Speakers and Presentations
Jean-Christophe Hamani – Keynote Speaker
The Art of Organizational Transformation
Being successful in implementing organizational transformations projects is crucial to any corporation. And this type of projects is definitely among the most complex to achieve, even for experienced practitioners. We will see what are the challenges not to miss and we will share best practices from both PMI certifications and personal experience better to master the art of transformation!
Biography
Jean-Christophe Hamani is an international expert in Strategic Execution and Transformation. For more than 30 years, he has managed large projects at all the international leaders in the Telecom industry (Alcatel/Nokia, Nortel, Ericsson, Huawei and Orange…). He holds many certificates: PMP, PMI-PBA, ITIL V4, Digital Transformation Strategy (Polytechnique), Entrepreneurship (Harvard), Innovation Leadership (MIT) and Organizational Transformation by PMI, the world’s leading professional project management organization. He held several positions including President of the Paris Chapter and then co-founder of PMI France, the largest EMEA chapter. In 2017, he founded the Francophone Community, which covers 16 countries on four continents, and works with companies, organizations and academics. He is a professor at ESCP Executive Education in Paris. He recently founded Tactics, a consulting firm that helps companies to fix sensitive tactical issues related to strategic transformation and execution.
Steven Deneir – Masterclass
Fix your scrum now, together
You have at least 6 months practical experience using Scrum, in any role. You know the terminology, and still… Some things are not going as you expected…
Maybe your team members are not motivated for the Daily Scrum, your Sprint Review is one-way communication, the Sprint Retrospectives are boring, …
You might recognize some of these. Very likely you have other challenges. Why isn’t it just working!?!
In this workshop you’ll work in smaller groups. Together you’ll find practical solutions for your challenges. And you’ll help others with their challenges using your experience. As facilitator, Steven ensures your group will pay attention that solutions are aligned with the core concepts of Scrum: empiricism, Done, a self-managing and cross-functional team, and living the Scrum Values.
Biography
With his almost 30 years of professional experience, Steven Deneir is an experienced agile coach and mentor.
As one (out of two) Professional Scrum Trainers in Belgium Steven facilitates the Professional Scrum Master, and advanced, the Professional Scrum Product Owner, and advanced, the Professional Agile Leadership, and the Professional Scrum with UX, and with Kanban modules.
Combining his experience with Scrum, AgilePM, PRINCE2, PRINCE2 Agile and PMBoK, in business domains ranging from software, financials, marketing, and mechanical engineering, Steven can clearly explain and give examples based on hands-on experience where teams and managers need to pay attention to, what traps to avoid, and what will most likely work given their specific context.
He is dedicated to bringing teams back to the fundamentals of agile, specifically the Scrum framework, so that they can make a huge impact. Again and again. Faster and faster.
John Niland – Workshop
The Identity Economy: How to raise the value of your work with a clear professional
The world of work has changed dramatically in twenty fiveyears. Today’s professionals want meaningful expression of their values and talents, not just a livelihood.
Our jobs and businesses used to be a means to an end: e.g. to earn an income, to provide for our families, to build something of commercial value. But even before the pandemic, this was changing. Professionals now see their work as an expression of themselves and simply do not want to continue in roles in which their values and talents are not invested and appreciated. Their self-esteem is intricately linked to the work they do.
Biography
He is well-known for his insightful and humorous presentations on topics about value: how we value ourselves and our work. His presentations linking self-worth to professional identity have won widespread acclaim since the publication of his book “The Self-Worth Safari”.
John’s core message is simple: when you grasp the vital distinction between self-worth and self-esteem, this is a game-changer at work and in life. You forge a clear professional identity and become more courageous in conversations. You bounce back quickly from setbacks. You do higher-value work and develop worthwhile partnerships. As a leader, you inspire others to do likewise.
Arlène Derbaix and Jessica Thiry – Workshop
Prioritize without sacrifice: Three techniques to help you prioritize your work and reach your objectives
Prioritize is not easy, however, this is mandatory if you want to focus your work on the important things and be recognized as an effective project manager. In this presentation, we will explain why prioritize is soo difficult. We will provide you with some tools to help you in this exercise – tools that you will be able to use for yourself (at work but also in your private life), but also with your teams. We will propose strategies to deal with activities which don’t fall into your priorities and finally, we will explain how to protect these priorities, but setting healthy boundaries.
