International Project Management (IPM) Day recognises the important economic and social contributions of project professionals worldwide. This year it falls on Thursday, 3 November 2022. To mark the occasion, we asked our chapter presidents to share their top project advice, plus we’ve got some tips for celebrating this important day.

 

What is International Project Management Day?

International Project Management Day is celebrated on the first Thursday in November. It launched in 2004 as an annual day of recognition of the achievements of millions of project managers worldwide.

With a project manager skills shortage, IPM Day is an excellent prompt for organisations to recognise and appreciate individual and team performance. It’s a day to shine a spotlight on the enormous contribution that projects make to business and the community.

What better way to support and encourage project managers than with top tips from industry experts?

 

Mark Adams MAIPM CPPM

Project and Program Specialist, Children’s Cancer Institute and AIPM NSW Chapter President

What is the best piece of advice you have received in your project management career?

Three words. Document, document, document. Verbal agreements, decisions and actions are not worth the paper they’re written on. Get comfortable and efficient with capturing notes about everything. Everyone will be looking to you to have recorded who said what, by when and when you do, make sure that you publish it promptly.

What are your top 3 tips for project management success?

  1. Build engagement skills: If done successfully, there is nothing soft about soft skills. So, rethink the label and call them engagement skills. Be authentic. Study how others build trust. Learn active listening and study negotiating. You’ll be amazed at how effective good questioning and answering can serve you.
  2. Documentation before action: Resist the urgency to start a project before the full suite of project documentation is completed and signed off. Confirmation of the agreed success criteria and all the component parts is the blueprint, including how you’ll navigate change requests. The good ideas and attempts to move the goalposts will just keep coming. Your discipline here will underwrite the respect and trust of your team.
  3. Change management: Learn change management. It’s about people and valuing them is vital. It’s vital to ensure project success.

 

What is the best piece of advice you would give to someone starting their project management career?

You can cultivate your own maturity by finding a high-performing team or mentor. Find someone who’s genuinely interested in developing you. Understand where you need to grow and then seek the opportunities to achieve that. Be courageous and think about what you can provide in return. Early career professionals bring agility, energy and ideas. Finding the fit for these is always a challenge. I won’t sugar coat that, but keep offering.

And finally, be considered with any professional course selection. There are so many choices and offerings. Many with hefty price tags. Just make sure that you’re really circumspect about the skills that that accreditation or certification actually will provide for you.

 

 

Maria Dalla-Fontana MAIPM

Manager – Space, Science & Technology, Dept of State Growth Tasmania and AIPM Tasmanian Chapter President

 

What is the best piece of advice you have received in your project management career?

Opportunities come in all forms, so make the most of others’ experience and seek out new challenges. You don’t need to be the subject matter expert to be a successful project manager, use and leverage the expertise that surrounds you – your PM superpower is harnessing that expertise.

 

What are your top 3 tips for project management success?

  1. Qualifications: A qualification in project management shows potential employers that you are serious about your career and the discipline of project management and also that you are both qualified and competent to do the job and have the required set of skills.
  2. Co-creation: No individual or company has all the answers, and that is why your approach to solving project problems should be done through the lens of co-creation with stakeholders.
  3. Diversity: When building a project team, aim for diversity and embrace people for ‘who they are’ and believe that everyone adds to the project by making it richer and stronger – don’t seek out people to fit into your project or workplace culture, actively seek out people to add to it.

 

What is the best piece of advice you would give to someone starting their project management career?

The number 1 tip for people looking to start a career in Project Management is find a mentor. And always remember to have fun – if it stops being fun, go in a new direction.

 

 

Victorian Chapter Council

 

What is the best piece of advice you have received in your project management career?

Don’t just come up with the problem. Identify potential solutions and recommend one.

 

What are your top 3 tips for project management success?

  1. Don’t rush: the biggest project mistakes in planning and decision-making are made in the earliest phases of a project. If you happen to be around at this phase of a project, take your time and think through the consequences of the decisions being made. Often you must go slow to move fast.
  2. Plan: never underestimate the potential of well thought-through and clearly communicated plan. In situations of high uncertainty or cases where external issues seek to derail your project, the plan can be relied upon as a basis for change and allow teams to move forward with certainty and confidence.
  3. Champion change: projects are all about change. Never underestimate the power of an organisation and its culture to oppose change. Don’t assume your stakeholders and end users are accepting or embracing of the changes your project will bring. Engage them directly in forums that allow open and free discussion to avoid change disasters.

 

What is the best piece of advice you would give to someone starting their project management career?

Project management is equal parts art and science. The science can be taught and learned through courses and online training. The art of project management can only be properly understood through direct observation and mentoring. Never pass up the opportunity to work on projects and with PMs that will provide you the opportunity to see the art of being a great PM.

 

 

Reece Dempster MAIPM CPPM

Project Manager for Bus Infrastructure at Public Transport Authority and AIPM WA Chapter President

What is the best piece of advice you have received in your project management career?

When engaging managers and stakeholders, become a great storyteller. We shouldn’t be just updating where we’re up to. We need to go back to the start, identify how we got to where we’re at, identify where we are and what we’re doing and where we want to be. Creating that story brings everyone onto the same page and keeps everyone going forward at the same pace.

 

What are your top 3 tips for project management success?

  1. Talk: Make a phone call instead of an email. If it’s a 30-second decision or a conversation, it beats a three to five-minute email any day.
  2. Know Excel: It is the integration tool between all project management tools. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing scheduling, financing, or quality control. It all comes in and out of Excel.
  3. Be curious: Keep an open mind. A better solution will never come to a project manager with a made-up mind.

 

What is the best piece of advice you would give to someone starting their project management career?

Volunteering in your chosen profession and industry allows you to learn from others and also grow your network at the same time. It is such a valuable way to engage not only your peers and colleagues but promoting yourself.

 

 

IPM Day ideas

Want to show your appreciation for your favourite project manager? Here are some ideas to get you started.

Tell them they’re great: sometimes we forget to let people know what a great job they’re doing, so use IPM Day as an excuse to acknowledge the efforts of an individual or team (privately or publicly!). Share your appreciation online too, and use the hashtag #IPMDay2022.

Get them a present: it doesn’t need to cost the earth; most project managers will be thrilled if you bring their favourite coffee to a meeting. Add some cake and you’ll have a friend for life. And if they’re working remotely? Get it delivered.

Invest in them: IPM Day would be a great time to review where your team is at and review options for their professional development. You could even shout them professional membership or certification to open doors and recognise their skills and experience.

 

Happy International Project Management Day!

We hope you enjoyed our advice and tips. A big thanks to our national chapters for taking the time to contribute.

AIPM members are invited to help us celebrate International Project Management Day (in late November) at our complimentary webinar where we will discuss the state of the project management profession in Australia in 2022.