I was invited to speak at the 32nd IPMA World Congress. I will be speaking on the second day. Am copying the abstract of the talk below, hope to see you there!
The conference takes place in St. Petersburg, but is run in a hybrid format. Sign up here: https://ipma2021.world/
Abstract: Project Resilience Beyond Agility – From Bad Ideas to Best Practice
Josef Oehmen, Ph.D., MBA, is an Associate Professor at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) . His research interests focus on managing large-scale systems engineering programs, particularly on the application of risk management, lean management and the associated organizational strategy processes. He is the founder and coordinator of the Engineering Systems RiskLab at DTU. Prior to DTU, Josef worked at MIT and ETH Zurich where he also obtained his PhD.
He has won numerous awards and scholarships, including regular keynote speaker invitations, teaching awards, the Shingo Prize for his work on Lean Program Management (2013), an appointment as Visiting Professor at the Technical University of Munich (2012), DAU Research Competition Winner (2012), INCOSE collaboration award (2012), a journal paper of the year award (2011), and the research award of the Department for Management, Technology and Economics at the ETH Zurich in 2009.
He co-founded DTU's Engineering Systems Group as well as MIT’s Consortium on Engineering Program Excellence (CEPE), co-chairs the INCOSE Lean Systems Engineering Working Group, and founded and co-chairs the Design Society’s Special Interest Group on Risk Management Processes and Methods.
Josef's current research focuses on developing and implementing paradigm-shifting risk management techniques in the design, construction and operation of Engineering Systems. He works on advanced (non-probabilistic) risk quantification methods, principles of resilient engineering project execution, lean risk management, and risk-based strategy implementation in engineering organizations.
His “academic home” is with the engineering design and operations management community, but the nature of his research is interdisciplinary. In particular, he works on the four related fields risk management; systems engineering program management; lean management; and technology strategy implementation.
In project management, we like to believe that if we only predict the future accurately enough, only plan detailed enough, and only execute disciplined enough, we will be successful. And if we are really professional, we add Agility practices to the mix.
It did not work out last time, but it surely will next time. In a large study of Scandinavian megaprojects, we asked a different question: What happens if we start being honest with ourselves and acknowledge that we will be wrong? I will present 4 take-aways to design resilient project execution models that rely neither on supernatural foresight nor dumb luck for success