Hello Fellow Members!
It’s been a joy and a privilege serving as your
VP-Administration for the past four years. Thank
you for trusting me to serve in this capacity. As
always, I am dedicated to providing the best service and
seek to continuously raise the bar on the level of
Chapter operations.
Even though PMINJ is a non-profit organization, the
PMINJ Board is committed to continuing serving you, our
Membership, in the most efficient and effective manner.
In other words, we run the Chapter like a business which
involves Strategic and Tactical Planning, Financial
Management, Portfolio Planning and Prioritization,
Performance Reporting, Continuous Improvement … just to
mention a few.
The Board conducted working sessions in November and
January to develop 2016 Strategic and Tactical Goals, as
well as to review and revise our Vision, Guiding
Principles and Strategic Objectives.
Strategic Objectives:
1. Engage and develop members in the
Project Management profession
2. Increase the value of PMINJ
membership
3. Provide an environment that
promotes collaboration and networking
4. Increase awareness of PMINJ
5. Demonstrate the value of applied
project management practices to NJ through outreach
6. Foster mutually beneficial
partnerships
7. Maintain and enhance chapter
operations
The Board approved the Operating Budget for 2016 to
ensure that as a non-profit organization we remain
financially viable now and in the future.
They also prioritized and approved the Portfolio of
Projects thereby making sure we are working on the right
initiatives that deliver the most value for our
membership.
Now that the planning is done – it’s time to execute –
and outperform!
“Efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness
is doing the right things”. Peter Drucker.
Laura has been an active volunteer of the Symposium
Registration Team for more than 10 years. Laura can be
counted on not only to do a great job with her specific area
of responsibility (preparing the certificates for the
attendees, vendors, & speakers) but she regularly offers
her time to help make the overall event registration process
more efficient.
With a smile on her face, Laura works at the registration
table for the symposium and makes registration experience
pleasant for the attendees. Laura is always willing to pitch
in and help to coordinate the registration activities when
needed. On multiple occasions, she came to the rescue
for the registration team, when a team member could not
attend the event due to a personal emergency. Laura
regularly provides suggestions for improvements for the
registration process and shares her ideas during the
Symposium Lessons Learned session. Laura always goes
the extra mile to help our chapter members and other
volunteers. The success of PMINJ's symposium and other
chapter events is attributed to the volunteers like Laura.
Back by popular demand – it’s Breakfast with the
Board! PMINJ Board members will host breakfast
meetings to start a series of casual meetings and candid
conversations about the Chapter, its services, the
profession, and how PMINJ can help support members’
growth and success as project management professionals.
Breakfasts will be held at locations around the state,
so if you’re interested in joining the conversation,
check the calendar on the website for an upcoming
breakfast, and sign-up to attend. Only PMINJ
Members are eligible to register for the breakfasts, and
reservations will be limited to 10 people per
event. Registration will open about two weeks
prior to each event, and will close three days before
the event, or when reservations are full, with location
details / directions sent to registrants the day before
the event.
Have breakfast with a Board member, and join the
conversation! See additional details and schedule
on the website.
Do you
need to sharpen your Strategic Planning or Business
Development skills? If so, then you should consider
attending the upcoming June workshop. PMI requires a
minimum of eight Professional Development Units (PDUs) or
eight Contact Hours focused on Strategic Planning and/or
Business Development. The PMBA provides eight
contact hours to satisfy both the Strategic Planning
element and Business Administration element.
At the completion of the PMBA course, attendees will be
able to lead teams in Strategic Planning efforts, have a
positive impact on the profitability of the company, and
thus demonstrate more value to the company as an employee.
Learn more and register on the PMINJ website.
At 8am sharp on
May 2nd, Judy Balaban, President of PMINJ chapter and
Jerry Flach, Director Symposium, kicked off the 30th
Annual Symposium to a full house at the Pines Manor in
Edison NJ. Opening keynote speaker, Brett Knowles,
consultant and thought Leader in strategy planning and
execution picked up this year’s Be Strategic: Revive Your
Project Portfolio Management Skills theme with his
presentation on Strategic Project Portfolio Management
Using the Balanced Scorecard. Strategy needs to be part of
the ongoing conversations and PMs have to make it simple
enough to communicate and ensure that it’s understood by
everyone so that all decisions are based on strategy from
moment to moment. Multiple views can be captured and
prioritized by first creating a Strategy Map then
weighting objectives and assessing current state including
process alignment. A Balanced Scorecard also requires that
the organization and project team proactively consider
project and strategy alignment over time.
