Agenda

Organisations are busier than ever with transformation, but strangely stuck. Drawing from his global work, bestselling author Jyoti Guptara reveals a common root issue: when strategic communication isn’t actionable, it sabotages engagement and execution.

Guptara introduces Story-Based Leadership as the next evolution in management — a discipline for turning strategy into consistent action. Stories model behaviour, making them the quickest, cheapest, and deepest way to influence.

A practical briefing for leaders responsible for change at scale.

Organisations are busier than ever with transformation, but strangely stuck. Drawing from his global work, bestselling author Jyoti Guptara reveals a common root issue: when strategic communication isn’t actionable, it sabotages engagement and execution. Guptara introduces Story-Based Leadership as the next evolution in management — a discipline for turning strategy into consistent action. Stories model behaviour, making them the quickest, cheapest, and deepest way to influence. A practical briefing for leaders responsible for change at scale.

Master strategies for creating cohesive, high-trust teams across cultural, disciplinary, and organizational boundaries while leveraging diversity as a competitive advantage.

This keynote introduces the idea that delivery is no longer driven by isolated excellence in leadership, governance, or technology—but by how well these elements operate as a single system. Using real patterns observed across transformation programs and intelligent PMOs, the keynote explains why organisations struggle when People, Process, and Technology evolve at different speeds. It challenges leaders to rethink delivery not as a set of tools or roles, but as an operating system that must be intentionally designed, governed, and continuously adapted.

"This session challenges participants to accept accountability: Most organisational noise comes from leadership behaviour, not process failure Ambiguity, mixed messages, and hidden priorities originate at the top Silence from leaders is also a form of noise Participants debate whether delivery chaos is a technical issue—or a human one."

This keynote reflects on a hard-earned truth emerging from mega-projects, national transformation programs, and AI-enabled delivery systems: control no longer guarantees success. Drawing on lessons embedded across People, Process, and Technology pillars, the keynote explores what humans have learned about leadership, decision-making, and execution when scale, speed, and uncertainty collide. It challenges the belief that tighter governance, more reporting, or more tools lead to better outcomes—and reframes clarity, judgment, and alignment as the real differentiators of modern delivery.

Is your operating model quietly sabotaging your transformation? This hands-on session shows how to uncover where value and revenue are leaking in your system, including slow decisions, rework, and too much work in progress, and why those patterns persist. Then we introduce a practical, value-first, waste-out operating model that makes it easier to do the right work, in the right way, at the right speed, with fast-track decision paths, lean standards, clear roles and decision rights, capacity guardrails, and clear guidance on how and when to integrate technology to accelerate execution and deliver stronger business outcomes. You’ll walk away with: 1. A modern operating model: what it is, how it changes the way work moves, and the vital elements that make transformation stick 2. A Value Gap Diagnostic: a practical tool to analyze your operating model and uncover the gaps in your organization preventing accelerated strategy delivery. 3. 90-Day Action Plan: a streamlined approach for the next quarter that accelerates strategy delivery by putting this new operating model into motion.

This session challenges the assumption that leadership remains unchanged in AI-enabled environments. It explores how authority, judgment, and accountability are shifting as algorithms increasingly influence priorities, risk assessments, and decisions. Panelists debate whether leaders are becoming decision-makers, sense-makers, or simply validators of machine logic—and what this means for human relevance in the future of delivery.

Experience how just-in-time learning transforms project execution. Discover Praxis by Emergn—a platform that integrates world-class product management education with an advanced AI agent to accelerate outcomes and outputs in real-time. Live demonstration of Stella AI providing contextual guidance while solving actual project challenges. Attendees will interact with the platform during the session.

This presentation highlights why strategies fail when governance is confined to boardroom-level GRC, treated as oversight and compliance rather than active leadership of execution. It explains how the absence of governance structures, decision authority, and accountability across portfolios, programs, and projects creates a disconnect between strategic intent and delivery reality. The session demonstrates how integrated corporate, organizational, and P3G governance enables boards and executives to steer, supervise, and course-correct implementation, ensuring strategy is translated into outcomes and sustained strategic value.

Master strategies for creating cohesive, high-trust teams across cultural, disciplinary, and organizational boundaries while leveraging diversity as a competitive advantage.

Many organisations want to apply AI in project management but struggle to know where to start. This session presents a practical, strategy-led approach to getting underway, focusing on how AI can be targeted to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and efficacy across project delivery. Drawing on real-world adoption experience, it outlines the early decisions, assessments, and alignment required to move from intent to action in a structured, responsible way.

This session challenges the obsession with visual dashboards: Static dashboards can’t keep up with real-time work Conversational interfaces will become “the new PMO layer” Humans must learn to manage through dialogue with systems Participants debate whether future leaders need design skills as much as decision skills.

This session disrupts traditional thinking by arguing: Over-designed systems collapse faster. Resilience requires “flexible rigidity,” not strict planning. Participants debate resilience as a behavioural capability, not a process.

Transform your PMO from a reporting function into a strategic enabler that drives business outcomes, influences executive decisions, and demonstrates measurable organisational impact. The facilitator divides the tables into one mentor table. 4 tables with one mentor per table. The tables will debate with each other and try to put down the other table, showcase their learning, and the table that debated and communicated it. Each table at the end presents what they learned from their debate.

Awaiting

This session challenges the assumption that flow problems arise from tools or processes. It confronts leaders with evidence that: Waiting time is caused by fear, misalignment, authority gaps, and slow decisions. Human psychology creates invisible queues.

Participants debate the uncomfortable truth that: Lessons learned are political documents. Learning loops break because leaders don’t want visibility of their mistakes. “Failure tolerance” is the new competitive advantage.

38% More Value. 67% Less Waste. That’s what happens when you stop obsessing over “on time and on budget” and start managing benefits. The data is clear: benefits management transforms PMOs from cost centers into value engines. In this hands-on workshop at GPMF, I’ll walk you through a step-by-step approach to make benefits real—not just a buzzword. You’ll learn how to: - Pinpoint the benefits that matter - Build a plan to deliver them - Track and prove the value your projects create You’ll leave with practical tools and takeaways you can use the moment you’re back at your desk. If you want your PMO to be indispensable, this is where it starts.

