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President's Letter

July 2006 - Letter from the President

Letter from the President

Summer is finally here! I suspect that, like my family, your summer activities are starting and things are even more hectic than ever! This is always a fun and exciting time of the year. Let me take a few moments to share with you two new developments and progress with on-going projects and some internal board efforts. I am excited about all the progress that is being made in the chapter and hopefully you will be too!

New Developments:

Strategic Planning Meeting: On Saturday, May 20th the Board of Directors held a strategic planning meeting. This meeting was facilitated by Allan Mills, PMP the previous Region 5 Mentor. Allan has conducted similar sessions for boards across Region 5. The purpose of this meeting was to focus our eyes outward away from the tactical focus we have normally. The session was a good one and the results will be available shortly on the web. The outcome of the meeting was to identify objectives and a high-level game plan to move our chapter from where we are today to a place of greater effectiveness in the future.

From that session we identified two key constituencies: Practitioners of Project Management (Our members) and Consumers of Project Management (Employers of Practitioners of Project Management). Both groups have a continuum that culminates with their members seeing PMI Central Virginia Chapter as both highly valuable and relevant. Our objective as a board over the next three years will be to remove the hurdles keeping groups from moving up the continuum, first focusing on Practitioners (our members and potential members) and then on to Consumers.

The session reinforced for our board the value of this year's goals of seeking to "Expand Our Footprint of Member Services" and "Increasing Volunteer Opportunities". Each board member is looking at their area of responsibility to see what projects or efforts would be appropriate in the coming three years. We value your input! Please let your voice be heard and get involved!

Assistant Vice President (AVP) Project: One of the hurdles we've recognized is the one that must be overcome for members to participate on the Board of Directors. Speaking from experience, I've found working on the board to be energizing, fun, a great networking opportunity and a great way to exercise leadership beyond what I can experience at work sometimes. As we've grown larger, the responsibilities (real and perceived) have grown as well. The net result is that it is harder to find people willing to commit to participate at this level. One chapter in our area that seems to not have this issue is the Baltimore Chapter. They have positions that they term "Assistant Vice Presidents" we will be researching and benchmarking off their program over the coming year. Our intent is to see if the Baltimore program will work for us as a chapter. Expect to hear more about this in the weeks and months ahead.

Ongoing Projects:

West-End Monthly Meeting Pilot: We had our first West End Chapter Meeting in May. The meeting went really well due to the great preparation of our West End volunteer team. Our second West End pilot meeting was held June 15th. We already have had a number of members who are attending for the first time as a result of this new meeting in the West End. Results of our pilot are just now coming in and the results are tentative; however, we're getting some great feedback. Overall, I think that we will be able to make a call on whether our chapter can support two meetings by the end of the summer.

Region 5 Symposium: By the time you read this the Region 5 Symposium will have completed. This is the first time the 14 chapters in our region (VA, WV, MD, NC, KY and Washington DC) have worked together to provide professional training on a scale this large. Our chapter was a key contributor to this event. The region will be evaluating the results of the symposium over the next couple of months. If results are positive the region will move forward to begin planning another event, tentatively planned for Baltimore, MD. More to follow in the days ahead.

Online Voting Project: We're making progress on our project for online voting! The board recently approved the voting service that we will use for our election in the fall. The eVoting Project Team did an outstanding job of researching a number of different options / vendors / services in preparation for this recommendation. Special thanks to Dave Harry for his great effort in moving the project forward! Check out Robert Berlin's information about the project in this letter as well as the updates on the project status page.

30 Minute Meetings: We've started our effort at additional communication (and PDUs) by adding a half hour segment during the networking time prior to the regular dinner meeting. This time is meant for regular information sessions (ex. New Member Orientation or Maintaining Your PMP Status for new PMPs) and in-depth communications with the Board. Our session in June covered the Strategic Planning Session that the Board conducted Saturday, May 20th. Due to constraints at our West End location we've not yet had these sessions there. Should we move forward with the West End Meeting on a continuing basis we will institute this session there as well.

Internal Board Efforts:

Board SharePoint: We've grown to be a large chapter over the last ten years. Concurrent with our growth has been the expansion of many technical capabilities. Things like the internet, email, enhanced electronic storage, advances in media presentations have significantly changed the way we do business every day. Our chapter and its governance should be no different. We are concerned as a Board about business continuity and maintaining our chapter's intellectual capital. One of the big things we've done of late is to initiate a board Sharepoint site where we can maintain our chapter documents and intellectual capital. This site is backed up on a regular basis and enables easier collaboration by the board as well as easing the burden of transition. All this is with the intent to be better run as a chapter.

Policy & Procedures: Coincident with the establishment of the Sharepoint is our effort this year to revise and update our chapter's Policy & Procedure documentation. We are looking at industry best practices for documentation and have a year-long project to update our policy and procedure documentation. Much of what we have is "tribal knowledge" with the help of volunteers across the organization we are separating policy from procedure documentation and clearly mapping our key integration points. The outcome of this effort will be a more solidly documented chapter that will make it easier for new committee and board members to understand the roles and responsibilities within each area and function of the chapter.

My apologies for the length of my letter this month! There are a lot of great things happening and this is the most convenient way to share all this at one time. Have a great summer and drop me a line at president@pmicvc.org I'd be happy to answer your questions, receive your input and / or talk about your thoughts on how to make our chapter more effective!

Best regards,
Jim

Jim Hayden, PMP
President, PMI Central Virginia Chapter