The lunch keynote speaker was Lorna Kelly,
a transformation speaker and author of “The Camel Knows
the Way” and “In the Footsteps of the Camel”. She
held the crowd’s rapt attention with the story of her
personal encounter with Mother Teresa and the Missionaries
of Charity. Lorna described how she tended to the poorest
in Calcutta with the Missionaries. Lorna defined Mother
Teresa’s decisive, passionate, joyful and well organized
leadership skills, bringing the audience with her on an
inspirational journey.
Closing keynote speaker, Carl Belack, author of “Managing
Complex Projects”, and practitioner, consultant, speaker,
and educator in project and program management elaborated
on brain science to reveal sub-conscious biases and other
influences that impact behavior, interpersonal
interactions, and decision making. Attendees learned how
to accept, recognize and minimize the adverse effects of
biases using portfolio management decision making
processes. He highlighted anchoring bias, that is over
reliance on ‘first’ information, overconfidence in
personal beliefs through confirmation bias, and optimism
bias; be aware!
Several value
added tracks provided PMPs with the opportunity to gain
insights and PDUs across the leadership strategic, and
technical categories of PMI’s new Talent Triangle. In the
leadership track: Jerry Brightman President of The
Leadership Group, launched with an interactive session
that challenged mental models as required to reframe
problems and opportunities and bring in new perspectives
for sustained project and portfolio management success.
Tom Crea, an ex-Army officer and experienced leader
empowered attendees in his session to continue striving
for excellent interpersonal communication skills among the
essential career and personal skills for anyone especially
project managers! John Stenbeck, Founder of GR8PM, Inc.
and Agile expert shared inspirational and insightful
strategies on how to develop your innate leadership skills
by conquering ones fears and engaging with others in
thoughtful goal setting.
In the Strategic
track, Ed Chapel and Te Wu highlighted Portfolio
Management as the bridge between ideas and planning and
concrete action. Portfolio Management increases project
success and can be set up first by assessing current state
practice, taking inventory of existing work and assuring
the governance model and training. Robert Medary continued
the track with Hybrid Agile “The Best of Both Worlds” in
which he combined waterfall and Agile methodologies, for
example having users provide feedback at an early stage,
to minimize risk. Lindene Patton finished with a
discussion on risk management, citing $4.7T in financial
risks from climate related impacts and its resulting
impact on lowered S&P ratings throughout the supply
chain. Solutions such as resiliency strategies and related
infrastructure investments are required especially in the
face of unsustainable escalating insurance costs.
In the Technical track, Sadiq Shariff and Baisali Sarkar
started with the 3Ps of Project, Programs and Portfolio
Management to align budget scope and metrics when
unleashing the Value of Program Management. Aita Salasoo
provided PMs with tools and techniques for managing and
communicating complex stakeholder relationships such as in
multi-vendor and platform environments. Attendees were
given a detailed questionnaire to leverage when
interviewing stakeholders.
This year the
symposium included a Career Track for PMs seeking new
opportunities. Attendees had the confidence bolstered with
a career panel session; discussions with hiring managers
and recruiters; and advice for resumes, interviews, and
the process to complete the transition to their next
position.
The 30th Annual Symposium affirmed PMINJ’s commitment to
excellence in Project Management and the value its members
receive.
The 2016 Tour de
Franklin Charity Bike Ride, held on April 24, 2016, was the
largest in the Franklin Food Bank’s history with 775
participants raising $78,000 for the Food Bank. The
event is the Food Bank’s largest annual fundraiser and takes
a team of over 100 volunteers months of planning to secure
support from many local businesses and the community to make
the day a success.
For the past five years, PMINJ
volunteers have been a vital part of that support. The Tour
de Franklin has grown significantly from the inaugural ride
in 1989 when 30 riders banded together to raise $1,500 to
between 400 -700 annual participants. To manage that growth,
the Food Bank partnered with PMINJ for help with the event
planning, execution and analysis. PMINJ’s role has expanded
from event day volunteers in 2011 to volunteer management,
process improvement, total event planning, public relations
management, and management of food donations for the
cyclists.
This year the Planning Committee made significant
infrastructure changes to further accommodate the recent
growth including moving the Tour to a new venue,
implementing a new registration platform, and expanding the
use of social media as a communication forum. PMINJ
volunteers not only helped plan and execute the changes but
also led and participated in planning committees for four
months leading up to the Tour. Committee members in
2016 include:
| PMINJ Member |
Planning Committee
Role |
| Doreen Clark |
Public Relations / Media Coordination |
| Lystra Haynes |
Food Planning & Donations |
| Melinda Posipanko |
Volunteer Coordination |
Nine additional PMINJ members volunteered on
the day of the Tour. PMINJ volunteers often manage processes
or volunteer teams during the Tour, providing critical
structure during an extremely busy day.