Integrate predictive and adaptive approaches at the portfolio level to optimize resource allocation, manage uncertainty, and accelerate value delivery.

In today’s interconnected business environment, value is no longer created by isolated projects or individual products. It emerges from value ecosystems, where multiple internal and external stakeholders interact and depend on one another to enable value delivery. For project management and product development, managing these ecosystems is essential to ensure that initiatives truly generate meaningful and sustainable value.
This workshop explores why value creation requires systemic alignment across projects, processes, organizational capabilities, partners, and external entities. Focusing only on individual initiatives often leads to fragmented efforts and local optimization, while value is realized through coordinated interactions across the ecosystem. In this context, structures such as the PMO play a key role in orchestrating initiatives to improve coherence, integration, and value delivery.
The Value Ecosystem Management workshop uses hands-on, team-based dynamics to help participants visualize and design value ecosystems. Working collaboratively, participants map the entities involved, the initiatives required, and the relationships and dependencies between them. By the end of the workshop, participants will be better prepared to think systemically, align initiatives, and support more assertive value delivery in complex project and product environments."

A unifying session that integrates the three pillars into one coherent future-ready model. Participants examine: how human behaviour shapes clarity, alignment, and sense-making how processes create stability, flow, and coherence how technology amplifies intelligence, foresight, and decision velocity The outcome is a Future Delivery OS Blueprint—a practical, organisation-ready model that leaders can take back and implement.

This forces a deep, uncomfortable comparison: Humans make biased decisions. AI makes structured decisions with invisible biases. Whose mistakes are more dangerous? Participants debate: What is trust built on — accuracy or transparency?

In today’s project and organizational environments, uncertainty is no longer an exception, it is the operating condition. Traditional leadership models, built for predictability and control, often break down when pressure intensifies and decisions must be made with incomplete information. This two-hour interactive workshop introduces Transilient Leadership, a new leadership model designed for high-pressure, high-uncertainty environments. Moving beyond resilience, Transilient Leadership equips leaders to transform disruption, setbacks, and ambiguity into strategic advantage. Drawing on real-world experiences and modern leadership principles, participants will explore how pressure affects judgment, communication, and team dynamics. Through practical frameworks, guided reflection, and scenario-based discussions, leaders will learn how to anticipate uncertainty, manage emotional and cognitive load, and lead with clarity when the stakes are high. Rather than reacting to chaos, Transilient Leaders learn to harness it, creating alignment, trust, and forward momentum even when the path is unclear. This workshop is designed for project leaders, executives, and change agents who want to lead decisively, ethically, and humanely in environments where certainty is no longer guaranteed. Participants will leave with a clear leadership lens, practical tools, and a renewed understanding of how uncertainty, when approached intentionally, can become a powerful source of insight, innovation, and impact.

"We are all heroes on a journey — navigating complexity, solving problems, and inspiring teams. But our ability to rise, lead, and create impact hinges on one thing: how well we communicate. In project management, communication isn’t just a skill — it’s the superpower that fuels clarity, connection, and change. From the moment we are born, communication shapes how we influence, inspire, and collaborate. So how do we make our messages truly land? Through storytelling. In this high-energy, hands-on masterclass, you'll discover how to master the art of compelling communication and powerful storytelling. Whether you're leading a project meeting, presenting to stakeholders, or managing difficult conversations, this session will give you tools to connect and communicate with confidence. What You’ll Learn: Craft Your Alter Ego – Develop a confident persona that helps you perform at your best, even under pressure. Supercharge Your Delivery – Harness vocal variety, strategic body language, and first-impression techniques to make every interaction memorable. Tell Magnetic Stories – Learn simple, repeatable story structures you can apply instantly to influence and engage any audience. You’ll walk away with practical techniques, a burst of creative energy, and a fresh toolkit to become the Superhero Storyteller your project world needs."

The "Corporate Dream" is a masterpiece of alignment: leadership sets the strategy, autonomous teams deliver via OKRs, and a single tool tracks it all. But in the real world, strategy is often a mystery, roadmaps are unreliable, and the organization is "efficiently" busy doing things it shouldn't be doing at all.

In this session, Dr. Christoph Hirnle exposes the Complexity Trap—the gap where management systems collapse under their own weight, leaving middle management crushed between executive demands and employee burnout.

Christoph will share a way out through Middle-Out Integrity. Drawing on distilled observations from over 1,000 organizations, he introduces the logic of Lean PPM™. You will learn how to restore the "Human Center" of your organization, stop the technical fallacy of over-relying on tools, and build a practical transmission layer that finally connects strategic intent to delivery reality.

This provocative angle forces leaders to admit: Most organisational interactions measure effort, not value. Digital economies punish effort-based structures. Participants examine value destruction hidden in approvals, committees, handoffs.

Transform stakeholder engagement, design validation, and team training through augmented and virtual reality technologies purpose-built for project environments.

In the face of automation, digital disruption, and shifting workforce values, project managers must evolve from task executors to strategic architects. This presentation explores how we can empower the next generation of PMs with the mindset, skills, and leadership capabilities to thrive in a hybrid, AI-augmented world. Drawing on over 40 years of experience, this session outlines a future-ready blueprint that integrates emotional intelligence, digital mastery, business acumen, and purpose-driven leadership. It presents proven strategies and practical models, including the PMO-BP® Dojo and the PRENSA Leadership Framework, to develop future-fit talent within PMOs and enterprises.

