PMI Global Summit Impressions

I would like to share my impressions from the 4-day PMI Global Summit 2024, which was attended by 4000 people. There were 3 different keynote speakers and multiple parallel sessions at the summit. The summit progressed with the slogans Gather, Grow and Guide.

First of all; I would like to share the news shared by PMI CEO Pierre Le Manh:

??Reframing of Project Success: PMI proposes to define project success as “delivering value that is worth the effort and expense”. According to the research conducted by PMI, the Global Net Project Success Score is at 36%. They will share the detailed report in November. However, it was emphasized in the opening speeches that in order to increase this number, it is important to choose the right project and determine the project success criteria from the beginning, regularly measure project performance and ensure team morale & motivation and work balance.

??PMI:Infinity 2.0 (PMI's Artificial Intelligence GenAI tool) will go live at the end of September. It will help professionals upload and generate project documents, offer project-specific recommendations, and provide templates and checklists. Additionally, AI Practice Guide Release is now available on pmi.org.

This year, I saw PMI Summit focusing on 4 different areas. These were; PMO, AI, Hybrid Project Management (WAgile) and Talent Management, respectively.         

On the PMO side, there were sessions that particularly highlighted XMOs and PMOs using artificial intelligence. It was discussed that PMOs support the entire organization like a service provider (PaaS) and affect the cultural, technical and business results of the institution. I think that it is critical to produce results by considering both internal and external customers in the Value-Driven Customer-Centric structure. PMI will offer opportunities to those who want to strengthen in this area with the PMO-CP certificate.

On the AI side, we watched presentations that AI can be used in many areas in project management. We came across many sessions that AI will develop in the 3A area presented by PMI AI Essentials for Project Professionals. The 3A we call: Automating, Assisting, and Augmenting Processes. It is shown in Figure-2.

In addition, many sessions were organized where we could reach a conclusion by using the Prompt Enginering approach, especially after GenAI using (PMI Infinity, Open AI ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini etc.) and they reflect the GenAI is very critical.

In the summit, we saw that Artificial intelligence is used in the following project management areas:

? Project prioritization,

? Risk identification and management,

? Scheduling and time management

? Reporting and documentation

? Communication and collaboration

? Supplier selection

I learned how to do earned value analysis with artificial intelligence in a session I attended at the summit. Especially today, communication with data has become important. Performing earned value analysis quickly and convincing the upper management has become very meaningful for us project and change management teams.

I also saw that most of the companies sponsoring the summit offer AI-supported project and portfolio management services. AI support offers many opportunities such as providing guidance in a chatbot style, taking data from the system and quickly presenting suggestions to the dashboard management. In addition, there are those who suggest suitable time slots according to the project manager and team's calendar and offer to hold meetings at this time.

Finally, I attended the session on what to consider to do the right AI projects. The recipe for success I learned from here is that if there is no data, work is as difficult as ever and this work requires a lot of time and money.

On the WAgile side, I had the opportunity to attend sessions on the correctness of choosing an approach that is appropriate for the corporate culture (taking into account customer, team and project needs). A few images are as follows:

Finally, there were sessions on understanding and advancing our Talents, namely our project team, who manage our projects and changes. In particular, it was discussed that we need to develop both their expertise and social aspects and somehow keep the Fun in what we do. I am adding a few images about these below:

If you want to participate in such summits, you can follow the https://www.pmi.org/events page. There will be global summits in Barcelona, Philippines and Phoenix, Arizona in the next year.

In addition, you can register for the PMI Türkiye Summit in Turkey, which will be held 2 weeks later on October 4-5 (https://pmi.org.tr/pmsummit2024/). Many national and international speakers are coming to the summit.

References:

1. https://www.pmi.org/standards/ai-essentials-for-project-professionals

2. PMI Global Summit Presentation