Biography
Arlène Derbaix and Jessica Thiry are combining more than 15 years of experience respectively in corporate Management and in Psychology.
Jessica Thiry owns a Master in Business and Administration as well as a Master in Psychology. She is working in a metal health association and she also owns her private practice.
Arlène Derbaix owns a PhD in Finance. After five years in business consulting, she joins GSK twelve years ago. After different positions in PMO, Pflio Director, Finance, CoS, etc., she now leads a team in the clinical operations space to promote and develop the Performance Management Culture.
Mathieu Gendaj – Workshop
Is Lean Six Sigma a Project Management Methodology?
This presentation will introduce you to the basic principles of Lean Six Sigma, and ways Six Sigma can accelerate your professional career and at the same time significantly improve your organizational performance. In this presentation you will also learn the various process management tools and techniques offered by Lean Six Sigma philosophy, and how those are complementary with Project Management techniques. A focus will be done on Six Sigma Process Improvement Project Management Cycle – DMAIC: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control.
Do you have the ambition to improve your problem-solving skills to help your department or organization excel in their performance? Do you see improvement opportunities in your workplace and are you curious how Lean Six Sigma can help? This presentation is for you!
Biography
Partner, trainer and coach at www.theleansixsigmacompany.be , I am part of a global organization active in 25+ countries and collaborating worldwide with Organizations and Universities to setup the global standards of Lean Six Sigma.
With sixteen years experience leading projects and teams in services and industry (automotive, railway, construction), including six years intensive practice within Toyota of Lean Six Sigma operations and philosophy, my main objective is to improve company’s processes by deploying Lean Six Sigma philosophy, Tools & Techniques in order to ensure continuous improvement with a long term vision.
Valérie Malisse – Workshop
What if only three attitudes are leading to inspirational leadership
Starting from the current VUCA environment (crisis on several areas, needs of the new generations coming on the market, etc.) and exploring new organizational models emerging (moving leadership, teal organizations, collective intelligence, etc.), we will embark on the three dimensions from which current organizations are setting themselves (purpose, self-governance and development).
From those three dimensions, we will explore what is the kind of leadership required to lead through and discover three ingredients or attitudes creating inspired and inspirational leaders.
Deep-diving on each of the dimensions, we will see what does this required versus “others” and also “personally”, and how does kindness, a priori trust and authenticity be ingredients to lead within an organization, particularly when change becomes the “new normal”.
Biography
Passioned by humanity, entrepreneurial behaviors and individual, team and organizational transitions, Valérie is unlocking your full potential and the impact of teams to ensure extraordinary results. Authentic, energetic, provocative; her “action coaching » practices are incredibly powerful and will challenge (limiting) beliefs, ensuring you and your team are setting up for the best.
Her motto? Great people deliver great results (the reverse is not always true)
She worked twenty four years @ GSK, last role being head of “Alignment & Engagement”. Main goal was about nurturing engagement of every single employee so that they all act in an aligned and active way to meet patient needs – Employee engagement index evolved from less than 50% up to more than 70% in eighteen months
She is co-author of a French book on inspirational leadership and collective intelligence: ‘Balancez vos ondes positives’
Mark Mortier – Keynote
Re – Story – ation
There can be no denying that our society and worldview is changing, you better chose to (re)create your story before it’s written for you. Create a new story that goes beyond the current western worldview based on the efficiency and the success of the company, by shifting the focus to the human behind the leader and team members.
“Re-story-ation” in which delivery is merely the result of applying collective intelligence, unleashing the big potential in you and your team members while thriving for professional and personal growth, purpose, fulfilment and happiness.
“Re-story-ation” is for those who dare to go down the road of self-knowledge, beyond the ego and being benevolent towards the success, fulfilment and happiness of their team members.
Biography
After having been a project manager for 20 years, it became clear to Mark Mortier that the next step was all about giving ,sharing and empathy management Mark’s old pattern was predestined to crack under the new insights he had gained in the past few years. There was a tremendous shift from trying to get the most out of a team to asking and providing what each team member needs in order to be anchored and live up to his or her full potential.
Marcus Glowasz – Presentation
Adapting to the Age of Change and Transparency
Today’s world is rapidly changing with often fast-changing messages, leading to high complexity and an increasing change frequency. As a result, project and change management practices are forced to move along with today’s evolving technology and modern practices and need to embrace new ways that enhance our natural capabilities to deliver change and become fit for the future.