As projects grow in complexity and scale, inclusive project management is no longer a social consideration, it is a core delivery capability. This session demonstrates how empowering people with disabilities through inclusive project design directly improves risk management, delivery performance, stakeholder trust, and workforce resilience. Drawing on lived experience as a leader with a visible disability, alongside work in complex public-sector delivery environments, this talk reframes disability inclusion as a strategic advantage rather than a compliance obligation. Participants will explore how exclusion, often invisible, introduces downstream risks such as cost overruns, schedule delays, talent attrition, and reputational harm. Using the ENABLE Framework, the session provides practical, scalable approaches project leaders can apply immediately across the project lifecycle, from initiation and procurement to governance, delivery, and performance measurement. Grounded in project management best practices and aligned with global standards (PMBOK®, PRINCE2®, Agile), this session connects human-centered design with measurable project outcomes. Attendees will leave with tools to embed inclusion without slowing execution, strengthening both delivery excellence and long-term organizational capability. Key Takeaways • Why accessibility must be embedded at project inception, not retrofitted later • How inclusive design reduces risk, stabilizes schedules, and improves quality • Practical actions leaders can take to empower people with disabilities while accelerating delivery

Projects fail for the same reason movies do: a cast of characters, conflicting agendas, rising tension, and moments where one bad decision changes everything. In this dynamic panel inspired by the #1 #1 2026 Amazon Hot New Release, “Projectland Goes to the Movies: 22 Blockbuster Strategies for Project Success”, award-winning consultant, co-editor and author Dawn Mahan moderates a conversation with some of the most respected and recognizable voices in the profession. As Lee Lambert puts it, “This is the book I wish I had written—fresh, fun, and inspiring. A true game-changer for the profession…” Each author panelist draws directly from their chapter, using films from different cultures and genres to surface universal truths about project success and failure. The discussion focuses on what these stories reveal about leadership, role clarity, decision-making, stakeholder dynamics, and why well-intentioned projects still derail. This is not movie trivia and not academic theory. It is a practical, globally relevant conversation about what experienced professionals see repeatedly in real projects and how leaders can recognize warning signs earlier, align people faster, and deliver stronger outcomes.

Growing From Structured Control to Sensemaking Under Pressure
This session is grounded in a five-part practitioner series titled PMO Maturity Meets Complexity, written over Eights weeks and shaped by real delivery conversations across different industries and regions. The series started with a simple question: Does the way we define and measure PMO maturity still hold when work becomes unstable, priorities shift frequently, and certainty arrives too late to be useful?

The discussion the growing presence of AI. Rather than framing AI as an acceleration tool, the series positioned Ethical AI as a mechanism for protecting human judgment, slowing interpretation when needed, and supporting sensemaking

In this session, I will synthesize these insights and explore how PMO maturity must evolve from structured control toward sensemaking capability. The focus is not theory, but lived practice: how PMOs help leaders think clearly, decide responsibly, and remain relevant when work refuses to settle.

This panel tackles the power struggle at the heart of modern delivery environments. As AI systems influence planning, forecasting, and risk assessment, the panel debates where final authority should sit and why. Tension points: • Should systems overrule human bias? • When policy conflicts with data, which one wins? • Are leaders prepared to be challenged by machines?

Why 85% of Digital Projects Fail (its not the code)

We often confuse Digital Transformation with just buying new software. But if you automate a broken process, you don't get digital transformation, you just get a faster broken process.

Research suggests that up to 85% of Information Systems projects fail to deliver their intended value. That is a big number. But why?

I've been reflecting on the strategies used to build digital ecosystems, and one truth stands out: People & Process eats Technology for breakfast.

Whether you are building a data consortium like Catena-X (where automakers like BMW and VW share data) or a developer ecosystem like NVIDIA (where the true moat is the CUDA developer community, not just the chips), the biggest challenge isn't the AI or the Cloud.

It's what David Kroenke calls the Five-Component Framework:
Hardware (Easy to buy)
Software (Easy to buy)

Giga projects, as large‑scale high‑stakes initiatives, operate in environments where complexity, uncertainty, and diverse stakeholder expectations converge.

Mega sporting events are often remembered for their celebrations, packed stadiums, and global broadcasts. What the world does not see is the reality behind them: compressed timelines, contractor strikes, multi-city coordination, multi-million dollars budgets, millions of attendees, and a complete absence of margin for error.

This session shares firsthand leadership lessons from delivering large-scale global events, including FIFA World Cups, Olympic Games, and multi-city activations across the GCC. When 1.8 million+ fans are expected, when 64 matches must start exactly on time, and when infrastructure must be delivered under global scrutiny — “good enough” is not enough. There is no Plan B.

Through powerful real-world stories, this talk will explore what it truly means to manage projects under extreme pressure and visibility. It will challenge young professionals to rethink resilience, accountability, systems thinking, and leadership maturity.

Participants will discover:
• Why pressure is a privilege — and how to build the mindset to carry it.
• How strong systems outperform heroic individuals.
• What zero-failure environments teach about preparation, execution, and ownership.
• How to develop decision-making confidence early in your career.

Designed especially for the next generation of project leaders, this keynote is not about theory. It is about real consequences, real teams, and real results — and how young professionals can prepare themselves to lead when failure is not an option.

This presentation explores how project managers can operationalize social responsibility through everyday project decisions and stakeholder engagement practices. Drawing on academic research and real project experience, the session focuses on practical strategies for building trust, managing resistance, and strengthening community impact. Participants will reflect on how social acceptability influences project outcomes and how project leaders can bridge intent and impact in complex project environments.

This session exposes the tension between genuine alignment and silent compliance. It questions whether organisations truly value critical thinking and constructive challenge—or whether obedience is disguised as alignment. The discussion forces leaders to confront how power, hierarchy, and fear shape behaviour, and whether current leadership models suppress the very thinking required for complex national programs.

This session focuses on how leaders drive real results in consulting and transformation initiatives by mastering the discipline of execution. It explores how successful leaders move beyond plans and presentations to ensure delivery, accountability, speed, and measurable impact in complex, high-stakes environments.

Often praised as a core leadership skill, emotional intelligence is examined here from a more uncomfortable angle. This session explores when empathy, influence, and emotional awareness become tools for control or manipulation. Panelists debate the ethical boundaries of emotional intelligence and whether leadership development has sufficiently addressed its responsible use.

This session focuses on the rising role of youth in leading and redefining project delivery. It emphasizes the power of youth-driven leadership built on curiosity, courage, and co-creation. By showcasing how young leaders introduce fresh thinking, faster decision-making, and purpose-driven execution, the session presents a clear case for why empowering the next generation is essential to building the future of high-impact delivery.

This session focuses on human behaviour in moments of extreme pressure—crisis, political scrutiny, time constraints, and public visibility. It examines how stress, cognitive overload, ego, and fear distort judgment, even among highly experienced leaders. The discussion moves away from blaming competence and toward understanding decision psychology in high-stakes environments.

