My Experience at the 2024 Fort Worth PMI Professional Development Conference

Article Written by: Julie Farmer, PMP

The Fort Worth Project Management Institute (PMI) Chapter hosted the 2024 FWPMI PDC at CERA in South Fort Worth. The PDC committee debuted both a new conference format and a new conference location. This conference brought together Project Management Professionals, Business Analysts, Cyber Security SMEs, and many others for a day filled with learning, networking, and inspiration. The new conference format included 4 topic session speakers that everyone attended together (two in the morning and two in the afternoon) and 2 breakout sessions where participants were able to interact together in smaller groups and build upon the different things that they learned in the sessions throughout the day.

The 2024 PDC theme was “Innovate, Implement, Inspire: Project Management in the Digital Area” and the conference kicked off with an inspiring keynote address by Saby Waraich ?? , who discussed Navigating Digital Transformation with the CARES Framework. Saby explained that you shouldn’t Be Scared, but that you share Care(s)… Communicate, Adapt, Relationships, Empower, and Stay Calm. Saby also emphasized the importance of Trust, being on a winning team, and Continuous Improvement. His enthusiasm, energizing comments, and key take aways set an exciting tone for the day.

Topic One - The Discussion

The first topic speaker was Tiana Reeves, PMP, PMI-ACP, CSSBB and she spoke about ’Continuous Improvement in Agile: Moving Beyond the Status Quo’. She explained the stages of continuous improvement: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control and that this happens at all levels. She also defined Success as equaling Process + Quality. Tiana explained that one of the best ways to do continuous improvement is to ask the “5 Whys” (ask your team a key question and then ask 4 follow up questions to drill down to get more information about the problem you are trying to solve). She reminded us to stay focused on the problem. Tiana closed with a reminder that everyone is involved in continuous improvement and to monitor and control and document the lessons learned!

Topic One - The Workshop

Participants then moved to 1 of 3 breakout rooms and used the skills that they just learned in a ball exercise. Teams of about 8 people were given an objective, 3 balls, and a set of rules that they had to follow. The teams were given 4 minutes to plan their strategy and 1 minute to execute. They were then encouraged to discuss what worked well by asking 5 Why questions. They were given time to repeat the exercise and they were able to see improvement between occurrences. Once the teams seemed to have the activity under control, they were thrown a curve ball (just like those that come up in daily jobs) and they had to work through new obstacles and rules and continue to try to improve each time.

Topic Two - The Discussion

The 2nd topic speaker was Dieter Scholtyssek and he spoke about’ Mastering AI-Powered Project Management with Generative AI’. Dieter was a returning speaker and he built upon his presentation from last year. Dieter was able to explain Generative AI for beginners and also provide Pro Tips for those who were more advanced. He is the author of a book called ChatGBT 3.5 if you would like more information about this topic. Dieter also talked about free models but stressed the importance of protecting your data and your privacy. In addition to talking about ChatGPT 4.0, Google Gemini, Grok (Twitter), and a few other models, he talked about poe.com, which is an inexpensive way to use all of the models monthly so that you can try them out and find the one that you like the best.

Topic Two - The Workshop

He also talked about how AI can help Project Managers in their day to day tasks like Predictive Planning, Budgeting, Creating timelines, and Documentation. Dieter also spent time talking about creating effective prompts and he demonstrated this interactively with the group. It was fun creating AI generated songs and hearing a podcast talk about the PM content that was entered into the AI generative model. In closing, Dieter encouraged everyone to try one of the models and to have fun with it.

Topic Three - The Discussion

Session 3 was presented by John S. . He is a Cyber Security SME and he talked about ‘Cybersecurity and Data Management: Building Resilient Projects”. He talked about the importance of Risk Management and he explained the importance of being careful with AI tools and making sure that you are protecting and managing your data. He recommended not using the free models and to still be careful with the paid models. He also encouraged everyone to have fun with these models but emphasized the importance of knowing what you are using and to understand the risk. He said not to ever use your company specific or personal data.

Topic Three - The Workshop

We then moved into our second workshop session and used the 5 Whys and Iterative process that we learned from Tiana along with the different Generative AI models that we learned from Dieter to research some security related breaches and to discuss how we would approach them if we encountered them in our jobs.

Topic Four - The Discussion

The final session of the day was Trent Leopold and “Leadership and Change Management in the Digital Era: Strategic Thinking for Project Success”. Trent talked about several topics including Business Analysis, Brain Health, Brain Training, and Brainomics. We watched a video presentation and worked through several phases of analyzing the vido. The take away of the session (and a great way to wrap up the day) was a reminder that the Digital Era is great and can help you be more productive but it is also very important to take brain breaks through out the day and to get up and see the sun rise (rather than looking at your phone screen first thing in the morning).

Final Thoughts

As the conference drew to a close, Kathy Harvel, Chapter President thanked everyone for attending the conference. She mentioned that attendees could use the PMI Claim Codes in their pamphlets to file for the 8 PDUs that were offered for attending the conference. CERA was a great meeting venue, the food was very good, the speakers were great, and it was fun to connect with others at an in person conference! If you want to help with the planning of next year’s conference or your organization is able to be a sponsor for the event, you can email [email protected].