PMI Global Summit Kicks Off: Change in the Air in LA
| by Matt Crawford
Workplace values aren't important only to Gen Z
Hello from Los Angeles! Day 1 at PMI Global Summit 2024 was quite interesting, especially for PMI members. During the opening keynote, Pierre Le Manh, PMI's President & CEO, announced PMI Infinity 2.0, the updated PMI AI tool that will launch later this year. The tool will be built on ChatGPT 4.0 and include an AI-powered risk analysis tool. He also announced that PMI is buying Cognilytica, an AI and Machine Learning analyst firm, to accelerate PMIxAI capabilities. PMI's all in on AI and the ways it may accelerate project management practice and learning.
He also announced that the PMO Global Alliance (PMOGA) is launching a new PMO practice guide and that PMI is launching an updated PMI-ACP certification. At PM Solutions, we're especially interested to see the practice guide, given that we've been researching PMO best practices for nearly two decades. How many of our identified practices will make it into that guide? And will there be surprises that will perhaps inform our future research studies? Stay tuned.
Another long-overdue change will be addressed in a forthcoming PMI research project, to be released in November: Pierre gave a preview of the study, which has resulted in PMI reframing project success. He made a key distinction between project management success and project success. PMI is defining project success based on the research as: “delivering value that is worth the effort and expense.” We couldn't agree more. Value delivery is central to our thinking in all our client interactions, and it's good to see this reflected by PMI.
More changes were reflected in the Project of the Year awards and the PMO of the Year awards. The Project of the Year awards are now separated into categories: Social Project Award, Technology Project Award and Construction/Infrastructure/Engineering Project Award. The PMO awards are now all through PMO Global Alliance (now part of PMI) and are broken into regional awards: Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, Middle East and North America. The Regional award winners were announced at the PMI awards ceremony, but the PMO of the Year will be announced at the PMO unCon in December in Istanbul.
One of the interesting sessions that I attended was “Firing up Gen Z: Igniting tomorrow’s agile pioneers," given by an actual Gen Z’er, Semira Allen. She shared some interesting data about the positives that Gen Z bring to the workplace including that they are digital natives, crave transparency and are creative and innovative. Some of the key ways that organizations can unlock the leadership qualities in Gen Z include: reverse mentoring programs, gamification of work and connecting with their workplace values.
I think the workplace values area is one where all generations in a company can connect!
If you're at the conference, I hope to see you and share some of the excitement of this event.