But while technology can enhance our capabilities, it requires more than ever people to enable such future. It requires a new mindset about how we collaborate, how we deal with failure, how we learn, and how we adapt to disruption and change. It calls for new leadership skills in all of us to foster a culture of transparency, authenticity, and accountability, to enable effective growth and evolution.
Biography
HE is a project and change leadership coach and facilitator, helping leaders and teams to future-proof their ways of delivering and managing projects, drive change in today’s fast-paced, high growth and rapidly changing global environments, and become effective leaders and role models in their practice.
With almost three decades of international experience in technology-driven projects, working with numerous organizations from large corporates to small business practices around the globe, Marcus is well versed in project best practices and has developed an obsession and passion for the innovation and advancement of the project management practice.
Wim Vandermeersch – Presentation
A digital Agenda for The City of Ghent
Since 2020, the city of Ghent has embarked on a journey to enhance the digitalization of the local government. In the process, a new organization ‘District09’ was founded and new governance processes established to align business and IT departments: a Digital Agenda for Ghent. In this presentation, you will get an insight into the ambitions of the programme, the prioritization processes developed and the responsabilization of all parties involved.
The speaker presents a summary after two years into the programme, the lessons learned as an organization and a perspective on what comes next.
Biography
He is director Business IT for the city of Ghent, District09. With a team of 100+ project managers, business analysts, developers, application managers and consultants, he manages a portfolio of 100 IT-projects and 600 IT-applications for more than 10, 000 employees as well as for the general public.
Wim Vandermeersch PMP holds an engineering degree from Ghent University and Master’s Degrees from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Antwerp Management School. Earlier in his career, he headed the PMO’s at Atos Worldline and Proximus.
Laurent Janssens – Presentation
Coach or not to coach, a change management question
Companionship strives for excellence through knowledge transfer… What are the required attitudes as PM to become this qualified professional? How to acquire them? Is companionship and coaching a path for granting these virtues ? Is PM certification and endpoint or more the start of a companionship journey ? Laurent will raise those questions to demonstrate that Project Management coaching is part of the journey to gain and develop the right attitudes at all stages of the project management development journey, requiring (self-) change management… Under the motto “Be inspired. Be inspirational!”
Biography
He is consultant in risk management and lecturer in this domain. Laurent is also executive interim manager combining programmed management skills with IT, change or process management ones. In this context, he helped several organizations to recover from failing projects and is pleased to provide advice or recovery your project on this matter. Laurent provides also project coaching and mentoring and is co-founder of the “Project Inspirational Companion” . Beside those activities, he is also busy with (IT) sustainability and promote digital/It savviness inside Boards.
Pavel Jonis – Presentation
Three things you might be missing in your PM framework
Pavel has led a number of Project Management training sessions and consulted various companies on how to get better in Project Management. He has talked to total newcomers and experienced project management wolves. These are the 3 topics that he sees are currently being overlooked in the project management landscape, that are easy to improve and can create real value:
A) Closing the gap between business ambitions and project goals through proper Project Initiation
B) Ensuring continuous development and raising the bar by performing regular Peer Reviews throughout project management cycle
C ) Using the many free tools available to increase team engagement in the virtual era
Biography
Pavel studied Swedish Language at Vilnius University and at the same time started working at an IT company. He later on got promoted to a Project Manager role, where he worked for 4.5 years before starting his own consulting business. Pavel has lead and executed IT infrastructure implementation and transformation project teams with up to 70 members. Right now he is leading Project Management Training sessions, helping organizations implement employee ladder systems and facilitating Strategic workshops.
Marjolein Deryck – Presentation
Both worlds: combining artificial and human intelligence
The diverse field of AI offers many opportunities. However, the introduction of new technologies often leads to a lot of resistance, as the human experts that need to work with the system don’t understand its working and hence are not able to take ownership of its decisions. Luckily this can be overcome by combining multiple technologies in a system that allows users to express their knowledge easily and exploit this knowledge to solve different problems on the same domain. After introducing the broad field of AI, I will present a knowledge base system that combines multiple AI technologies. I will also explain how this combination allows knowledge articulation by domain experts, a technique that supports users to take ownership of the system and decisions made by it.
