7:30 AM – 8:30 AM
Registration & Breakfast
8:30 AM – 10:00 AM
KEYNOTE PRESENTATION
Effectively Dealing with Workplace Disrespect (Paul Pelletier, Paul Pelletier Consulting)
Disrespect happens. No matter how we reinforce expectations for workplace respect, every workplace encounters those who become workplace nightmares. If ignored or handled badly, bad behavior can devastate a project, team or organization like a wildfire. If handled early and effectively, relationships and workplace culture will be enriched. This makes disrespect management critical – it takes skill to effectively avoid arguments, clarify misunderstandings, deal with disputes, and repair relationships. Simply put – disrespect requires intervention and direct conversations. The keynote provides leaders with tools for approaching and resolving disrespect issues before they become full-blown conflicts. Participants will learn how to assess the situation early, maturely and how to change the context of the conversation. The keynote helps leaders use direct conversations to take the initiative to confront the problem. Critical to disrespect management, participants will develop strategies for changing the context of conflicts from negative to positive, from disrespectful to appropriate. Participants will learn how to turn a disagreement into an opportunity to provoke learning and enrich relationships.
10:00 AM – 10:30 AM
Coffee Break
10:30 AM – 11:30 AM
Breakout Sessions
SOCIAL FACTORS | The Culture of Project Management (Monica Semeniuk, SFU)
Projects have gone “global.” We have clients, sponsors, suppliers and team members from many countries, and they all bring their cultural values with them. Some of these values will be counter to the underlying assumptions that are embedded in project management. In addition to the usual work of planning, implementing and communicating, how do we bridge the cultural gaps in project management? Cultural intelligence (CQ) brings a process to working with multicultural stakeholders that can be applied to projects. This presentation will provide an introduction into CQ as another tool in the kit of savvy project managers. With practice, we can lead the way in transforming our projects, and our organizations, into havens of culturally-aware and effective interactions.
HEALTHCARE | Innovating a Healthcare Payer: Lessons Learned from Lean Startup Transformation: Outside-in Thinking (Michael Nir, President, Sapir Consulting US)
Our problem:
Health insurance providers focus on inside out claim management. The business processes are built around assessment of treatments, approval of procedures and efficiency of operations. The IT systems in place are therefore focused on automating internal processes, reducing touch points and supporting the efficiency of operations. On top of which, most healthcare payer operate legacy antiquated systems.
The prevailing mind set is: the customer is an ID, a number rather than a unique individual with specific needs, especially in time of anxiety when they need the healthcare system the most.
Our customers:
The customers that are interacting with the healthcare inside-out thinking are expecting radically better services and are frustrated with the digital infancy of both the providers and the insurers. They are looking for Amazon/Google/Facebook like experiences yet are receiving mediocre service.
Our Lean Startup Transformation
We asked ourselves – how do we jump start a program where outside in thinking is paramount? How do we offer unparalleled healthcare insurance experiences that rival those industries that have undergone digital disruption? How do we reinvent our business thinking? How do we introduce services rapidly without first engaging in a long IT delivery cycle? Are there methods to weed out bad ideas really fast? It turns out that there are!
Lean Startup coupled with scaled agile delivery and lean UX offered us a way forward.
We selected 5 best practices that helped us reshape both business and IT thinking:
• Start with the customer in mind.
• Define and communicate the mission and vision.
• Synthesize an integrative operating model.
• Identify metrics that matter.
• Pivot or persevere.
In the presentation I’ll share the good the bad and the ugly of what we learned from implementing outside in thinking using lean start guidance to innovate a healthcare payer.
