PM@CH Journal 2017 December 2017 | Page 7

The Swiss Project Management Journal The People Project tion on the diseases for which the system was set up.   Eventually people returned to their homes to rebuild or went to live with relatives elsewhere.   Shelters were de- commissioned, supplies accounted for, data analysed, and reports written. Project management literature continues to highlight the spread of Agile metho- dology beyond IT projects, but I actually thought based on my work in other areas, the concepts of Agile have been absorbed and documented by IT, finance, and other traditional project management domains, not exported from it. My entire career has been based on delivering on tasks in an unpredictable environment, managing risk (not only to the project, but often to the actual physical safety of the team), communicating with stakeholders who could make or kill a project, and maybe even you, managing multi-cultural, multi- lingual teams working long hours under harsh conditions, and constant assess- ment and re-iteration of a strategy to achieve the project goal.   That this goal has most often been protecting respon- ders, reducing mortality and relieving suf- fering make these activities non-projects because there was no product other than survivors? I often must explain how my work is pro- ject related, even at PMI events, and I am not always able to convince people that I am a project manager. I am often told by recruiters that even though I am a certi- fied PMP and have a long work history, that I just do not have enough project management on my CV. A lot of work goes into training, working, and getting certified in projec t manage- ment, but this work should make us se- cure in looking outward to see where our skills can improve processes. We need to support areas of work like humanitarian response, who are bringing on more con- scious project management training and implementation of project management principles and work to make training ma- terials relevant to a broader field. As pro- ject managers, we need to look at how we can spread the philosophy of project ma- Project Management Institute SWITZERLAND Chapter nagement, whether the result is a piece of software or a lower fatality rate because good project management is also just plain good management. I was once told that a project is something that “you don’t do for the rest of your life”. This makes the idea of project manager as a career extremely ironic.   We all need to keep moving on, growing and making our corner of the world better.   We’re all in this position because we get things done.   Let’s all try to do a better job of sticking together. This goes for the IT project managers who scoff at the con- fusing and sometimes even bizarre means of managing projects in the humanitarian field, but it also goes the humanitarian 7 project managers who may be at the table next to a table of programmers at a café, thinking “those guys don’t know what managing chaos is.” Tamara Curtini Niemi 2017 Edition