Day 1

2009, 08, 08 The first day of PMBOK Cafe was experimental.  Twenty Project Management Professionals gathered for the Global Project Management workshop.  The opening presentation talked about Building Trust, Resolving Conflict and Acting on Shard Knowledge. 

People first worked on their own thinking about the future of Project Management.  What are the skills, tools and techniques we will use in 2012.

These ideas were assembled into affinity diagrams.  The main concepts that emerged were Communication, Technology, Organization and "Crazy" integrated ideas.  One of the interesting ideas that emerged was the use of technology to be able to alert Project Managers to psychological issues.

The main concepts were discussed as a group.  The people had a nice mix of cross discipline project experiences.  While it was chaotic to assemble divergent ideas into a cohesive knowledge map.  People created an ideal shared space that was extremely interactive.  The deliverables were the "Knowledge Clouds" which were mostly conversations with some pictures, words and ideas.

Most of the knowledge was intangible, difficult to express and people were relating their personal experiences.  The discussions were very lively and the workshop was buzzing with creative energy.

Day 2

2009, 08, 09 The second day of PMBOK Cafe focused on converting the buzz from the first day into something that is explicit and can be communicated to a wider audience.  The goal of the second day was team Presentations.  Each team was allowed to plan their schedule and allocate their resources and their time to produce a presentation on their "Knowledge Clouds".  This was a challenging goal, because of the rich discussions from the first day.

Participants learned how to use some collaborative technology, for example Google Documents to allow more than one person to work on a document or a presentation at the same time.  There were some technology bumps from so many people collaborating together in one space.  Teams were able to survey each other and get feedback on some of their concepts.

The presentations were all excellent on their verbal content.  Each team was able to convey their knowledge and discussions after each presentation were very interesting.

If there was a general theme to emerge it was that, In 2012 Global Organizations need to use technology to flatten the communication among team members.  Information needs to be more shared, granular and real-time with the ability to capture the work in progress.  In general Japanese Corporations are very rigid Functional Organizations.  Project Managers would be given more power and responsibility in decision making.

An effect of flatter organizations, might lead to more stress.  More responsibility can create more stress for team members.

The intangible parts of project management for example Happiness of Team members needs to be monitored. In 2012 Project Mangers need to have  system that can help People detect stress across cultures and time zones and alert the right response teams to help.

While technology can not solve all of Project Managers problems, participants generally agreed that better technology can improve the trust of team members, organizations need flatter communication structures that can improve the velocity of communication and aid in decision making. Lastly, technology can alert people about team members feelings and improve the soft side of Project Management.

On behalf of myslef Robert Higgins, Rajeev Supekar and Melinda Liow we would like to thank everyone for collaborating and working together on Project Management Knowledge.

Creating a Knowledge Cloud

Senior Japanese Project Managers from diverse industries, such as finance, networking, construction, mobile communications.... converge together at PMBOK Cafe to collaborate and discuss with each other about the future of Global Project Management. This Facilitated Workshop used the Best practices from The Project Management Book of Knowledge. Specifically, the new tools and techniques in the Scope Collect Requirements were utilized.

This video is part of the Brainstroming Process. PMBOK Cafe describes it as a knowledge cloud. A knowledge cloud sorts ideas and discusses the relationships between ideas. Images are added to encourage visualizing information. The Sticky Notes are 16 peoples different ideas, and this team is discussing the different ideas with the purpose of uncovering deeper knowledge about an idea.