In many organizations, PMOs are expected to deliver strategic value while operating in environments defined by constant pressure, evolving priorities, and limited tolerance for disruption. Traditional maturity models often assume stable conditions, separating structure design from execution. In practice, many PMOs must be built while critical initiatives are already underway. This presentation explores how PMO maturity can evolve in execution-first environments, where delivery cannot stop to allow for ideal structures. It focuses on the leadership and governance decisions required to protect value while projects continue to run, highlighting the trade-offs between control and speed, structure and flexibility. The session examines how governance can act as an enabler rather than an obstacle, clarifying decision rights, reducing friction, and supporting teams under pressure. It also emphasizes the human dimension of PMO maturity, showing how trust, shared understanding of reality, and pragmatic leadership contribute to sustained performance. Participants will leave with practical insights on how PMOs can grow in capability without slowing execution, deliberately sequence structure, and ensure that maturity serves value rather than becoming an end in itself.

In a world where megaprojects rarely succeed, how does a PMO remain relevant—and indispensable? This session offers a real-world look at how one organization’s PMO overcame critical organizational challenges to enable the successful delivery of one of the world’s most complex nuclear megaprojects. It explores how the PMO evolved from a traditional support function into a strategic driver of confidence, alignment, and execution by tackling today’s most pressing complexity and delivery challenges head-on. Packed with practical insights, this session is designed for PMO and transformation leaders seeking to evolve their operating models, enable mega-project success, and earn a lasting seat at the strategy table.

Step into a derailed-train scenario and see how first responders turn chaos into coordinated action. In this session, we'll walk through a real-world disaster-response workflow and translate it into project-management practice. You’ll learn how responders create structure in chaos: rapid alignment, clear operational ownership, under-pressure prioritisation, and short coordination cycles. From there, we will make a direct translation to projects that face ambiguity, shifting requirements, and high stakeholder pressure. You’ll see the clear parallels between on-scene coordination and project leadership: assigning ownership early, creating a shared “map” of what matters, prioritising ruthlessly when time and capacity are limited, and running short, repeatable check-ins to keep the team aligned as new information emerges. You will leave with a simple, minimalist coordination routine you can apply immediately to stabilise complex projects without adding unnecessary process overhead.

Panel discussing leadership, governance, capability-building, and digital tools for PMOs operating in complex environments.

This session explores how project managers can elevate their leadership impact through confident and persuasive communication. Participants will learn how to transform technical updates into powerful messages that inspire, influence, and align diverse stakeholders. The presentation will uncover practical strategies for structuring messages, managing stage presence, and using storytelling to build credibility and connection. By mastering these public speaking skills, project managers can lead with greater confidence, clarity, and charisma—turning every presentation into an opportunity to drive engagement and project success.

This presentation introduces P5.express, a minimalist and practical portfolio management system designed to help organizations focus on Value, not bureaucracy. Rather than complex frameworks and heavy governance, P5.express provides a small set of clear activities, roles, and documents that enable better portfolio decisions with limited effort. The session will explain how P5.express works through its 6-monthly, monthly, and daily cycles, and how these cycles help organizations continuously evaluate Value, balance resources, and decide when to start, stop, or pause programs and projects. It will also show how P5.express fits alongside existing project and program management approaches such as PRINCE2, Agile, Scrum, or P3.express, without forcing change at the delivery level. Using practical examples, the presentation will demonstrate how P5.express improves transparency, reduces conflicts, and helps leaders make informed decisions about priorities and investments — making portfolio management simpler, lighter, and more effective.

Capital and infrastructure projects play a critical role in driving business growth and improving societal well-being. Yet, despite their strategic importance, many owners continue to face cost overruns, schedule delays, and underperforming assets. The root causes are often linked to insufficient attention during the early development phases, where strategic alignment, scope definition, and governance should establish the foundation for success. This paper examines common failure patterns observed in recent project assessments conducted by the author’s firm across industrial and infrastructure sectors. The analysis highlights how weak front-end loading (FEL), lack of stage-gate discipline, and inadequate owner decision-making contribute to lost value. By contrasting successful and underperforming projects, the paper demonstrates how structured development, accountability, and governance improve predictability and outcomes. The technical content aims to equip owners with practical insights into closing maturity gaps, reducing risk exposure, and ensuring capital investments deliver the intended long-term value.

This talk builds on the core message of Welcome to Your Project and deliberately challenges the comforting idea that there are “best practices” that guarantee success. Using concrete, contrasting examples of large-scale projects, it shows why identical methods can lead to radically different outcomes when context, constraints, and stakeholder dynamics change. The session makes one point unmistakably clear: projects do not fail because people chose the “wrong framework,” but because they applied the right-looking approach in the wrong situation. One size does not fit all – and pretending otherwise is one of the fastest ways into crisis.

يتناول هذا الحديث السريع ظاهرة شائعة في بيئات التنفيذ الكبيرة: حيث يتم اعتماد الخطط، حضور الاجتماعات، والموافقة على القرارات شكليًا—بينما يغيب الالتزام الحقيقي والمسؤولية الفعلية. يركز الحديث على: الفرق بين الموافقة والالتزام كيف تُستخدم العمليات لتأجيل القرار بدل حسمه لماذا تفشل البرامج رغم اكتمال كل المتطلبات “على الورق” الرسالة الأساسية: المشكلة ليست في غياب العمليات، بل في غياب الشجاعة لاتخاذ القرا

This presentation introduces the Value-Centric Project Management Framework™, a practical approach that repositions procurement from a cost-focused, siloed function into a strategic enabler of project success. Drawing on real-world project and supply-chain experience, the session highlights how traditional procurement metrics, organizational structures, and contracting models contribute to project delays, claims, and lost value. Through a structured framework built around the 6Cs (Consistency, Clarity, Continuity, Collaboration, Control, and Completion) and a real oil & gas case study, the presentation demonstrates how aligning procurement with project economics (NPV, IRR, payback), contractor performance, and delivery timelines can significantly reduce delays, claims, and cycle times—while increasing profitability and stakeholder satisfaction. The session offers actionable insights for project managers, procurement leaders, and executives seeking to deliver complex projects faster, with fewer disputes and greater overall value.

