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 The
International Institute of Project Management (IIPM), Chennai,
hosted the first-ever conference in India on the industry's hot
topic ‘PMO in IT Industry: The Relevance & Challenges’ on
December 9, 2007. It was also an occasion for conducting the
‘Professional Development Day’ for practising project managers,
consultants, trainers, and PM professionals from all industries.
The conference provided an excellent
opportunity to create awareness about the growing need of
setting up of PMO unit in all project-based companies across the
length and breadth of the Indian subcontinent.
Admin executive, IIPM, Shiva, welcomed the
speakers, panelist and the attendees.
The conference formally opened with the
inaugural address by O Arivazhagan, CEO, IIPM, on the conference
main theme ‘PMO in IT Industry: The Relevance & Challenges’.
Arivazhagan explained the concepts of PMO and
its relevance to the IT industry by drawing parallels from the
construction industry. He drew the attention of all the
participants by asking 10 questions to check the relevance of
PMO in the IT industry. It was so interesting and
thought-provoking that the participants answered "yes" to almost
all the questions in unison with great enthusiasm thereby
acknowledging the need and relevance of PMO in the IT industry.
Arivazhagan kept the audience's interest live
and kept open answers to the second half of the conference theme
i.e., ‘The Challenges’ till the end of the conference so that
the conference participants could take home the challenges that
were required to be tamed by the industry professionals when
they set up a PMO in their organisation. This created lots of
curiosity amongst the conference attendees and prompted the
forthcoming speakers and panelists to come out with the
challenges they faced to augment Ari's list of challenges.
The following speakers spoke on the
conference theme covering various areas/phases of setting up a
PMO in the IT industry:
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Abiraman, PMO Analyst, Polaris
Software Lab Ltd
Topic – PMO: Roles & Responsibilities
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Dipanker Das, Project Manager, CGN IT
Topic – PMO: Implementation Experiences - A case study
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Tony Jacob, Operational Consultant,
Aconex India, Chair – Professional Development, DPC-SIG,
USA
Topic – PMO in Construction through Online Collaboration
- A case study
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M Sakthi Vel – Deputy Manager – State
Bank of India
Topic – PMO: Which Organisational Structure is Best
Suited?
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Lakshmi Narayanan, Associate Manager
- Delivery, Virtusa India,
Topic – PMO: Roles & Responsibilities
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Dhanesh Kunar, Project Manager, WIPRO
Topic – PMO: Which Organizational Structure is Best
Suited?
-
Ramakrishnan, Former GM, CGL
Topic – PMO: Implementation Experiences: A case study
After a sumptuous lunch, there was a lively
and highly interactive panel discussion on the main theme of the
conference, ’PMO in IT Industry: The Relevance & Challenges’.
The following SMEs, practising professionals and consultants
took part in the panel discussion that was well moderated by Ari
with his usual punching and humorous quotes from his
professional career spanning 23 years of project/project
management experience in various industries and countries.
-
Panelist 1: Ravichandran, CEO, Indus
CyberTech
-
Panelist 2: Gayathri Balaswamy,
vice-president, M&A Integration, ISG Nova Soft
-
Panelist 3: Jawahar Venkatraman, Project
Manager, PMP
-
Panelist 4: Ajit Kumar, Delivery Manager,
Logica CMG
-
Panelist 5: Ashok Sharma, SAP Project
Manager, SEAL InfoTech
-
Panelist 6: V S Srividhya, Senior Project
Manager, INFOSYS Technologies Limited
-
Panel Moderator: O Arivazhagan, CEO, IIPM
 After
a vivid and highly interactive discussion by panelists and the
participants, with interesting comments from the moderator, for
nearly two hours on various challenges being currently faced by
industry professionals, Ari, narrated in the end the top 10
Challenges that any PMO team should prepare itself to address
while setting up a PMO in IT industry.
IIPM awarded all those who scored above 75
per cent in the PMP exam in 2006-2007.
All the participants were given professional
development certificates for 7 PDUs.
The conference came to an end with the vote
of thanks by Sai Prasad, Cognizant Technology Solutions.
In the evening, IIPM hosted a cocktail dinner
party for all IIPM alumni wherein the PM professionals networked
and exchanged their views on current trends in the industry.
IIPM thanked the sponsor of the cocktail
dinner, International Dream Merchants (IDM) whose digital movie
trailer of the forthcoming digital film ‘The Perfect Knot’ was
screened to the amusement and enjoyment of the audience. The
conference attendees were thrilled to see the trailer of the
digital film which was, as informed by Ari, managed as a project
in the film industry using corporate principles and many project
management tools and techniques from PMI's PMBOK Guide.
IIPM also displayed yet another face of
responsible corporate companies by soliciting donations from the
participants to encourage social responsibility from amongst the
PM professionals to help the needy.
IIPM, on behalf of the PM community, extends
special thanks to the following project managers who generously
donated in response to IIPM's call for helping charitable
institutions.
1 O Arivazhagan, PMP (PC System)
2 Namagiri Lakshmi, PMP (PC System)
3 Padmalakshmi, PMP (household items, dress materials)
4 K S Prashant Kumar, PMP (dress materials)
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