Live From PMI Leadership Institute Meeting – Day 3

Day 3 was a mix of the mediocre and the amazing.

Outreach, Knowledge, and Maturity.
There was one session about chapter outreach, where I met some really interesting people. The chairs of the Swiss and Frankfurt chapter were at my table, sharing some of their tips for things like mediating conflicts between local vendors and Universitys. They made up for an otherwise yawner of a session.

Then, I ended up at a “Knowledge Delivery” session, hosted by Brantlee Underhill (the Agile CoP’s business sponsor). She was talking about how the Virtual Community Project will facilitate more knowledge across the PMI. There was a lot of concern from PMI component officers about how they could accomplish their mission, once they were assimilated into PMI proper. After some debate, we agreed that service delivery is simply a logistical hurdle. However, we all raised the need to emphasize to PMI that a group needs a group identity (aka brand), specifically within virtual communities (e.g. logo & colors). One PMI volunteer leader suggesting we rethink knowledge copyright the way TED.com does with its online videos. An American volunteer suggests all PMI leaders go to an event in another countries. “I learn so much more than just another US event”. All very important input for PMI to consider when converting its SIGs into the new virtual communty model. This session was more interesting, because the PMI Agile Community is chartered as a virtual community, and I got some good dialog around how to make that successful.

Finally, there was a session hosted by Martin Price of the PMI UK Chapter. He was by far the most valuable speaker, taking us on a journey of some key maturity patterns, which mirrorred Alistair Cockburn’s SHU-HA-RI pattern. He cited A key nugget was “PMI Components manage projects”, reminding us that PMI should eat its own dog food, as it were. At the end, he asked every to fill out a self-assessment form regarding your community’s collaborative maturity. It very much had the feel of the bioteams model popularized by Dan Mezick

Retrospective, PMI style
The final session invited a few people to express their key learnings from the event. One said “I’m tired and inspired”, while others said something or other about networking being good. The South Sweden chair expressed an actionable goal to pass along to his local chapters some names of potential speakers. When I was handed the mic, I shared the illumination that I’m not alone struggling with component problems. As a newcomer to leading a PMI community, I had assumed that my problems were isolated to newcomers, that more senior chapter presidents and SIG chairs would have already skated well beyond our issues. As it turns out, some of the problems are common to the most mature of those communties (like running two community website in parrallel).

Introductions over drinks and final thougths
After some dinner, I went to a reception hosted by the PMO SIG, promoting its symposium in November. I got to talk extensively with Emad Aziz from the Middle East / North Africa chapter, who is putting together an impressive PM conference in Cairo. I also met with Raj Kalady, the Managing Director of PMI’s office in Mumbai. So in the end, the LIM chapter provided mediocre sessions, but amazing networking opportunties. If I could convince the organizers to offer at least 1 Open Space session, the value offered would go through the roof. Finally, late in the evening, the Agilists participating in the Congress showed up and introduced each other over some appetizers and drinks. There will be over 10 Agilists featured at 4 sessions during the Congress starting tommorrw. Jim Cundiff of the Scrum Alliance is among them, and has come to observe the proceedings. LIM was good for building relationships, but the Agile events at the Congress promise to change people’s lives.