New Trends in Project Management 2014 - Part I: Go Beyond Agile!

New Trends in Project Management 2014 Conference is over! That was the best project management conference experience I've ever had! Two events (New Trends in Project Management and Agile and Lean Development) in one venue Sheraton Sopot Hotel , 6 tracks, almost 50 speakers and 300 participants. The conference was organised by PMI Gdansk Branch with cooperation of Intel Corporation - this small branch with GREAT PEOPLE proved again that Together Everyone Achieves More (TEAM). Thank you very much all volunteers, sponsors and partners for making this happen!

Having so many I won't be able to summarize all of the sessions (6 tracks) nor even all sessions I've attended in one post so have decided to split it into parts. This part will focus on Jorgen Hesselberg's keynote opening speech: The AWG - a Sustainable Engine of Agile Enterprise Transformation. Jorgen is the Director of Agile Enterprise Transformation at McAfee & the Director of Agile Alliance's Supporting Agile Adoption Program but the most important have a passion for all he does! More about Jorgen can be found here. That write up will be a bit different to my previous conference summaries. Inspired by Natalia Talkowska the founder of Natalka Design - the partner of the conference, so more professional visualisations will come soon, I will share some key takeaways from the speech and my notes in the form of drawing. Hope you will enjoy my new style and if not please let me know:-)

The key points:

• Agile does not mean Agility. A lot companies want to be Agile, a lot are saying they are Agile. We should transform not because we want to be Agile, but because we want to respond to the changing market place! That's the most important!  
• Beyond Budgeting. This is a set of management principles that organisations adopt for taking decision processes. It helps to meet success factors and be adaptive to unpredictable conditions. Some of them are: Values (few clear values and goals not detailed rules and budgets); Transparency (for more see the picture); Organisation (more in the picture), Autonomy (freedom and capability to act not micromanagement); Goals (relative goals for continuous improvement, don't negotiate fixed performance contracts); Resources (as needed not annul budget allocation); Planning (continuous process not top-down annual event); Rewards (based on relative performance not on meeting fixed targets); Controls (based on relative indicators & trends not on variances against plan).
• Empiricism: Base your decision on what actually happens, not what you want to happen!
• Going Beyond Agile: 

1. Vision not hallucination!
2. Experimentation - do not try to get it right up front
3. Adaptability - do you want to be right or successful?
4. Relentless focus - have an opinion; invest in what matters
5. Reject Quick Wins - at the cost of Enduring Success!

The final thought: 

1. Educate your executive
2. Expand Agility beyond engineering & product management
3. Establish a cross-functional Agile Working Group (AWG).

Experiment, do small things and enjoy!