ENTERPRISE AGILE | Collaborating for Software Development at Scale: Lessons from Designing and Implementing Program-Wide Agility in the Enterprise (Gary Wagner, Senior Project Manager, TELUS)
The increasing need for speedy technology transformations is occurring in parallel with workforces shifting to nationally or internationally disperse teams of knowledge workers tasked with delivering. Yet traditional program and project management frameworks used for software development can often fall short in enabling the enterprise to scale up and adapt to the unique challenges of such transformations. Siloed Agile ways of working, whilst offering promise relative to speed of implementation, need to be synchronized for cross-functional teams to truly deliver scaled agility. In this presentation, Gary Wagner (PMP, SPC) will draw from his collaborative experience from the trenches in both designing and implementing the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®) with colleagues and leaders at TELUS. Gary will layout the approach the teams took with leadership at designing the implementation roadmap. Then he will overlay with the deep multi-year lessons drawn from all levels of the program which inform key questions to ask prior to or during, any scaled agile software delivery transformation. The presentation will highlight key strategic and operational capabilities needed and call out their relative impact on the ultimate success of the transformation.
SOCIAL GOOD | Trends in International Development Project Management: Human-Centered vs. Client-Centered Approaches (Adam Simpson, Manager of Global Programmes, UN Women)
International development projects and programs are large, often overlapping, and primarily focused on achieving local level results that are difficult to link to larger political priorities. Developmental projects are, in theory, designed to maximize social benefits as part of larger state-building efforts. However, problems may arise from a lack of integration with broader sectoral and national policies; creation of parallel management systems and structures; proliferation of reporting arrangements; lack of subsequent attention to operation and maintenance; and rising costs due to delays. Furthermore, international experts are often not well equipped or capable of completing projects within the normal expected time frames for donor-supported projects. This gap in project implementation suggests that actors in the development sphere ultimately deny their power to effect sustainable change, and thus negatively impact the intended results of large-scale, international development initiatives.
11:30 AM – 11:45 AM
Coffee Break
11:45 AM – 12:45 PM
Breakout Sessions
SOCIAL FACTORS | Getting Ready for Take-off: Setting up Your Team for Project Success (Ariel Landau, Boeing, Director, Training Development)
Designing and developing pilot training programs for a d new jet, especially in a highly-regulated industry, requires strong program and project management skills. It also requires a team of highly motivated and capable people to ensure successful project execution. This session will offer a rare glimpse into the world of aircraft training development and the associated challenges of managing competing interests while being part of a larger aircraft program schedule.
HEALTH CARE | Management of a Large-Scale Project in Personalized Medicine and Cancer Genomics (Robyn Roscoe, Director, Management and Administration, BC Cancer Agency)
The POG (Personalized Onco-Genomics) Program at the BC Cancer Agency aims to determine the feasibility and utility of whole genome and transcriptome sequence data in treatment decision making for doctors of patients with metastatic cancer. Management of this intense and expansive project has required the creation and establishment of tools and procedures to ensure the rapid and accurate processing and tracking of case and data; integration of project and case information for individual analysis and program development; identification and management of complementary activities in finance, ethics, technology development, data handling, contracting and communications; and ongoing knowledge transfer. A team of project management professionals and associates manages all aspects of the projects, including the sample pipeline – from consent to data dissemination – as well as the supporting teams and issues.
ENTERPRISE AGILE | Change Management: **THIS SESSION IS FULL** A Critical Skill That Every Project Manager Needs to be Successful (Sarah McKinnon, Director, Coaching & Learning Solutions, TELUS)
More than 70% of all major transformation efforts fail. Why? Because organizations do not take a consistent, holistic approach to changing themselves, nor do they engage their workforces effectively. As project managers, it is critical that you understand how to successfully lead and manage change. In this session, we will review the Kotter framework for change management and then leverage activities, discussions and sharing of experiences to better understand how to successfully apply it in the real world. “Change is the only constant in life” -Heraclitus
SOCIAL GOOD | Saving the World Using Lean and Agile Project Management (Jason Hanley, CTO, The Rumie Initiative)
The Rumie Initiative works with local partners to deliver education to rural areas where it’s needed most. We’ve brought our solution to more than 25 countries and evolved our unique hardware and software platform quickly through 4 major generations based on partner feedback.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT | Toastmasters Workshop: What you say, and how you project it, can say a lot about you, your leadership and your organization! (Sharookh Daroowala and Stefano Cossalter)
Everybody agrees that whether you want to attract more clients, advance your career or inspire your team, you must master public speaking skills. And yet few people invest the time and effort to acquire this vital skill. In this inter-active and humorous session, you will start learning to: 1. Slay the dragon and overcome the dreaded fear of public speaking 2. Use the power of stories to illustrate and illuminate your points 3. Discover that public speaking is really about the art of connecting and the science of understanding the listener’s psychology 4. Believe that Project Managers can be funny too!
