Project management is a crucial area of software engineering. Its role and significance only increase with the growing scope and complexity of the work.
It is also a very dynamic theoretical area, with multiple methodologies and approaches competing for their spot in the workflows of organizations.
The first edition of HTEC’s Project Management Conference, which took place on September 30, represented an attempt to capture the breadth of theoretical thought in the area and highlight some of the emerging methodologies and trends in project management, straight from its thought leaders.
With the ambitious endeavor freshly and successfully behind us, we’d like to take you behind the scenes of the event and the seeds that made it happen.
How it started
The conference is the culmination of different converging activities of HTEC’s Project Management Office (PMO). Created with the goal of providing a growth platform for Project Managers of all seniority levels, the PMO represents a support system for their continuous education, training, and certifications.
What started out as a set of PMO’s strategic decisions on how to conduct education going forward quickly grew into a vision of a large-scale conference. Marko Pavlović, the Head of Project Management Office, talks us through the process.
“The initial idea was to have an in-house conference where our team members would share their areas of expertise. However, we realized that not only are we always available to our colleagues for guidance and consultations, but they also might find external speakers more interesting, as they see us every day. Instead, we decided to reach out externally to established experts and thought leaders and try to get them on board. In this, I must mention our Colleague Dragan Aničić, whose extensive experience and broad network were of immense value.”
Once the event began to take shape, the PMO also decided to step outside of HTEC and open the event to the public. Aside from it being an opportunity to once again emphasize HTEC’s long-standing belief of “growing ourselves by growing others”, opening the event was also an effort to reach out to the broader professional community and contribute to an active discussion meant to help the entire community grow and expand its knowledge together.
How’s it going
The list of conference speakers reads like a “who’s who” of today’s project management: Mike Griffiths, Scott W. Ambler, Sanjiv Augustine, Nader K. Rad, and Frank Turley all held lectures, while they were joined for the closing panel discussion by Milan Šmigić and one of professions pioneers Lee R. Lambert. Together, they presented a wide variety of viewpoints and approaches present in today’s theory – something that Marko Pavlović emphasizes as one of the key goals of the conference.
