Educational, useful and pleasant. With these words could be described the Technological Seminar “Initiate your IT professional career in PPM” that took place last Friday, 22nd of April in the Technological Institute of the Innovation (ITI), in Valencia. The workshop, organized by Odpe Business Solutions, with PPM School and ITI itself, took place as a preamble of the course “Project Management in the IT Environment”, beginning on the 10th of May.
About 20 people, belonging to several companies associated with the Technological Institute of the Innovation and ODPE gathered at Innova Room in ITI installations. The seminar began with Dr. Rafael Lostado (PPM School) who stated the reasons for which he considers “Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) system is an organizational management philosophy basic elements of which are tasks and projects”. He emphasized it is “a cross-cutting management system that allows shareholders, executives, middle management and employees to speak in the same language”.
He presented the main professional associations in Project Management: the Project Management Institute (PMI) and the International Project Management Association (IPMA); and their referent documents: the PMBOK and the NCB, respectively. He stated that to the PPM introduction in an organization it is recommendable to “strike a balance between functional and matrix organizations”. He said that “PPM is able to align the Strategic Plans of the Organizations with Project Management through Control Panels and Project Management Offices (PMOs)”. He also said that “with PPM, organizations can reach organizational excellence processes which could even be parameterized. Being the key of these processes the development of the organizational competence”.
In relation to the professionals venturing into a professional career as Project Managers, he said “PPM is in its first stages so there is a long working life in there. To go for a career in this field is a safe bet due to its current and future strong demand”. “The way to prove these professional abilities is through the certifications going from the employees assigned to project teams to CEOs themselves”.
For his part, Marcos García (OdPe) talked about when, how and who decides the implementation in a organization of a PPM system concluding that “a 75% comes from the IT department, 20% from the PMOs and 5% from other areas”. After that, and once accepted the PPM System implementation by the company management, he explained how a project of these characteristics is launched: “once you get the budget allocation, a PPM software is chosen and most part of the times management goes to the the IT department PMO. To ensure the success of this project, it is necessary to carry out a parallel PPM training and Change Management plans to minimize internal resistance”.
Then he explained how a PMO works and the progressive way a functional organization transforms into an organization by project. To conclude, on the basis of projects average results in the report Pulse of Profession, 2016 applied to Spanish companies he sated that “in our country, the data obtained is about a 20% worse than the world average. So there is a lot to do”.
Xavier Mulet was not able to attend the seminar and Dr. Rafael Lostado took his place presenting the characteristics of the course: “Foundations of Project Management in an IT environment”, beginning on the 10th of May. According to Lostado, “it is a course adjusted to the PMBOK, 5th Ed., with its own slides that will be very dynamic in the interaction between teacher and student and essentially practical. A compulsory course project will be carried out by the students in which they will use all the knowledge acquired as the course goes on. The quality of the project will suppose the 50% of the final mark an the other 50% will come from the continuous evaluation”. The program comprises the following didactic units:
- Introduction
- Influence of the Organization and Life Clcle of the Project
- Project Management Processes
- Project Integration Management
- Scope of the Project Management
- Project Time Management
- Project Costs Management
- Project Quality Management
- Project HR Management
- Project Communication management
- Project Risks Management
- Project Acquisition management
- Project Stakeholders Management
Note: The course will be given by Xavier Mulet, Information System Director in Valencia Port Authority from 1998, Associate Professor at the Polytechnic University of Valencia and President for 13 years of the PMI Valencia Chapter.
If you liked the article about the seminar, our article about Project Management and Computer Science may be of your interests.
Leave A Comment