Australia’s Premier Project Management Conference took place this month in Melbourne, hosted by the PMI Melbourne Chapter. This year, the conference was themed by diversity, performance and wellbeing.

The national conference, which was first introduced in 2013 and is now in its fifth year, enables professionals, academics and other community representatives to share their knowledge and experiences. It is fast becoming ‘the’ nationwide event for project professionals.

The event spreads itself over three days, starting with a masterclass (attendees could choose to attend on specific themes that interested them most, including: ‘Agile & Lean’, ‘Speak and be heard’ and ‘Storytelling for leaders’). The masterclass was then followed by the two-day conference including the PMI Australia Awards Gala dinner.

During the two-day event, with a range of industry speakers, we heard topics such as Design Thinking, Managing Diversity, PMO Maturity Assessments, Cyber Security, Agile Project Management and Continuous Improvement. Our CEO, Fatimah Abbouchi, who was in attendance, thoroughly enjoyed the event:

“The conference was overall thought-provoking and provided many opportunities to learn more. The Agile and interactive flavour that was adopted was particularly interesting; satisfying my creative and interactive side. The speakers were all fantastic, Alex Jones particularly, who shared his experiences working for Disney. The exhibitors and their displays were also fantastic; sharing knowledge and tools that may well improve overall business and project functions. Overall, the event was well organised and flowed well. It provided a good energy and atmosphere for learning and knowledge sharing, where attendees could move between rooms depending on who they wanted to hear speak.”

Day two of the conference was jam packed with, again, thought provoking presentations. Topics included ‘storytelling’, ‘building your career using LinkedIn’, ‘communicating numbers’ and ‘Agile & the future of Project Management’. There was a strong presence of ‘Agile Thinking’ in many of the presentations that continuously touched on the ever growing ‘Agile’ space.

Many large corporates are responding to increasing digital disruption with “new ways of working”. Project Management is currently trending as a critical skill to drive success in these new ways of working. With the rise of Agile, traditional project managers are augmenting their toolkits to take up new roles in project delivery to align to the new ways of working. It’s now more important than ever to continue to evolve and develop your skillset, to continue to be relevant in your field and meet new demands.

According to PMI, the current key skills being sought are:

  • Agile,
  • Lean,
  • Digital, and
  • Innovation.

With such a significant number of organisations undertaking major transformations, and an increase in demand for Agile resources, events like this help to drive ideas, new lessons and learnings for individuals and organisations alike to immerse themselves in.

What are you doing to upskill and further build your toolkit?

Sources:

https://www.melbourne.pmi.org.au/

https://pmiaustraliaconference.org.au/