Biography
Dr. Marjolein Deryck obtained her Ph.D. in engineering technology at KU Leuven on the use of knowledge base systems. One of her contributions is the development of an alternative knowledge acquisition technique, called knowledge articulation, that allows end-users to easily create an intelligent system. She is part-time active as postdoctoral researcher at VUB to automate user preference learning on system-generated explanations. She is also part-time researcher at Intelli-Select, a start-up company that commercializes a prototype that Dr. Deryck developed during her research.
Peter Ruymen – Presentation
Robotic Process Automation: Humans maintaining control
not just part of the loop
– What is RPA, why do we need it and what are its key benefits? (demo and presentation)
-Steps to suitable change when introducing Robotic Process Automation a peak preview
1-Develop a high level vision and the set up a center of excellence (Ensuring the vision through principles)
2-The communication strategy (Creating a culture of automation)
3-The change network (Key users and Change agents)
4-Organizational readiness (The Criteria) and (The principles to ensure future change: Development principles supporting allowing agility and Principles to allow prioritizations) and (Solution for users to make and prioritize automation requests, calculate ROI, and monitor requests with a dashboard => what is the problem we are trying to solve!!!!)
5-Evaluation and KPI’s
Robotic process automation should not be seen as eliminating people from the workforce. Rather, it’s about freeing them to focus on more valuable work while keeping them in the drivers’ seat of processes.
Biography
Peter has over twenty years business experience, working in all kinds of disciplines and environments. With a Masters’ degree in Enterprise Architecture and an eager inquisitive mind, Peter blends academic learning with, hands on, pragmatic knowledge of business processes, IT and end user needs.
For Peter, success is getting things done better than before.
Nicolas Petit – Presentation
How to activate informal networks and influencers to drive
behaviour change at scale
Change programmes often fail, and yet we keep doing the same things again and again, i.e. scoping, KPIs definition and tracking, stakeholder engagement, governance, gap analysis, prioritization of actions, monitoring of deliverables vs quality vs budget vs resources etc.… All of those rely on formal leadership, formal communication and formal rational approaches.
What if there was another way? A way anchored in behavioral science, leveraging how people truly interact and make decisions, i.e. largely influenced by stories coming from their informal peer networks rather than driven by rational thinking. A more human way… This is what was done at GSK, using peer-to-peer connections to change behaviors of 17.000 people Worldwide and thereby (re)shape the culture of the company. Come and hear the story.
Biography
Nicolas Petit is a fifty year old executive, with twenty five years career in the Pharma industry. For the past three years, he was senior Senior Director of Culture Transformation at GSK Vaccines, where he implemented a Viral ChangeTM novel approach to transform the culture of the company globally. Nicolas owns two masters (Management, Applied mathematics), is an alumni of INSEAD on AI in business. He is also an internal executive coach, a facilitator for the Human Performance Institute, black belt and agile coach.
Nicolas founded “Humanize” in 2021, a consultancy aiming at developing human centric workplaces through technology and data.
Guy Goossens – Keynote
PMI Impact Strategy
PMI IS ON A MISSION. As the leader in project management, we aim to empower people to make ideas a reality.
PMI Impact Strategy (previously called 4.0) is our growth strategy that addresses the needs of our existing community and welcomes a new audience of global changemakers. Our community is strong and together, we can shape the future.
Our PMI Impact Strategy can be summarized in three Strategic Objectives.
- Broadening our Reach
- Deepen our Impact
- Nurture Lasting Relationships
Biography
Guy is currently active as a PMI Region Mentor for the North-West Region 8. This holds 12 chapters, which includes Belgium.
He was former President of Belgium Chapter and served for 8 years in the Belgian PMI Board.
He is also Managing Director at Prosource, a company specialized in the Project Management Profession.
He loves Ultra-running.
Patrice Wellhoff – Presentation
Change management: without Process, you will go nowhere!
Change management specialists often talk about the importance of taking people into account, explaining that resistance to change is natural, but very few present a real methodology.
Yet, a methodology is key because it is the map that allows you to get out of the forest safely. And it is often the best-protected expertise of consulting firms.
You will discover why a methodology is key, some well-known methodologies and their value, including those to avoid that will lead you into a dead end.
You will learn about the wheel of change and how it aligns perfectly with the project cycles, and how the change manager solves problems that the PM will not be able to handle, and thus ensures acceptance of your work.
