Projectchat 2011

I’ve been at the Projectchat 2011 conference in Sydney for the last couple of days. Projectchat is the ‘home’ of the Deltek community with a strong focus on scheduling and Earned Value.

The event this year has been organised by a new name, Connexion Systems Pty Ltd. New name, same team – Connexion has evolved from WST Pacific through Deltek Australia to its present form and remains the primary sales and support agency for Open Plan, Cobra, and associated tools in Australia.

My personal high point was the standing room only audience for the first airing of my thoughts and ideas on refocusing scheduling tools to focus on optimising the critical work and the critical workers rather than arbitrary activities, durations and ‘float’. The presentation can be downloaded from: http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/Resources_Papers_152.html

Other thoughts and feelings include how little organisations have learned over the last 25 years, highlighted by Greg Betros’ paper, the same bad practices remain far too common. Countered by an expanding recognition that scheduling and project controls matter and the expanding interest in training and certification (for more on this topic see: http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/Resources_Papers_149.html).

Another highlight was the overview of PMI’s updated Practice Standard for Earned Value Management presented by one of the core team members Lloyd Carter. The 2nd Edition has significant improvements over the original and aligns with AS 4127. I’ve bought a copy and will post on this shortly.

As always with Projectchat, there was a great party last night… now all I need to do is get through the rest of the sessions.