Association for Project Management in South-Africa (APMSA) held its first annual conference

The APMSA held its first annual conference on 22 November 2018 in South-Africa. The International Project Management Association Executive Board was also invited to attend this event. ExBo participation underlined IPMA’s commitment to cooperation with South African MA and the whole Region.

The theme of the event was: “Ensuring a successful project start-up – preparation for kick-off”. The importance of this subject was considered as crucial for project success and the idea was to contribute positively to curb the high failure rate of projects worldwide.

The conference was a major success with members from the private, public and educational institutions from South-Africa and members from the IPMA Executive Board, which attended the conference.

Presenters from the IPMA, APMSA, the University of Pretoria in South-Africa, the University of the North-West in South-Africa, Project Management South-Africa (PMSA) and from the private industry presented relevant presentations on the theme of conference. The attendees represented the City of Tshwane, the City of Cape Town, the University of Pretoria, the University of the North-West, Indigo Kulani Group, EOH and representatives of Zimbabwe.

The presentations put major emphasis on stakeholder management, rather than the norm of cost, time and quality. It was also stated that project managers should be aware of the assumptions, expectations, and perceptions of each stakeholder. Adaptive leadership was addressed, whereby a mix of agile and the waterfall model was proposed for project implementation. A separate presentation was made to propose an influence theoretical framework in the project management body of knowledge in the future. The value of project management, as well as the added value of the new IPMA Individual Competence Baseline® (ICB4) was introduced during the separate presentation of ICB version 4. There was a strong emphasis put in preparation during the set-up phase as well as importance of human factors in project management. The representatives from Zimbabwe also indicated a cry-out for assistance to establish professional project management in Zimbabwe.

The proceedings were concluded with a network session between South-African delegates and members of the Executive Board of the IPMA.

South-Africa, as a member association, is of significance to the IPMA, as South-Africa can be the gateway to the African continent to promote professional project management in the future.