The PM Track: What it’s about and how to get your session picked +Bonus 40 ideas for sessions you can steal!

If you’re anything like me, right now you’re thinking: Finally! It’s a very exciting moment for those in our field who have craved ways to collaborate, learn from experiences and refine our craft. The Drupalcon team has heard our request loud and clear, and we can now enjoy the very first Project Management Track!

What makes this awesome news

We can finally dedicate these sessions to Project Management in its own right, instead of treating it like it’s some sort of sales or business solution that needs to be sold. Those of us in the field know this universal truth: it’s about delivery, not just sales!

Who should submit and who should attend

We want seasoned professionals to submit sessions, but anyone is welcome to attend. Sessions will assume some PM knowledge is already acquired by the audience. We only get 7 sessions, so we want to make them count!

Timeline reminder

- Submit by 8 June midnight CEST

- Selection from 8-20 June

- Sessions announced 28 June 

Do this to get your session picked

Don’t submit general project management sessions. Let’s get into the nitty-gritty. Keep the emphasis off business (eg: how to sell your estimate), and more on practice (eg: how to make your estimate). Workshops would be great for this kind of content! Do propose sessions that solve real PM problems, explore new concepts, and challenge our preconceived notions. We want the good stuff; the advice and tips that come from years of experience, and many projects under the belt. Propose a variety of content formats into the selected sessions, from workshops that focus on teaching, to case studies to panels and your more “classic” presentations.

Let’s make it happen people

Share this post! We need to get the word out!
Submit a session! You have until Midnight CEST (that’s 6pm Eastern) on 8 June 
Share your ideas! What do you want to learn from sessions? Tell us in comments
RALLY! Let’s get so much great content we will have a dickens of a time choosing!

 

Bonus: Content Ideas for you!

Back in the day, I proposed a lot of session ideas and it helped generate content, so I’m repeating the experiment! I highly encourage you to steal them, tweak them, and reinvent them -  whatever you want! I hope to inspire you to share your hard-earned wisdom, check out the list at the end of this post.

Here are a few of my session ideas up for grabs:

  • Project estimation techniques
  • Project planning tips
  • Scope and Change management and handling tough conversations
  • Risk management tools, techniques and handling frequent project risks
  • Your experiences with different PM methodologies: what worked or didn’t?
  • Fixed bids pros, cons, good, bad, ugly, how to avoid them, how to use them to your advantage
  • Managing Portfolios: how to keep track and report on what matters
  • Leadership and coordination approaches
  • Pre-sales estimation: Benefits/Risks, Tips & techniques
  • PM Tools comparison: what’s the best one? why?
  • The shift: changing methodologies, issues and advice on implementing new processes
  • Handling difficult and demanding customers who don’t know the meaning of “out of scope”.
  • Priority management and backlog grooming tips/advice/tactics
  • Defining Done: techniques to make things clear
  • Lessons Learned, Post-Mortems and Retrospectives: learning from past mistakes & successes
  • Team cohesion: staying united & motivated during tough projects
  • Authority: how to wield it without being a jerk
  • The long project: how to manage big, long, projects and how they differ
  • The big nasty: worst project you ever had, and what you learned from it
  • Difficult team members: bringing up the quality of work on projects, and dealing with
  • Drupal Risk Management: Common Drupal project risks and how to mitigate them
  • Watergile for Drupal: Hybrid PM Tips and Techniques for Agile + Waterfall Projects
  • Drupal Resources: How to PM Volunteer Projects
  • Drupal Iterations: An agile process case study
  • Drupal Estimation Panel: Tips and Techniques for Estimating S/M/L projects
  • Drupal Estimation: Did you forget something? (things we should estimate, but often don't)
  • Before You Win: Project Estimation and Assessment
  • Drupal Assumptions: Common Assumptions that Kill Projects (and how to educate your clients)
  • Drupal Project Reporting: The Good and Bad News about Reporting Progress
  • When you’re wrong: handling project estimations & assumptions that went south bigtime.
  • Turning it around: bringing projects back on track when they are off the rails
  • Drupal Projects: Good, Bad & Ugly -- what do we love and hate about Drupal projects
  • Testing: assumptions, estimations and pitfalls of drupal testing
  • Managing different kinds of projects, do some techniques work better than others?
  • How to make estimators out of developers
  • OTOBOS: umm, does it really exist across an entire project? Has anyone ever delivered every single iteration on time on budget on scope?? If not, why is that?
  • Chaos report: top contributing factors to project failure and techniques to mitigate those risks on your drupal projects
  • Do you hate agile or some other methodology? Why? What would make it “better”?
  • Best project you ever ran case study: why was it good, what worked, what did you learn?
  • Bad PM: worst mistakes you can make.

So, let’s get cracking! Submit your sessions, spread the word and come join us in Barcelona!

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Shannon Vettes
Project Management Track Chair
DrupalCon Barcelona