12:45 PM – 1:45 PM
Networking Lunch & Career Fair
1:45 PM – 2:45 PM
SOCIAL FACTORS | **THIS SESSION IS FULL** Effective Negotiation Using the Self-Leadership Model (Sabahat Naureen, Principal, Prime Potentials)
Negotiation is a critical aspect of project management. Whether it is mitigating conflict between project members, persuading major stakeholders to reduce scope creep, convincing them to accept scope changes that have budget implications, or simply getting your team on board for a tight deadline, negotiation is truly everywhere. This 4-step Self-Leadership Model is a proprietary methodology that gets deep into the psychology of any negotiation and shows how you can come out on top. This will be an interactive workshop, where the participants will not only be able to walk out with actionable tools, but also have the opportunity to apply the model to their own negotiation scenarios on the spot.
HEALTH CARE | A Patient Experience Tool: Explore a Digital Platform that Collects Data for Planning Quality Improvement (Sarah Farina, James Voth & Christina Thomas, Broadleaf Consulting)
The General Practice Services Committee (GPSC) Patient Experience tool was designed to use the patient voice to enable targeted, clinical, and practice management improvement. The tool has the capacity to measure the progress and patient-centredness of the various strategic initiatives of the GPSC. This innovative tool enables the collection of patient experience data to inform practice-level improvement activities, something that has not been done at a large scale within primary care in British Columbia. The development phase for the tool is complete and activities related to operations and scaling of the project are underway.
ENTERPRISE AGILE | Scaled Agile Project Delivery including Machine Learning Algorithmic Features (Henriette Koning, Director, Information Systems PMO, STEMCELL Technologies)
Following the Scaled Agile framework (‘SAFE’) at a company with a strong engineering mindset can be challenging – add to that features delivered by a team of data scientists using machine learning on big data to produce prognostic and algorithmic alerting, and you risk an epic (no pun intended) clash of paradigms. This presentation will present the challenges, solutions, and opportunities for such a situation.
SOCIAL GOOD | Engaging the Community: Stakeholder management in complex urban planning developments in the downtown eastside (Tom Wanklin, Senior Planner for the DTES Planning Group & Wes Regan, Community Economic Development Planner, City of Vancouver)
We all know that the benefits of projects are realised through its stakeholders and that project impact is sustained through their ongoing efforts and engagement. However, what is not clear is how stakeholder commitment can be achieved in project situations that are both passionate and acrimonious? The City of Vancouver has developed a couple of approaches to early stage project engagement that attempt to embrace the passion, diversity, and commitment of even the most polarised of stakeholders. Their pragmatic, facilitated and democratic approach opens up a world of stakeholder engagement that many project managers will find useful, empowering and enlightening. You will come away from this presentation with a new-found enthusiasm and understanding of stakeholder engagement that is inspired by the expertise, experiences and stories of Tom and Wes.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT | Project Management Volunteers (Carol Neuman, Nick Cheung, Klaudia Budniak)
PM-Volunteers has been extraordinarily successful with 200 active and completed projects with nonprofits since 2010. This will be a panel discussion with 2 volunteer PM’s and 2 non-profit leaders sharing their experiences. We will explore some opportunities and perhaps dispell some myths. The differences between working in the private sector and with nonprofits can be….interesting. The benefits can be ….amazing, both for the PM and the nonprofit. Whether you already have experience working with a nonprofit and want to hear from others, or have considered volunteering but always said “not right now”, join us for a lively and personal discussion. Knowledge philanthropy is hot right now.
