The conference was the first of its kind dedicated to promoting a shared project management approach to both European public and private sectors. Open PM² is a free and open to all version of the project management methodology developed by the Commission in 2007 and is one of the instruments offered by the Interoperability Solutions for Public Administrations (ISA) Programme coordinated by DG Informatics, the IT Department of the European Commission. The event took place in the Charlemagne Building in Brussels and was sponsored by the Council of the European Union, the Committee of the Regions, the European Central Bank and the European External Action Service.

The PM² conference was open by the Deputy Director-General of DIGIT Mario Campolargo who pointed out that adopting the methodology was an opportunity to reinvent the role of project management as a tool to unite teams and foster more transparency and accountability in the way we manage projects in the modern digital age.

Nicos Kourounakis, Methodology Lead at the Commission, introduced the Open PM² Initiative stating that it is a project success story that started in the EU institutions and now aims at giving back to Europe tested and usable best practices based on lessons learnt.

"We train about 2000 people in the European Commission per year. 98% of them would recommend the open PM² methodology further."

Bryan Barrow, an international project management expert, dedicated his speech to the importance of stakeholder management in projects. He provided an insight into how to spend less time fire-fighting, arguing and dealing with difficult people and more time working collaboratively towards the successful achievement of shared business goals.

The first half of the conference ended with a panel discussion on the future of project management chaired by Thomas Gageik, Director of Digital Business Solutions at DIGIT, who reassured the significant role of project management in the digital transformation that Europe is undergoing.

The second part of the conference was split into three tracks – each focusing on a series of sessions tackling a different aspect of or case study from the PM² methodology.

Sakis Maraslis, one of the founders of PM² at the Commission, opened Track 1 by unveiling the early days of the methodology. He explained that although PM² started as a small assignment to address an operational need, it was very quickly turned into an organization-wide initiative with a multi-dimensional impact. Jeremías Iglesias, Project Hub Leader at European Central Bank (ECB), followed him by giving an overview of how the PM² Methodology was implemented at the ECB for IT projects. Tiago Palhoto, an experienced Agilist, presented an insight on how the agile values, principles and practices are brought inside the methodology. Laurent Kummer, senior PM consultant at European Commission, closed the track with a presentation on how PM² was applied to the EU Results projects - building a single repository to host the results of the EC funded projects involving a project team and steering committee spanning 40 Directorates.

Track 2 presented an opportunity for a sneak peek into projects using PM² and reaching to all Europeans such as the Wifi4EU , promoting access to wireless connectivity in public places, presented by Marc Berghmans. Rosaria Giovannelli from the Single Resolution Board of the European Commission focused on the benefits of adopting PM² across the different EU institutions. Stephane Gagnon, Associate Professor in Business Technology Development at Université du Québec en Outaouais, reported on an ongoing research initiative to develop the first Body of Knowledge for the Business Technology Management profession. For this, the integration of Open PM² was chosen as a core approach. Konstantinos Dryllerakis, eGovernment/ICT advisor, talked about the Structural Reform Support Service of the European Commission helping Member States implement structural reforms for their administrations in the form of on-the-ground technical support. The track ended with a presentation of the ISA² Programme by Natalia Aristimuño.

In Track 3 Daniel Cabrero shared with the participants tips and trick for adopting the PM² methodology. Carolyn Thomas gave an insight into the role of the project support office and how it is aligned to the methodology - uniting project teams by establishing solid communication across competency centres or functional boundaries. Manuel del Castillo Sanchez presented the story, the challenges, the lessons learned and the future of PM² at Council of the EU. Roberto Pappalardo gave the example of how PM² was chosen as a corporate solution in order to change the project management culture at the Publication Office of the EU and deliver on strategic goals. Over 100 projects benefited from its adoption. Petre Turliu closed the track with a story about the takeaways on delivering a complex project in record time at the Court of Justice of the EU.

The first day of the conference ended on a positive note with David Hillson "The Risk Doctor’’, international thought-leader in risk management, who challenged the traditional view of risk as something negative and recommended adopting a mindset of opportunity instead.

In her closing speech, Gertrud Ingestadt, Director-General of DIGIT, stressed on the fact that providing a modern public administration to EU citizens depends on the smooth collaboration between European Institutions and Member States in the project field and that better project management will enable governments to develop and deliver high-quality public services.

Day 2 of the conference was dedicated to short PM² trainings covering the essentials of the methodology, its governance model and mindsets, risk and portfolio management, business implementation plan and the possibility to apply agility to it. They were delivered by project management trainers from the EU institutions and the private sector. A highlight of the day was the visit of the Vice-President of the European Commission Andrew Ansip who congratulated the whole team of PM² ambassadors on their contribution.

All sessions from the 2 days are recorded and available at Joinup website along with the presentations. See the Twitter conversations following #OpenPM2Conf or #OpenPM2.