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My Takeaways on the Digital Project Management Summit in Philadelphia.

Filed under: Project Management (PM) When I told people that I was going to the inaugural digital project management summit, I'm not sure they knew what th


When I told people that I was going to the inaugural digital project management summit, I'm not sure they knew what that meant. Is it a bunch of Gantt Charts, Process Diagrams, and Risk Assessment spreadsheets? While those are important parts of project management, my takeaways from this conference related to the soft skills of project management. The primary focus of the conference was around communication and collaboration with the client and your project team.

Through most of the talks, there were common themes:

  • Be honest.
  • Ask questions.
  • Establish trust.

The legendary Sam Barnes discussed what it's like to be on the client side. Sam has been on the agency side managing web projects for years and most recently worked on internal projects with a vendor. He reminded us that our clients have internal politics and struggles they are working around, and that this isn’t their full time project. The insight he gave us was like reading the other team's playbook.

Michael Lopp finished the two day conference with the keynote speech on "Stables and Volatiles". The Speech looked at people we work with, and delineated them to two factions: Stables and Volatiles. The information that Michael opened our eyes to will help us communicate better with our internal teams to draw from the strengths of our individual team members, and avoid the pitfalls of their weaknesses.

Big thanks go out to Brett Harned, Greg Hoy, Happy Cog, and all of the speakers for putting together an amazing two days. I haven't even recovered from this year, and I'm already excited for next year’s DPM Summit 2014!

For more information about the conference, check out their website: Digital PM Summit

-Matt


Photo Credit: http://www.projectmanagesoft.com/software/omniplan
Photo Credit: http://instagram.com/p/fgwds4BGqh/

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