Best Practice Showcase – June 09

Posted on | June 24, 2009 | Author: | lindsayascott | No Comments

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The Best Practice Showcase was held in Westminster on Tuesday this week, in case you’re not familar with the Best Practice events, they’re hosted by the OGC (Office of Government Commerce) to primarily promote best practice with the OGC set of project management products (PRINCE2, MSP etc). I say primarily, in actual fact, the event tends to bring together programme and project management professionals from all walks of life and it’s about sharing THEIR best practice too, regardless of the methods, tools or frameworks they use.

The event attracts about 700 professionals and it’s free admission, so good so far. Delegates are required to pre register and choose from a range of seminars and also “birds of a feather” sessions. The seminars are held by companies and individuals who have been invited or hosted by the exhibitors at the event. The sessions, for those who are unfamilar with the birds of a feather concept, are basically tables hosted by the exhibitors and delegates are invited to sit and discuss topics with other delegates.

There was a whole range to choose from and initially walking into the event was pretty overwhelming. The event certainly had a buzz about it with many of the sessions and seminars in full swing. I stopped by the seminar presentation from Rabobank which focused on Portfolio Management, specifically the presentation focused on how the bank was advancing its PMO function before being hit by the credit crunch. It was an interesting insight to see how an organisation quickly refocuses on what’s important and for them, it was ensuring that the projects being delivered (and continued to be delivered) were delivering real business benefits and making a difference to the bottom line. Interestingly, project healthchecks were quickly used to assess the entire portfolio of projects, they described this process (or tool) as a steadying mechanism in turbulent times as it allowed them to clearly see whether projects were being delivered by the right people and even that now the markets had changed – were the projects that were currently running still needed? They found that some benefits had literally evapourated overnight.

I just wanted to share with you the business benefits that were specifically used by this financial sector organisation when categorizing:

Income Generation
Reduction of costs (which also included cost avoidance)
Operational activities / operational risk
Operational efficiences
Regulatory / compliance (must do’s)
Strategic objectives

I know benefits management continues to be a much talked about area in project management (or portfolio management!) and I’m particularly interested in knowing more about the difference categories that exist depending on the organisation or projects that are being run, for example; are the benefits categories particularly different in say the charity sector?

Following a quick look around the exhibition stands, I sampled the other side of the event – the birds of a feather session. The birds of a feather session I attended was “PRINCE2 Trained…So What?”, hosted by PMProfessional, a project management training provider. The table was hosted by the Managing Director and the delegates around the table ranged from project managers currently working in PRINCE2 environments, a couple of out-of-work PM’s who had recently taken the qualification to help them in their job search, a training course broker, an APM employee and a career PM who had 20 years experience but no qualifications. The session started with a round the table introduction and then we discussed why do people take their PRINCE2 qualification? Of course some see it has a qualification to help them in the employment market, others said “but its the way forward in project management isn’t it?”, their organisations use it therefore to get on they need it and finally there was one particular gentleman that felt like he had no choice; he had a number of years experience as a PM but needed something to show the “outside world” that his experience was backed up with a qualification.

The table was well hosted and I particularly like the analogy about cookery to describe PRINCE2 and its fit within the capabilities of a project manager and its comparsion to the APM qualifications.

APM qualifications teach you how to cook but not how to put together a menu. PRINCE2 is like a 14 course menu. Sometimes you only want a snack, other times a three course meal and if you were hosting the Queen for dinner you might want to consider all 14 courses.

PRINCE2 doesn’t teach you “how to become a project manager” and the sooner people who have no prior experience in PM that take their P2 qualification and wonder why the job offers are not flooding in, realise that the better.

It was also an interesting session because I got the usual “you recruitment consultants are all the same, looking to tick off the keywords without considering the true capabilities” in other words we only consider people who have their PRINCE2 qualification. I’ll blog more about this issue in project management recruitment later but it does annoy me that people are being too easily classified by a five day training course!

The rest of the day was spent in other sessions, all thought provoking and idea generating, it’s just a shame that you’re limited to a number of sessions and you may miss out on other seminars that are equally of interest. All in all, this event is highly recommended, after all, it’s free, you have a large number of “experts” all under the same roof in which to agree, disagree, debate, share opinions and contribute to the community in which your livelihood exists – what’s not to like?