The PM Camp Aberdeen event for project managers ran on Saturday, 26 November 2011 at the University of Aberdeen, as noted on the sign up page at http://pmcampaberdeen2011.eventbrite.com/. We had a dozen people in the end. There was a mixture of people like myself, who ran some projects, to several consultants from Logica who ran numerous projects. There were also a number of beginners to the field, who were just getting started and a number in between. Everyone contributed during the day at one point or another, and the questions and discussion seemed to flow well during the day.

Due to the snall number of people we ran with one track for the day, instead of the multiple tracks envisioned. We started with a number of general prepared slide decks on topics of interest to a number of people followed by lunch, provided by Logica, and an afternoon of general open space discussions which carried on the general theme from the morning.

One thread that ran through the whole day was how to integtate agile practices into general project management practices. As everyone was from the software development field, this is perhaps not surprising, and worked well as a point of discussion. Some of the talk went from basic practices, up to the general philosophy of agile.

Other topics during the day were tools for PMs; challenges of PMs; and Wikispeed on using agile for automotive projects.

The day was good and all participants thought that (a) there should be more of these PM Camp events, and that (b) we shouldn’t wait a year, but have them twice a year, so another event will be scheduled for May.

Thanks to Rajeev Hasija for help in organising the event, and bringing the Logica support to the event, and also to Polly Purvis at ScotlandIS for their support of the event. We couldn’t have done this without your help, and it’s greatly appreciated.