The best is yet to come

Today is my last day serving as Project Management Institute France president, and I would like to share some thoughts about it. This text is not a summary and I am going to miss some people, sorry for that.

It was two years of very intense work.

2021, learning from reality

Before to start this learning journey, I had a strong vision about what should be done to transform our association to adapt it to the future. I have shared my ideas here: Les défis de PMI France pour l'année 2021. I was full of energy to put all this ideas in motion, but COVID had a huge impact for every single organisation in the world and the NGOs were not an exception. I was wondering about the feasibility of our transformation.

And then reality hit. I have discovered that Project Management Institute France had a big problem of governance so, I had to adapt the road map and fix the foundations. 2021 was, no doubts, the worst year of volunteering on my entire life. I was astonished to see how people can replicate behaviors that we ca found on big corporations. Ego is a major problem concerning all kind of human organisation, not only for companies. I recommend Isaac Getz 's book about this subject, Leadership without Ego: How to Stop Managing and Start Leading.

Then, a big crash regarding our website. It is always surprising me how something easy can become a nightmare. The website is a cornerstone for our way of working because our team is decentralized. We do need a platform to accelerate volunteers actions and avoid waist of time. Most of those functionalities were broken. It was a major issue.

In the middle of all this situation, I made a call to members and volunteers to re-imagine our association. Thanks Lamia MOUSSAOUI for facilitating this collaborative effort. PMI France co-construit sa stratégie 2021-2023, and after many brainstorm sessions, surveys, interviews, and Klaxoon whiteboards, we were able to identify the deepest reason why Project Management Institute France exists. The result was a deck of slides describing our ambition. Not very useful, isn't it? Well, we were missing the action plan.

Maybe, the most important outcome of this work was:

1. the confirmation that Project Management Institute France was doing the right things; but
2. we were communicating badly; and
3. the discovery of the elephant in the room: pleasure of volunteering must be in the heart of our association.

2022, delivering real value

2022 was a quite different year: a fully aligned team took over the leadership and the magic started to happen. But we were only 7 for a team of 12 so, I request the support of Laurent Maceyko, PMP who was a great help.

The National Project Management French Congress in Avignon confirmed that Project Management Institute France was alive, and healthier than ever! Almost 500 attendees, great speakers, and the most important French sponsors supporting us. Bruno Doucende headed the team that made this perfect dream a reality.

Later, we took advantage of our Volunteers Annual Meeting to build together the 2025 action plan. Again, it was an incredible experience! 65 volunteers coming from all over France to push forward our strategy and develop a pragmatic action plan. Thanks Paulin Kitieu and his team for the great work performed.

PMPDays is major event putting around the same table the NextGen of project managers, the most important French companies recruiting and SKEMA Business School . Christian-Jacques Bonetto and his team leaded this initiative, which had also a great impact!

Thanks to Aurore LAFAYE , and today to Vincent DRECQ , Project Management Institute France has Focus, a portfolio of initiatives with +50 projects that helps us to maximize the value we add to the French PM community and keep an eye on what matters most.

Thanks also to Georges Autissier who served first as Treasurer and then as Secretary. 6 long years of structuring and delivering value to the Project Management Institute France ! Georges Autissier is also behind another major initiative: pushing Project Management Institute France to become an association of general interest (association d'intérêt général) which would bring a lot of benefits in so many different ways. We should get good news on Q3 '23.

Also, Stéphane Derouin leaded the Lab Hybrid, a think thank to confront ideas about different project management approaches like waterfall and agile. You will see the result of this work on amazon very soon.

Mounina Tounkara, PMP? did it again! Like in 2016, she leaded a great Study Group to highlight the content of our mothership, the PMBoK7. This initiative had a gear reception and today you can see the result in our Youtube channel.

Women by PMI is leaded by Oriana Marechal who renewed this program which aims to promote equity in the professional environment.

Anca CEI leads with tenacity our whole IT team, including the design of our next website, which should be ready on Q3 '23. Thanks for this great team!

Jean-Luc FAVROT is giving a new energy to all Project Management Institute France members outside mainland France. This is a huge effort for a geographically decentralized target population.

We had the honor to receive Pierre Le Manh in Paris at the end of the year. Pierre Le Manh explained us his vision and commitment to get things done by choosing first the right strategy instead of doing too many thing at the same time.

Feuille de Route is our internal newsletter, with great content and very useful insight about the chapter and the international community. Thanks Yasmina Khelifi, PMP, PMI-ACP, PMI-PBA for being there from the very beginning and thanks Marylène Lafon for taking over. Also, thanks Florine de Korwin for your very professional support!

The national newsletter is also a great plus this time not only for volunteers but for all project practitioners interested to receive it. Thanks Margarita Dos Santos and Laure-Emmanuelle Peyret for your continuous support.

And even today Jean-Yves Klein and Géry Schneider organized PIAF Agile , a full digital day to share about great experiences on agile approaches. At the moment of writing this text they had almost +900 inscriptions, 22 speakers, 18 sessions, and +15 sponsors.

All those initiatives are just some of the outstanding manners Project Management Institute France and its volunteers deliver value to the whole project management French community. I am so proud to have participated to this adventure! And sorry if in any way I made mistakes, I gave my best to honor your confidence and commitment.

Welcome Bruno Doucende , the new president, the whole chapter is behind you! Let's make it worth it!