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Special Report from the PMI Research Conference
Research is increasingly seen as a foundation for growth and excellence practice of project management. So it was fitting that PMI’s biennial Research Conference, held 13–16 July in Warsaw, Poland was the event where researchers Janice L. Thomas, PhD, and Mark Mullaly, PMP, unveiled the preliminary results of the multi-year study Researching the Value of Project Management. (See story in this issue.) The conference saw a record attendance level; nearly 400 participants came from 52 countries. Many were researchers themselves or taught project management or related subjects at universities. There was good representation from the practitioner community as well, including a number of program managers and directors of PMOs (project management offices).
Zbigniew Traczyk, PMP, a PMI component mentor for Europe and Africa and a co-founder of the PMI Poland Chapter, welcomed attendees to Warsaw. PMI President and CEO Gregory Balestrero said that while practice and research define a profession, only research can advance it. “The key to effective research is asking the right questions at the right time,” said Mr. Balestrero. He described research as “crucial to success, especially given today’s challenges with energy prices, climate change, competition for resources, economic turmoil and schedule compression.” PMI Chair Philip R. Diab, MBA, PMP, said, “We are changing the world with project management research … Project management matters. It brings change and transforms.” Ed Andrews, PhD, PMI director of Academic and Educational Programs and Services, noted that PMI is only project management organization with a full-time research program with staff and funding. “PMI has published 400 publications since 1997, held five conferences including this one, holds research working sessions, and encourages a greater diversity of topics across disciplines,” he said. The three days of the conference were packed with knowledge sharing, proffered papers and plenary sessions including the presentation on Researching the Value of Project Management.
Experts in Their Fields The topics and content of plenary sessions, presented by academics who are global authorities in their fields, were much-discussed by attendees during networking breaks. Some speakers, such as Andrew Pettigrew, PhD, dean of the School of Management, University of Bath, U.K., came from an aligned management fields. Pettigrew said that plotting the outcome of many innovative changes often results in the classic “J curve”—in other words, things get worse before they get better. Martin Hoegl, PhD, chair of Leadership Human Resource Management, WHU-Otto Beisheim School of Management, is an authority on the subject of teams. One of the findings of a study he presented was that “smaller is better” in teams. The amount of effort expended by each team member reduces after a team adds members beyond four. “It’s just human nature,” Dr. Hoegl said. “People think there are lots of others on the team, so they can work less.” He also presented on co-located versus virtual teams. Preliminary study results showed dispersed teams have better outcomes than local teams if the quality of their teamwork is high, but do much worse than co-located teams if the quality their teamwork is low. Also, teams on the same floor do better than teams separated even by one story of a building. Velimir Srića, PhD, is an author and academic from Croatia who has served as that country’s minister of science and technology. His expertise is social intelligence and leadership, and his talk engendered a lot of discussion among attendees. Dr. Srića called for a paradigm shift to base organizations on love, not fear, and to organize teams based on friendship, partnership, common vision and mutually agreed values. Delegates Dive Deeply into the Discussions Attentive delegates asked hard questions of presenters following each session and discussed the conclusions of the papers at networking breaks each day as well as lunches and evening receptions. There was also an opportunity to relax and relate socially during a gala dinner sponsored by George Washington University, a first for a PMI Research Conference. Terence Cooke-Davies, PhD has been to every PMI research conference since they began in 2000. Speaking about this conference, he said “I’m enjoying it hugely. There hasn’t been a time slot yet where there hasn’t been a topic I didn’t want to go to. Maintaining very high standards is what we’ve come to expect of a PMI Research Conference.” Cyril Pospíŝíl is a new PMI member and a PhD candidate at the Czech Technical University who is studying the relationship between project management and risk management. He said the conference sessions were very valuable. “It is great to be in touch with the research others are doing,” he said. “Not only is it important to see their conclusions but how they do their research as well.” Blaize Reich, PhD, a theoretical researcher and recipient of the Project Management Journal® Paper of the Year Award, said that if we can understand theory, we will have better link with performance at the project level. “Research, like practice, is going from implementation to achievement of business value,” she said. “That last step is one we as researchers have to understand and help with.” (See more on the awards in this issue of Post.) Juan Garzon, PMO director of Ecopetrol in Colombia, was an attending practitioner. He felt he could do better work at his PMO by learning the theoretical backing of the best practices. Kathy Cowan-Sahadath is both a practitioner and a PhD student and was part of a team doing research for Researching the Value of Project Management. “This conference has provided the opportunity to experience the research thoughts and contributions of some amazing project management experts from around the world, and to be a part of their discussions and questions associated with theories, models and applying creative and innovative approaches to project management discovery,” said Ms. Cowan-Sahadath. PMI warmly thanks the conference sponsors:
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