This Fire Talk confronts one of the most dangerous myths in modern delivery environments: that faster decisions automatically lead to better outcomes. In high-pressure programs, leaders are increasingly rewarded for speed—quick approvals, rapid escalation, visible decisiveness. Yet many failures are not caused by slow decisions, but by fast decisions made without clarity, alignment, or accountability. This talk challenges leaders to reflect on uncomfortable questions: Are we accelerating decisions—or accelerating mistakes? When does speed become avoidance of difficult thinking? How often do we confuse confidence with judgment? The speaker explores how decision velocity, when disconnected from decision quality, creates false momentum, masks unresolved risk, and shifts consequences downstream to delivery teams. The Fire Talk concludes with a critical reframing: The future of execution is not about deciding faster — it is about deciding at the right moment, with the right insight, and owning the consequences.

Projects are how organisations execute strategy. Every project should move the organisation toward its new “working just right” future. Yet despite decades of investment in project management capability, results remain persistently poor. Research and practice consistently show that most strategies fail not because they are flawed, but because they are poorly executed. When projects fail, the failure is usually treated as a project delivery problem. In reality, it is far more accurately described as an investment problem. Project professionals can certainly destroy investment returns by allowing costs to overrun, timelines to blow out, or scope to drift. What they cannot do is create value if it was never there in the first place. No hero, guru or hero-project manager can rescue a project that is ill-conceived, mis-conceived, or disconnected from strategic intent — and, unfortunately, too many projects fall into that category. This session challenges the assumption that better delivery alone leads to better outcomes. It explores how and where value is systematically destroyed across the project lifecycle – often long before delivery begins – and why traditional success measures such as time, cost, and scope fail to predict strategic value. Participants will be introduced to a practical, outcomes-driven execution model that explicitly links strategy to projects through clear, specific, measurable outcomes. The session explains the critical role of early decision-making, path dependency, and governance in protecting value as projects progress, particularly in complex and uncertain environments. Designed for project leaders, PMOs, and executives, this presentation provides a repeatable and practical approach to strengthening strategy execution and ensuring projects deliver the results – and value – the organisation actually intends.

Most project teams 'do’ lessons learned at the end, but the same issues still repeat on later projects and programmes. This session introduces LOOP—a practical way to build learning into the flow of projects and programmes: Listen for signals and friction, Observe patterns and make insights usable, Optimise by changing a behaviour/process/decision quickly, and Persist by embedding that change into cadence and governance. Informed by knowledge management principles in project environments, we’ll explore three ready-to-use loops (decisions, risks, benefits) that help teams turn experience into better outcomes—without adding bureaucracy.

Imagine having complete confidence in your teams. Feeling like the people responsible for the organization’s top priorities were connected to the meaning and need for their work. This session will center project managers as the secret weapon for organizational stability amid rapid technological acceleration.

1. The Project Nobody Warns You About (5 min)
Why bank digital transformation is fundamentally different from any other IT project — regulatory overlap, zero-downtime requirements, and cultural resistance all at once.
2. Architecture as a Project Management Decision (8 min)
How choosing multi-cloud (AWS/Azure) + API-first + Banking-as-a-Service wasn’t just a technical call — it was a governance and risk management strategy that shaped the entire delivery model.
3. The Vendor Orchestra Problem (8 min)
Managing multiple technology partners (Appro, Avanza, NI, Temenos) simultaneously — how you structured accountability, avoided blame-shifting, and kept the critical path from fragmenting.
4. Compliance as a Project Constraint, Not an Afterthought (7 min)
Embedding UAE Central Bank IAR compliance and ISO 27001 into the delivery framework from Day 1, and what happens to timelines when you don’t.
5. Lessons for Any Complex Project Leader (7 min)
Transferable insights for PMs managing large-scale transformation — change management, UAT discipline, stakeholder alignment with boards and regulators.
6. Q&A (5 min)

As AI accelerates the speed of transformation, organizations risk optimizing for efficiency at the expense of judgment. Maha Chehab defines as 'The Cost of Unwisdom.' Drawing from her book, Human and Wisdom in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Building Wisdom for Individuals, Societies and Organizations, she introduces the Wisdom-Led PMO: a new governance model that operationalizes ethical anchoring and systemic thinking. Discover how to recover lost value realization by shifting your PMO from a 'process enforcer' to an 'institutional conscience' that safeguards both ROI and human sustainability.

The Future of PMOs in an AI-Driven World explores how Project Management Offices are evolving from traditional governance and reporting functions into execution intelligence hubs. As organizations face accelerating change and increasing portfolio complexity, AI enables PMOs to move from hindsight-based reporting to foresight-driven decision support—enhancing strategic alignment, predictive risk management, benefits realization, and leadership decision agility, while preserving human judgment, accountability, and governance at the core.

This presentation explores how cutting-edge technologies such as AI-enabled delivery, digital twins, and advanced analytics are revolutionizing modern project ecosystems. Attendees will gain insights into how digital systems provide clarity, enhance decision-making, and drive impactful outcomes, shaping the future of efficient, resilient, and innovative delivery processes.

This talk critiques the growing dependence on dashboards, metrics, and visual indicators as substitutes for leadership thinking. It explores how leaders hide behind data to avoid difficult conversations, responsibility, and uncertainty. The Fire Talk asks: • Are dashboards helping us decide—or protecting us from deciding? • What happens when insight is reduced to charts without context? Core provocation: “Data should inform judgment, not replace it.”