The Franklin Food Bank is not
part of any government agency and is supported only by
community donations and targeted grants. While the
$78,000 raised by the Tour de Franklin sounds like a lot, it
is a small fraction of the Food Bank’s annual budget.
Demand for the Food Bank’s services have increased
approximately 10% each year since 2007 with close to 12,000
food packages provided to Franklin Township residents in
2015. The Food Bank seeks innovative ways to fight
hunger, including managing a community garden, working with
local farms for surplus produce, and collaborating with
larger food networks.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to make the 2016 Tour
de Franklin a success!
Volunteers from the PMINJ Corporate
Outreach group participated in Resource Management Day on
April 13th at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) at their location
just off Route 1 in New Brunswick. Many thanks to
Kate Bogumil, a chapter member and consultant at BMS for
suggesting to her manager, Roger Williams, to involve
PMINJ. Claudia Campbell-Matland and Bruce Fieggen
also participated. Bruce presented a one-hour
interactive and engaging lecture on Portfolio Management
as it relates to prioritization and allocation of
resources as well as changes to the CCR, as there were PMP
certified Project Managers in the room with questions
about the changes.
Between sessions, BMS
Project Managers from disparate groups and locations
highlighted their projects with visual displays.
Claudia perused the displays while Tod manned the chapter
table. One of the main messages shared was that the
PMINJ chapter encourages all members to think about
whether their employer would appreciate our involvement in
a similar event. The purpose of Corporate Outreach
is to strengthen awareness and build relationships with
corporations, while providing members an excellent
opportunity to volunteer and share their positive
experiences, knowledge and skills.
Why is
it difficult to get the whole picture from one or even
several pieces of information? Sometimes the
information is just too fragmented and chunks of
linear information do not stimulate most people’s
brains. So what is the best way to comprehend and
learn? I hope to shed some light into this mind
boggling dilemma that we all face.
Tony Buzan popularized a thinking technique called
“Mind Mapping” which resulted in a Nobel Peace Prize
nomination in 2011. Tony once said “The more you
know and learn, the easier it is to learn and know
more.”
What is Mind Mapping?
Mind mapping is a visual tool that enables us to
structure, organize, prioritizing, brainstorm, learn
and memorize information in a highly specialized
way. Traditional notes require a person to scan
the information from left to right and top to bottom
of the page but the brain’s natural preference is to
scan the entire page in a non-linear fashion.
Mind Mapping combines words and pictures in a
nonlinear fashion thus helping simulate logic (left
brain) and creative thinking (right brain) thus
stimulating both parts of the brain.
There are many Mind Mappers out there – two you might
recognize are Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein.
The benefits of Mind and Visual Mapping are virtually
endless. Here are just a few:
Are You Ready to Give Mind Mapping a
Try?
To start: think of a dinosaur in a jungle near a
volcano. Now close your eyes and think of a
dinosaur in a jungle near a volcano.
Did you actually see the words “dinosaur in a jungle
near a volcano” or did you envision a dinosaur in a
jungle near a volcano? Did you think of Dino
from The Flintstones? If so, then immediately
contact me because you have a very vivid imagination!
When it comes time to recall your Mind Map from
memory, the words you write down become secondary and
the visual images, colors and symbols you use are what
leave a lasting impression on your long-term memory.
All of this works together to help improve your
photographic memory and recall of information.
Now you know the meaning behind the
quote: “A picture is worth a thousand words.”
How to Draw a Mind Map
You don’t have to be an artist to draw a Mind
Map! Here are some quick guidelines to help you
draw your first Mind Map:
Utilizing a Mind Map
Boeing condensed its manual into a 25-foot-long Mind
Map. This enabled its aeronautical engineers to learn
in a few weeks what had previously taken a few
years. I can’t promise you this type of
results. But with practice who knows you may be
able to do better.
Retaining Your Mind Map in Memory
Here are some tips to help you build a strong
long-term memory of the information you are learning:
Recalling a Mind Map
What if you need to recall your Mind Map perhaps at
executive meeting or an exam? Drawing a Mind Map can
help to stimulate imagination while at the same time
creating strong associations. And it is these two
factors that stimulate long-term memory and recall of
information. Review it to refine or correct certain
areas. This will enable you to fill in any areas which
may have been missed and this will also reinforce
important associations.
To move your Mind Map from your short term to your
long term memory Tony Buzan recommends the following
interval review schedule:
At this point your Mind Map will
become part of your ongoing long term memory.
Take these techniques for a test spin and let me know
how it turns out for you.
Igor Zdorovyak is a PMINJ Marketing/PR
volunteer. If you’d like to share your success
story, then please contact him at
– you might be part of his next feature!
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