Topics

The following topics will be addressd at the conference.

Success through projects
Building on the 2007 conference theme; the business of projects, which set out to define how projects can deliver benefit and competitive advantage to organisations of all kinds, the 2008 conference looks at turning understanding into action. This conference will deal with many of the key factors that make a project a success, from choosing your project, delivering it successfully, and managing complexity projects beyond their scope, at both a stakeholder and global level.

Possible subjects include: Managing projects better, organisational project performance, measuring success

Subject champion - Adrian Dooley

Right projects, right people
From the outset the benefit a project offers should be well defined and no project should be completed that isn’t delivering value. Selecting the right projects, managing the portfolio and stopping projects are neglected components of project success. The project manager’s natural instinct to ‘get things done’, the keenness of the organisation to see the end product and the organisations struggle to understand what continues to deliver value means that portfolios expand, morph and bloat to uncontrollable levels consuming money, time and resources. Building on last year’s theme of the skills gap, which identified that delivering the right people was one side of the project success equation and choosing the right projects was the other. This subject investigates all elements of managing your project portfolio.

Possible subjects include: selecting projects, managing the portfolio, stopping projects, managing project management capacity

Subject champion - Peter Simon

Stakeholders and sponsors
There are many p’s in the project management world; including projects, programmes, portfolios and professionalism but none have a greater impact on the success of projects than politics and more politics. No project, in the public or private sector is isolated from the outside world. The successful alignment of the project team, its sponsors and its wider stakeholders are central to project success. Building on the 2007 theme of Governance, which looked at how projects interact in a broader organisational context, this subject investigates how to manage projects whilst maintaining contact with the outside world and the role that sponsorship plays in achieving this.

Possible subjects include: being a sponsor, managing your sponsor, managing politics, dealing with stakeholders, communicating success (and failure)

Subject champion - David Bright

Managing in a complex world
Projects are ordered, planned, scheduled and delivered. The world is complex, chaotic, imprecise and changing. Projects are unrehearsed, and the world continually evolves.  Building on the 2007 theme of mega projects – which identified that the complexity rather than size of the project presented specific issues, this subject investigates how complexity – both of the project and its environment can be managed. As projects become increasingly pan-sector, they grow increasingly complex. Physical boundaries of a construction and engineering project do not exist in other environments where creativity is unbounded.

Possible subjects include: complex projects, complex project environments

Subject champion - Mary McKinlay

Local projects, global consequence
As the old adage goes, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. If your project isn’t delivering benefits its delivering problems. Building on the 2007 theme of sustainability, which investigated how the global sustainability movement was impacting on project management, this subject broadens the subject even further to investigate how your project can and will impact on a global level. It looks at a broad range of subjects from how environmental factors impact on the project, to the role that ethics will play on managing your project.

Possible subjects include: Sustainability, globalisation, ethics

Subject champion - Tom Taylor  

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