The presentation, "Securing the Future: AI Security in Saudi Arabia's Giga-Construction Projects," is a strategic briefing designed for the GPMF. It explores the critical intersection of AI, cybersecurity, and large-scale infrastructure within the Saudi Vision 2030 framework. The presentation aims to transform Project Managers into "Guardians of the Digital-Physical Link." It argues that for Saudi Arabia’s giga-projects, AI security is a fundamental requirement for operational continuity, site safety, and national resilience. Strategic Necessity: AI security is presented as the bedrock of Vision 2030, protecting massive investments from "silent failures" and logic manipulation. Key themes - The New Attack Surface: It addresses AI-specific threats like Data Poisoning and Model Drift, specifically focusing on the vulnerabilities of Digital Twins and BIM systems. - Governance & Ethics: It provides a roadmap for compliance with SDAIA’s AI Ethics and NCA’s Cybersecurity Controls, emphasizing the mandatory "Human-in-Command" protocol. - Lifecycle Integration: The narrative advocates for "baking in" security from project initiation through to facilities management to prevent costly retrofitting. - Actionable Leadership: It concludes with a Resilient AI Roadmap, a Milestone Checklist, and a Recommended Reading list for continuous professional development.

This Fire Talk explores how automated workflows, approvals, and decision rules are slowly shifting accountability away from humans. It challenges leaders to confront a critical gap: when automation fails, responsibility becomes blurred. The talk asks: • Who is accountable when a system approves a bad decision? • Are organisations designing automation without redesigning responsibility? Core provocation: “Automation moves faster than our accountability models.”

Saudi Aramco has developed and implemented a digital solution called Digital Quality Applications (DQA) to enhance quality management in capital construction projects, leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digitalization to drive continuous improvement and proactive risk management.
It highlights the potential of digitalization and AI in transforming quality management in capital projects, which can help them mitigate operational, financial, and safety risks, and improve overall project execution. This is particularly relevant for professionals in the energy and construction industries who face similar challenges.

Leading in today’s complex and fast-changing world powered by AI, leaders need to adopt a growth mindset, build a culture of experimentation, be willing to take bolder risks and manage risks to move faster and learn quicker than the competition – or get left behind. The world has never moved faster than ever before. Yet, this is the slowest it will ever be going forward. This module frames common strategic limiting beliefs and techniques to shape a culture and lead a fast-moving company.

a. How past successes can limit us
b. How risk management can stop us from trying and learning
c. How pilot projects can lull us into complacency
d. How the ‘Paper to PDF’ or 'Google to ChatGPT' mindset can limit our digital transformation

Techniques to lead in the AI-era:
a. Lean more on people's decisions over business plans
b. Rebuild risk management through a portfolio of innovative bets
c. Co-funding and collaborating with other parties

As AI becomes embedded in planning, forecasting, and risk management, trust can no longer be treated as an abstract value—it must be designed into systems. This session explores how transparency, explainability, and governance architecture influence whether leaders and teams trust AI recommendations or quietly resist them. The session addresses difficult questions: When should humans override machines? How do we prevent blind trust or silent rejection? What level of explanation is “enough” for accountability? The focus is on designing AI-enabled environments where trust supports better outcomes rather than replacing human responsibility.

AI is no longer just a productivity tool for writing status reports or summarizing meetings. It is rapidly becoming an operating capability, powered by agentic workflows that influence how projects are planned, how programs are governed, and how portfolios are prioritized.

. After building an AI agent—and after productivity gains are realized—the harder question emerges: What comes next?

This session serves as a practical guide for how AI should be used by PPPM professionals and for PPPM work—beyond efficiency gains—without undermining accountability, ethics, or leadership. Rather than focusing on tools, the conversation explores how AI fits into decision-making, governance, and operating models at scale.

The session also invites participants to reflect and engage: What are you building next? How are you moving from AI-enabled productivity to AI-informed leadership? Attendees will leave with a grounded perspective on how to lead confidently in an agent-driven PPPM environment.

Three forces are converging to reshape project management: AI is revolutionizing how teams deliver, the "silver tsunami" risks decades of hard-won project wisdom walking out the door, and Gen Z and Millennials now make up two-thirds of your workforce—generations more likely to tap TikTok for advice than a coworker on the shoulder.
The clock is ticking…but the opportunity is enormous!
Join Future of Work expert Luke Goetting for a high-energy, interactive keynote that turns these collisions into competitive advantage. Packed with live audience participation and cheeky cultural nods from avocado toast to TV dinners, you'll discover how to use AI to capture critical project knowledge before it disappears, build skills marketplaces where expertise flows across teams and portfolios, and walk away with "aha" moments that change how you see your coworkers, your direct reports, and even your family members!
Come ready to laugh, participate, and leave with strategies you'll implement Monday morning.
Learning Objectives:
1. Apply AI-powered strategies to capture critical project management expertise before it walks out the door
2. Design skills marketplaces and co-mentoring programs where knowledge flows across project teams and portfolios—regardless of title or tenure
3. Bridge generational communication gaps by understanding how Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z approach collaboration and knowledge sharing
4. Build psychological safety that accelerates project team performance across generational divides
5. Leave with immediately actionable frameworks to strengthen knowledge transfer in hybrid and in-person project environments

Sustainability has become one of the most widely used terms in modern project management—and one of the least effective. Despite decades of frameworks, certifications, and reporting regimes, projects continue to lock in systemic risk, displace harm, and weaken long-term capacity while still being labeled “successful.”

This presentation challenges the prevailing assumptions behind sustainable project management and reframes projects as the primary instruments through which national strategy, economic resilience, and societal outcomes are actually decided.

Drawing on the evolution of project success, the M.O.R.E. framework, and the PMI–GPM sustainability ecosystem, the session exposes why incremental improvement, maturity models, and principle-based approaches consistently fail under pressure. It introduces impact thresholds as the missing governance mechanism—clear, enforceable limits that distinguish improvement from sufficiency, intention from consequence, and ambition from credibility.

Rather than treating sustainability as a reporting exercise or a professional value signal, this presentation positions it as a discipline of decision-making, where projects either operate within system capacity or quietly consume the future they claim to protect.

Participants will leave with a sharper understanding of:
Why project success must be defined as value worth the effort and cost—not execution efficiency
How M.O.R.E. redefines accountability, authority, and legitimacy in complex project environments
Why impact thresholds are the only reliable way to prevent risk transfer and governance failure
What sovereign-scale project governance looks like when refusal is a professional act, not a failure

This presentation is a direct examination of where sustainability collapses—and how projects can be redesigned to hold the line.