2:45 PM – 3:00 PM
Coffee Break
3:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Breakout Sessions
SOCIAL FACTORS | Continuous Improvement of the PMO at BC Hydro: People, Practices and Technology (Stephen Bailey, Project Manager, Capital Projects PMO & Stephen Mason, Manager of Project Services, BC Hydro)
BC Hydro has a mandate to deliver an approximately $2 billion annual capital plan, to support BC’s economic growth and meet the demands of BC Hydro customers by refurbishing, replacing and building generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure. This presentation will be focused on what has happened at BC Hydro since winning the 2016 PMO of the Year Award. We will look at the impact that this had on the PMO after receiving the award as well as two continuous improvement initiatives the PMO has recently focused on using LEAN principles. The key initiatives that would be highlighted relate to scalability of our single standard practice and the refocusing our monthly schedule progression cycle.
HEALTH CARE | Optimizing Teams in Raven Song Primary Care: A Nimble Project Approach (Susan Lim, Nicole Latham, Andrew Day, Vancouver Coastal Health)
In this presentation you will hear about a novel and inclusive approach to the ongoing design, developing, implementing and evaluation of team based care in a community clinic setting. The challenges and opportunities of project managing change in a rich and diverse stakeholder environment, that spans multiple professional disciplines can not be underestimated. It is clear that a traditional project approach is ill-suited to the dynamic and inclusive nature of the change required. However, an ‘agile’ approach does not necessarily fit the specific context of the multi-professional community health settings. The RavenSong approach is unique in that it pragmatically borrows from both traditional and agile approaches in creating a ‘nimble’ and context appropriate approach the project management in a community health setting. It is also notable that the RavenSong approach includes aspects of project management more typically associated with entrepreneurial activity in highly innovative sectors. The RavenSong approach demonstrates a highly unique and context sensitive approach that is responsive and sensitive to the community health care context, as well as being pragmatic and positive in its approach to overcoming challenges and constraints that are typical of multi-stakeholder environments. Learning Outcomes Understanding the challenges and opportunities of change projects in the community healthcare sector Understanding the challenges and opportunities of an ‘agile-like’ approach in a complex and multi-stakeholder context Understanding the possibilities of an ‘agile-like’ approach in the community health sector Awareness of novel and exciting approaches to the management of projects in non-traditional project environments
ENTERPRISE AGILE | Epistemic Agile: Integrating Knowledge Across Hybrid Approaches (John Rauser, Director of Information Security, 7Geese)
Knowledge management is one of the most critical and fundamental duties of the Project Manager: ensuring that knowledge is shared and integrated across different domains, contexts and activities. This means having the right tools and techniques in place to collect information, but also the right organizational culture to drive sharing. Both of those objectives are confounded when using a hybrid approach. In this talk we will look at how to improve hybrid project management with an approach to project integration focused on knowledge management.
SOCIAL GOOD | Social Good Panel
We end our Social Good track with a panel of speakers, that includes guests from PM Volunteers, who will share their experiences in creating social good. We will explore the opportunities and challenges of working in this complex space, and perhaps dispel some of the myths that surround it. The challenges can be… interesting. The benefits can be… amazing – personally, professionally, for the communities we serve and for society at large. Whether you are experienced in working in this space or are new and interested, there will be much to discuss and learn. Please join us for a lively, informal and personal discussion on how we each can create a better world as individuals and as project managers!
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM
KEYNOTE PRESENTATION
Fostering Innovation Through the Power of Neurodiversity! (Samad Aidane, University of Oregon)
As globalization continues to gain speed and strength, the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to leadership is no longer sufficient to effectively engage an increasingly diverse, multicultural, and international array of project stakeholders. More than ever before, the capacity to lead innovation and transformation through harnessing the power of cultural diversity is becoming an increasingly important skill for individuals at all levels of the organization and especially at project and program leadership level. Drawing from the growing body of research in cognitive, social, and cultural neuroscience, the presentation will introduce a framework for understanding how culture shapes the brain and the core cultural dimensions that drive thoughts, emotions, and behaviour in cross-cultural collaboration. The aim of the keynote is to move participants beyond the simple dos and don’ts of cultural awareness to a more sophisticated understanding of cultural differences and the key role that project and program managers play in fostering neurodiversity as a key enabler of innovation and competitive growth.