How to speak to project sponsors

The theme was the ‘Projects driving and sustaining the future of the Australian economy’ but the recent PMOz conference was clearly driven by soft skills: leadership, emotional intelligence and how to talk to executives.

The future of project management

The Project Management Australia Conference, known as PMOz, will celebrate a decade of thought leadership at the Grand Hyatt in Melbourne on 17-18 September 2013 with a program themed ‘Projects Driving and Sustaining the Future of the Australian Economy’.

Funding and the future of project management

The economic status quo will decide the future of program, portfolio and project management, according to Andrew Leicester, director of PMGlobal.

Project management conference driven by delegates

The 9th Annual Project Management Australia Conference (PMOz) is set to be a highly interactive affair with the program having already been crowdsourced by delegates.

Is it time to go professional?

Like journalism, project management is not recognised as a profession, neither requiring qualifications, deference to a core body of knowledge, mandatory registration or licensing, a code of ethics and legal status for people to practise. You can see that project management is almost there, but not quite.

The project management education triangle

When self-confessed ‘pracademic’ Linda Weterman went to give her students a ‘near world’ experience of project management, she triangulated competition, simulation and mentorship to great success.

Simulation and Industry Mentors—Weterman, Hogan

Simulation and Industry Mentors as a pathway to learning ‘near world’ Project Management

Students are increasingly finding it difficult to learn project management in a classroom environment that is conducted using a traditional teaching approach as it lacks the complexity to bring real-life project experiences to life. Simulation is a widely accepted technique to create models that resemble the real life business context and can be very useful for teaching and learning project managzement. Expert project managers can also share project management scenarios with the students and successfully mentor them during their learning process. This paper brings these two techniques together and presents an alternative teaching methodology for project management that uses latest simulation technology and involves industry mentors to generate ‘near world’ project knowledge and a positive learning experience in a stimulating, enjoyable and engaging learning and teaching environment.

Author: Linda Weterman, Frank Weterman, Tania Hogan
Review status: Presented at the 2011 PMOz Conference (PMI endorsed)

Project deliverables out, project benefits in

Project management author Dr Ofer Zwikael believes accepted project management practice is flawed because it is preoccupied with deliverables when benefits should be at the forefront of every project decision.