Welcome to the Spring edition of the APM People SIG newsletter 2018

Newsletter content:

Welcome from the new People SIG Chair
People SIG survey - take part!
Stakeholder Engagement Focus Group
Communication workstream

Welcome from new People SIG Chair

Welcome to the People SIG Newsletter – the first for 2018, and only the second one in recent times! I am Andrew Bell and I joined the People SIG during 2017, and I’m now chair!

During my career in the automotive industry, and in academia, I have learnt that people matter in project work. Plans will get you so far, but without people skills your plans are doomed to failure!

I’ve been volunteering for APM for over 15 years, and I’m now trying to make the work of the People SIG more visible, and useful to a wider audience. As I write, the SIG has just supported the APM Conference in late April, and was also involved in the BoK 7 consultation process. Later in the year, we hope to revise our micro-site web pages to be more useful and accessible for ‘people’ with an interest in ‘people’ issues.

A major part of the SIG’s output is from the Stakeholder Engagement Focus Group (SEFG), and I would like to thank them for their continuing hard work in providing updated information for the People SIG and SEFG website.

Last October, the People SIG supported the NW branch conference "Project Manager to Leader: Collaborating, influencing and conflict management". The bulk of that event was an acted-out project situation delivered by “People Deliver Projects” organisation, with audience participation!

Last November the SIG held a workshop on three streams:

refining and examining the existing SEFG website content,
starting to look at Communication in Projects, and,
international working.

These three streams form the basis of the SIG’s objectives for the coming year. I hope you find the exerts and links provided in this newsletter useful.

Picture: Andrew Bell (Left) talks to Roger Garrini (Chair of Midlands branch

People SIG survey – take part!

APM People SIG wants to know what you think about people related aspects of project management, and we’re inviting all APM members to take part in our quick survey.

We launched the survey to support the APM Conference 2018. As the APM looks to the future of project management and the tools and capabilities we will need, it is important that we understand where we are today. The People SIG wants to find out about the day-to-day challenges and priorities relating to people in projects: working with stakeholders and leading teams.

It is a simple pulse-check survey. Your feedback will help to inform the way the People SIG supports the project management community. The survey will remain open through May to gather as many responses as possible. All responses will be anonymous.

It will only take a couple of minutes to complete. So please take part in the APM Conference 2018: People SIG quick survey today!

Stakeholder Engagement Focus Group

1. Stakeholder Engagement web pages:

In June 2017 the SEFG completed a major over-haul of the APM Stakeholder Engagement web pages, creating over 20 pages of resources and information. The SIG workshop in November provided an opportunity to get feedback from our own stakeholders – from real end users of the site.

Thank you to everyone who took part. Following on from your comments and recommendations, we have identified three immediate areas of improvement: making the valuable content on the site easier to find; improving ‘sign posts’ and general layout to make it easier to identify which content is relevant, and to deep-dive further to related information; making better use of multi-media content to share or explain different aspects of stakeholder engagement.

We have kick-started the next phase of development with the APM web team who will be testing a new, simpler landing page layout. The volunteers in the SEFG team will be giving a day of their time and effort in May, to drive progress on content and design improvements.

Look out for updates on the SIG microsite.

Picture: The Stakeholder Engagement web site workshop generated valuable feedback in November 2017

2. Stakeholder Engagement webinars, events and other resources:

Coming up on 28 June, Benedict Pinches of the SEFG will be presenting a webinar: “What is stakeholder engagement and why is it important? webinar”

You can find information about stakeholder-related events that are coming up and useful information about working with stakeholders from the SEFG online pages: bookmark the monthly “Useful Links update” on the APM Stakeholder Engagement website area and follow the SEFG on Twitter @ApmSEFG.

Communication workstream

The presentation from the November 2017 workshop is currently available on the APM website. The output is currently being reviewed with a view to release to the website.

If you have any comments on the newsletter or would like to contribute an article to a future edition, please contact us.