Travel Update – Tokyo

It has been 3 long weeks on the road…….

First port of call was Boston USA for the PMI College of Scheduling conference. The conference attracted well over 200 people; the numbers were down from 2008 in Chicago but not bad for the middle of a recession. My paper Scheduling in the Age of Complexity was well received and there was a wide range of other papers and key note addresses of interest. The College’s work on its Scheduling Excellence Initiative (SEI)  was progressed and is moving towards the completion of the first stage.

Second stop was the UK for 2 key meetings and some family time. The first meeting was with the CIOB manager developing their guide to scheduling good practice – this standard will have significantly more focus on the practice of scheduling than the current PMI Practice Standard. Whilst the standard will be specifically aimed at the construction industry, my feeling is the content will have wide application. More on this later….

My second UK meeting was with Gower Publishing Ltd to discuss the marketing of Dr. Lynda Bourne’s book, Stakeholder Relationship Management: A Maturity Model for Organisational Implementation. The book will be available in September and pre-publicity will commence soon.

This last week has been in Tokyo as part of the Australian delegation contributing to ISO 21500: A Guide to Project Management. Multi-national committee work can be frustrating but the feeling at the end of 5 intense days was good progress had been made building consensus and the body of the standard was close to being technically complete. As soon as the contents are signed off, the team I work on will finalise the language and glossary and subject to a vote of all of the nations involved, move the standard forward to a formal committee draft. Developing an ISO standard is a slow process, the likely date for publication will be late 2012 by the time the standard has moved through all of the drafts needed to ensure international acceptance. ISO 21500 is designed as an overarching standard to help bring coordination and commonality to the various underlaying national and industry standards such as the PMBOK® Guide.

Now all I need is a quite flight back to Australia and its back to the backlog of mail and business. More later.