Giga and megaprojects are often described as ungovernable due to their scale, complexity, pace, and political visibility. In reality, they are not ungovernable. They fail because governance responses to extreme complexity are frequently misjudged, over-engineered, or poorly aligned to how decisions are actually made at scale. The result is familiar. Excessive bureaucracy. Blurred accountability. Constrained executive authority. Cultural norms that prioritise consensus and engagement over timely decision-making. And a fundamental misunderstanding of what effective governance must look like in high-stakes, nationally significant investments. In this candid, experience-based session, Adrian Morey draws on decades of global practice across city-shaping infrastructure, technology, and transformation programs to explain why traditional governance models break down in giga and megaprojects, and what senior leaders must do differently to protect value without slowing delivery. The session cuts through governance mythology and focuses squarely on what works in complex, politically exposed, and fast-moving delivery environments. Key themes Why governance collapses under giga and megaproject complexity despite strong intent and capability The common governance traps that create friction, dilute accountability, and quietly drain value What effective governance looks like in high-risk, politically visible mega-scale investments Practical approaches to embedding governance that protects investment while enabling pace and authority This is not theory. It is grounded insight drawn from real-world assignments and candid discussions with senior executives responsible for governing multi-billion-dollar portfolios and living with the consequences of governance success or failure.

As organizations face growing complexity and accelerated change, the traditional role of the Project Management Office is being fundamentally redefined. No longer limited to governance and reporting, the PMO is increasingly expected to act as a strategic integrator—connecting all value-driven initiatives across the organization, from strategic transformation programs to ongoing operational improvements, while enabling informed decision-making and sustainable value creation.
This panel brings together global practitioners and thought leaders—Americo Pinto, Heba Al Shehhi, Raphael Albergarias, and Helio Costa—moderated by Amireh Amirmazaheri, to explore how PMOs must evolve to integrate and orchestrate the full portfolio of organizational value initiatives. Through diverse perspectives and real-world experiences, the discussion will challenge conventional PMO models and examine how future-ready PMOs can shift from control to enablement, aligning strategy, execution, and operations in environments that demand both continuous transformation and operational excellence.

Why mega-projects rarely fail because of technical incompetence and almost always fail because of human behavior under pressure What happens to decision-making, ethics, and leadership presence when governance systems are stretched beyond design limits How cultural friction, power distance, and unspoken norms silently reshape execution in global project environments The illusion of control created by frameworks, dashboards, and assurance layers and where they break down in reality Why technical excellence is table stakes, but delivery reliability is a human capability Leadership failure modes observed in high-consequence environments: avoidance, over-control, heroism, and blame displacement How Cultural Intelligence becomes a delivery enabler, not a “soft skill,” in complex, multicultural programs Practical patterns leaders can adopt to improve judgment, trust, and accountability under extreme pressure What executives, sponsors, and PMO leaders must unlearn to lead effectively when certainty disappears

This keynote explores how unconscious psychological forces shape decision-making in leadership and in life. We often assume that decisions are the result of analysis, logic, and data. Yet psychoanalytic thought suggests that our choices are also influenced by internalized relationships, emotional histories, unconscious loyalties, and deeply rooted patterns of perception and expectation.
Leaders, like all people, do not decide from a neutral position. Every major choice carries meanings connected to identity, authority, responsibility, and belonging. Underneath rational evaluation, the psyche seeks continuity with what feels familiar, even when it is not optimal. As a result, individuals and organizations may unconsciously repeat relational dynamics, recreate known tensions, or gravitate toward scenarios that resonate with earlier experiences.
The keynote introduces the idea that the unconscious is not an abstract or clinical concept but a living dimension of human functioning that operates through symbols, projections, repetitions, and emotional interpretations of reality. It shapes how we perceive others, how we respond to authority, and how we position ourselves in systems and relationships. What appears as strategic preference or instinct may, in fact, be structured by unconscious expectations about success, failure, control, or recognition.
Rather than presenting tools or techniques, the talk offers a reflective psychoanalytic perspective on leadership as an ongoing inner process shaped by the interaction between conscious intention and unconscious dynamics. Greater awareness of these internal processes does not eliminate uncertainty or conflict, but it can widen the space for thought, reduce automatic repetition, and allow for more deliberate and meaningful choices.
The central question of the keynote is simple: if the unconscious participates in every decision we make, what becomes possible when we begin to recognize its influence?

Projects and technology transformations rarely go perfectly — and when they don’t, commercial escalations, disputes, and misaligned expectations can derail delivery, damage client relationships, and put programs at risk. Yet many project leaders lack the practical negotiation skills, commercial confidence to manage these situations effectively.

What if your project problems aren’t caused by lack of skills, tools, or frameworks—but by invisible exclusion? Neurodiversity is already everywhere in project management. Up to one in three project professionals may be neurodivergent—yet most project environments are still designed as if everyone thinks, communicates, and copes with complexity in the same way. The result? Burnout, misunderstood talent, avoidable friction—and unrealized performance. This session challenges a dangerous myth: that neurodiversity is primarily an HR or “nice-to-have” inclusion topic. In reality, it is a delivery, leadership, and risk issue hiding in plain sight. Grounded in a comprehensive basis paper and a widely discussed practitioner content series published on Linkedin, this talk cuts through theory and clinical language to focus on what actually happens in real projects. We expose how standard project practices—meetings, communication norms, role definitions, escalation paths—can unintentionally disadvantage neurodivergent professionals, even in organizations that genuinely value inclusion. At the same time, we show how neurodivergent strengths—systems thinking, hyper-focus, pattern recognition, unconventional problem-solving, and radical honesty—can dramatically improve project outcomes when the environment is designed intentionally. This is not about lowering standards or creating special treatment. It is about designing projects that work with human brains instead of against them. If you care about delivery reliability, leadership credibility, and future-ready project teams, neurodiversity is no longer optional—it is already shaping your projects. The only question is whether you are managing it deliberately or by accident.

This panel questions whether many digital initiatives are creating real capability—or simply performing transformation for visibility. Panelists debate how organisations can distinguish between meaningful digital change and expensive technology theatre. Tension points: • Are digital tools solving problems or masking them? • Why do digitally “mature” organisations still struggle to deliver? • Who benefits from transformation narratives?

