Project Expo & Eddie Obeng

Posted by Kevin Brady on Mon 6th October 2008 at 04:03 PM, Filed in Industry News

Last Week I attended the Project Expo 2008 at Olympia for Project and Programme Managers. This is the best FREE industry show in the South of the UK. If you are an experienced or aspiring project /programme manager this is a must, and certainly worth a train ticket and a day off work.

The show has seminars and workshops running all day discussing cutting edge industry issues and concepts. Also, the show hosts stands from all the management institutes, many training companies and management software vendors. However, the one thing that always makes me smile is that the software vendors still pump naive or desperate project /programme management professionals the line that ‘tools can cure all known project /programme management ills’. All I can suggest is that before you are seduced by this line read my post “Tools for Fools”.

For me the biggest winner of the day was Eddie Obeng. I had heard of and seen him on the internet, and thought I would attend his seminar more out of curiosity than anything else. Whilst the central message was fuzzy and I can honestly say I can now recall little of the detail, I felt I was possibly looking at the ‘Tom Peter’s’ of Project and Programme Management. In an industry littered with IT project and programme failures life can be pretty miserable and stressful for most of us. This was born out by the number of balding men and women   in the packed audience; all suffers from stress induced alopecia! To see within 30 minutes visible hair re-growth on much of the audience – well OK, a smile or two and nods of understanding, told me I was seeing something quite new.

Through scenarios, analogies and war stories Eddie, in a humorous way, made a connection with many of the war veterans present. He made many inspirational comments about the ‘promised land’ of better run projects, and came across as the “man” to follow on his journey to enlightenment. Whilst I can say I won’t be one of his disciples, he does fill a gap in the industry and I would put Eddie first on list to fibrillate back to life your under performing project /programme management team.

I was thinking of becoming a Project /Programme Management evangelist a few years ago after being encouraged by a number of friends and colleagues.  However, I was put off by the fact that no one had attempted to fill the space and I wondered if this was because the problems behind consistently successful project and programme management delivery were so complicated and intractable that speakers in Tom Peters mold were not willing to take up the quest. How wrong I was and Eddie proves it can be done.  If you need to re-energise your Project /Programme Management Team you could do a lot worse than giving Eddie a call  

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