Biography
He has been for many years an IT PM and IT Director and is now the general manager of Key Partners, a change management consulting firm based in Paris. For more than fifteen years now he has been consulting and training big companies in change management. Most of his customers are IT Directors and PM who need to ensure proper acceptance for the transformation projects. He has developed a methodology based on the Wheel of Change. He is also the author of the book “Relax! 6 steps to overcoming resistance to change in your projects
Kurt Vanderhaeghe – Presentation
Setting up a LEAN, AGILE and CONTROLLED environment to manage change and optimize IT delivery – a testimonial
I have been trying to improve WHAT my teams are doing and HOW we are doing it every single day. I recently started the initiative “management manifesto”. Just like the agile manifesto is uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others doing it I want to improve project
Biography
I worked as a consultant on fault tolerant systems for the banking sector. I am an experienced Project and test manager with expertise in the financial sector, in Retail and for the governance. As a certified Project Manager and Agile certified PSM1 scrum master with 25 years of professional experience in IT projects of which 14 years as PM and scrum master.
Bart Seuntjens – Presentation
How to onboard management & employees in business process management journey
Based on out experience with BMP implementations we will present lessons learned with concrete examples to share ways to conceptualize, design and execute a BPM program. BPM approach bottom-up or top-down? What is the difference, benefits and how to proceed by involving the different stakeholders. Industries are Life Science and Transport and Energy Sector.
We have seen both approaches, top-down and bottom-up. Depending on the culture and the maturity of an organization both ways can work with the right sequence of steps and either way taking into account the following elements: Governance, CoE, Create a process mindset, Stakeholder management, Communication and Change Management actions to guarantee the buy in of the management and the employees of the organization
Biography
Bart joined Avertim in 2015 to support this fast growing independent consultancy firm by leveraging his transformation and change management capabilities and network. Before, Bart was partner at Eurogroup Consulting Belgium, a European independent management consultancy firm, present throughout Europe via the European network of Eurogroup Consulting. After his university and masters studies, at the College of Europe (Bruges), Bart joined Accenture in 1994 to specialize in Transformations and has applied his skills and competencies in assisting large organizations in difficult contexts. In 2006 Bart joined Eurogroup Consulting.
Kamil Mroz – Panel Moderator
Adapting our today for a better tomorrow
PMI Top 50 Honeree Kamil Mroz moderates this new feature to our PM Fair in the form of a panel session. Joined by Keynote speaker, Mark Mortier, our eclectic mix of experts, Marcus Glowasz, Steven Deneir, Marjolein Deryck, covering various industries discuss their key takehomes and highlights from this conference. In addition, there will be attention paid to the following key questions from Industry:
- How can PMs ride the wave of opportunity and avoid succumbing to issues created by AI?
- As change-makers and enablers, how can we shift from process-minded PMs to strategic thinkers?
- Why should we do agile, and what makes it amenable (or not) to various industries?
Finally, there will be an opportunity to ask our panelists any question in a Q&A session – what do you want to know?
Biography
Kamil is an experienced Program Management Lead, currently working for UCB Pharma. Prior to joining UCB, he’s worked at GSK, NNE Pharmaplan and ran his own PM consulting company in Belgium.
Kamil is know as an active volunteer within the global PM community by regularly speaking at PM conferences, authoring publications and enthusiastically sharing his experience with the next generation of PMs. In 2020, Kamil was recognized by PMI as a PMI Future 50 honoree, a group of leaders who are transforming the workplace through collaboration, inclusion, and purpose.
Over the last 10 years, Kamil has been recognized for outstanding leadership and project management excellence by both the IPMA and PMI. In 2013, he received a prestigious IPMA Global Individual Award, and since then he has been part of the yearly Global IPMA Jury to select future winners. In 2019, he received a global award from PMI recognizing his significant early-career impact in advancing project management.
Kamil holds a double bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering and Biochemistry (conc.) from the University of Ottawa, a Master’s degree from the University of Kent, and is currently pursuing a part-time PhD in Management at HEC Liège exploring the effects of project management capabilities on the pharmaceutical sector and the interconnection between strategy, innovation and operations, and has recently become an agile coach. Moreover, he is certified in a multitude of project, program and strategic management approaches: PMP, MSP, MoV, M_o_R, ITIL, P3O, MoP, Agile Scrum (Exin), BSC, EFQM, SIP, PRINCE2, PMI-ACP, DASSM.