the very behaviors we demand of our leaders? And how do I develop those behaviors?

In this high energy session, you will learn research-based frameworks for describing agile leadership. Then, you will get "hands-on" practicing concrete tips, hacks, and routines that will improve effectiveness for you and your boss, whether you are a project manager, supervisor, departmental head, or executive.

In user surveys by VersionOne each year, over 80% of respondents claim faster delivery, better teamwork, and closer stakeholder alignment. However in quantitative studies, Agile is no better than other delivery methodologies. Wait, WHAT?!!! Why is that?

Companies are moving to DevOps, BusDevOps, DevSecOps, SalesBusDevSupportSecRinseRepeatOps (and the list goes on), but few teams can agree what that means or how to do it. What are we missing?
In this session, we’ll look at seven patterns and insights that will help you understand why these programs aren’t achieving their full value and what needs to change to fully succeed.

• Understand the primary reasons why Agile and DevOps teams are struggling
• Learn the most important key to successful team delivery (Hint: It’s not methodology.)
• Discover ways to help influence and transform your teams into highly productive ones.

It happens that the Leader comes to the existing team and with good intentions begins to build relationships with people around but do it not in the best way. We will discuss a few examples, and Artem will share ideas and some tools of change leader (Scrum Master / Agile Coach / Consultant) aimed at not harming and to build a good relationship and trust, which will be the foundation for further change in processes and results.

In this talk we will cover:

• The reality of agility in teams when the expectations are not the same as reality.
• How to champion an agile mindset within teams and have a whole team approach when decisions have to be made.
• What scrum masters and the team can do to avoid conflict and friction between what is expected and what is evident.

How tech and platform PM impact business.

Learn the process to achieving product market fit and what to do once you reach it.

Why is data important in product and project managers, how to use historical data to dictate future success, and how to curate the data story and present relevant information.

This talk will cover the nature and benefits of a cognitive diverse team, and the impact on the products they create. Having a diverse team is a great first step, but how can people in the team collaborate effectively and inclusively. We will look into creating an environment that brings the best out of people and feels psychologically safe.

Building software that is designed to learn requires a significant mind shift. In this session, Alex goes through the evolution from Agile software process (now 20 years old) that nearly all software development currently uses, to a new AI centric software development process. As the current Founder of SAVVI AI and the former Chief Product Officer, for Synchrony Financials AI enabled Products, much of Alex time was spent managing large and talented teams to implement products that learn. Those products learned to improve personalization, enhance credit decisioning, grow profitability and reduce customer complaints. Alex walks through specific case studies and examples of how to plan for AL/ML in your software, via adding “Learning Stories” into your software process. In this session he will also explain some of the pitfalls and how to overcome them, especially around getting colleagues comfortable that software that learns can be very safe and extremely effective.