Prepare to be inspired as we embark on a journey beyond the finish line, exploring the transformative power of cultivating a winning mindset. Through captivating stories, anecdotes, and practical insights, discover the key elements of positivity, determination, continuous improvement, and adaptability to overcome obstacles and achieve your goals. From leadership principles to fostering a culture of excellence, this speech will empower you to navigate the challenges and opportunities that await beyond the finish line.

Panel discussing hybrid workflows and how humans maintain oversight over automated systems.

As the construction sector faces increasing pressure to deliver projects that are sustainable, resilient, and digitally enabled, the role of the project manager is undergoing a fundamental transformation. This session explores how project management must be reimagined by simultaneously advancing people capabilities, delivery processes, and construction technologies.

The presentation will examine the future skillsets required for next-generation project managers, the integration of sustainability and green project management principles into core project processes, and the role of construction technologies—including digital tools and data-driven decision-making—in enabling more efficient, low-carbon project delivery. Attendees will gain practical insights into how organizations can prepare their project teams to lead complex construction projects that align with global sustainability goals while meeting performance, cost, and schedule expectations.

This session reframes confidence as a deliberate, learnable signal expressed through three visible behaviors: clarity (you simplify complexity and frame the decision), composure (you stay steady under pressure and manage escalation without drama), and conviction (you recommend trade-offs instead of only reporting data). You’ll see how executives interpret confidence in high-stakes moments, and how habits like over-explaining, hiding behind process, or escalating without options quietly erode credibility and invite micromanagement. Through real delivery scenarios, you’ll learn practical shifts to move from status reporting to decision framing, deliver bad news with calm authority, and position yourself as a trusted advisor who can steer outcomes even when formal power is limited.

Trust is increasingly fragile across organisations and societies. This session explores whether leadership behaviour has unintentionally eroded trust—or whether leaders themselves are operating within systems that undermine credibility. Panelists discuss transparency, consistency, accountability, and the growing preference for systems and data over human judgment.

Across governments and large infrastructure organizations, billions are invested in strategic programs each year — yet many still struggle to consistently translate strategy into measurable societal outcomes. Traditional project management approaches focused on schedule, cost, and contract compliance are no longer sufficient for today’s complex, multi-stakeholder delivery environments.

This session introduces the concept of the PMO-Led Delivery Ecosystem, where the PMO evolves from a reporting and governance entity into a strategic integrator connecting national strategy, portfolio prioritization, risk intelligence, quality assurance, digital project management systems, and capability development.

Drawing on real transformation experience from national infrastructure programs, the session will demonstrate how integrating strategic alignment frameworks, predictive risk intelligence, digital PMIS-enabled decision support, and organizational capability building can significantly improve delivery confidence and public value realization.

Participants will gain practical insight into building future-ready PMOs that support large-scale delivery environments such as Vision-driven national programs, mega infrastructure initiatives, and multi-agency transformation portfolios.

The session will provide a structured roadmap for organizations seeking to move from project control to outcome-driven delivery leadership.

Leading global teams today is less about traditional oversight and more about cultural orchestration. It is the strategic alignment of diverse perspectives and cultural norms to achieve a unified global mission without compromising local relevance.

1. Purpose

To provide practical, experience-based guidance on how to effectively engage stakeholders during urgent risk situations in mega projects, ensuring fast decisions, alignment, and controlled outcomes.

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2. Context

Mega projects operate in highly complex environments involving:
• Multiple government and private stakeholders
• Tight timelines and high public visibility
• Significant financial, operational, and reputational risks

In urgent situations, delayed stakeholder alignment is often the main cause of project failure, not the risk itself.

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3. Objectives

By the end of the session, participants will be able to:
• Identify critical stakeholders in urgent scenarios
• Prioritize engagement based on influence and urgency
• Apply structured communication for fast decision-making
• Manage conflicts under pressure
• Accelerate approvals and mitigate risks effectively

This session challenges long-standing leadership behaviours that are still rewarded but no longer effective. It invites honest debate on which skills, habits, and mindsets must be unlearned to lead in fast-changing, AI-enabled, and highly complex environments. The focus is not on nostalgia—but on courage to evolve.

This session addresses one of the most common yet least visible risks in organisations: conversations that never happen. It explores how avoided conflict, delayed escalation, and unspoken disagreement accumulate into execution failure. Participants are challenged to reflect on the real cost of politeness, hierarchy, and fear—and how courageous dialogue changes outcomes.

This session invites an honest examination of leadership habits that are still rewarded but no longer effective in fast-changing, AI-enabled, and highly complex environments. It challenges participants to identify behaviours that once worked but now slow decision-making, suppress challenge, or distort accountability—and what must be unlearned to remain relevant.

This Fire Talk addresses a rarely discussed reality: leadership fatigue in long-running transformation and delivery environments. It explores how sustained responsibility, constant visibility, and decision pressure quietly erode judgment, courage, and empathy. The talk challenges the assumption that resilience is infinite and asks whether organisations are unintentionally creating conditions where exhausted leaders make unsafe decisions. Why it provokes debate: Is leadership burnout a personal weakness or a systemic failure? Do organisations reward endurance at the cost of judgment? Should leadership sustainability be treated as a governance risk?

In today’s volatile and technology-driven landscape, organizations are under constant pressure to transform—yet many digital initiatives fail not because of technology, but because alignment is missing between people, processes, and strategic intent.

This session explores how leaders can successfully navigate high-change environments by integrating intelligent automation and AI into structured governance frameworks without losing sight of culture, capability, and accountability. Drawing from real enterprise transformation experience across banking, telecommunications, and public sector institutions, the session will unpack practical strategies for embedding AI into operational workflows, strengthening project governance, and driving measurable impact.

Participants will gain insights on balancing innovation with risk management, building cross-functional buy-in, and ensuring transformation efforts deliver sustainable, scalable results—not just short-term automation wins.

This talk is designed for project leaders, executives, and transformation professionals seeking to future-proof their organizations while maintaining operational excellence in an era of continuous disruption.

This Fire Talk challenges a dangerous assumption: that approved plans equal organisational commitment. It exposes how plans often mask unresolved disagreement, political compromise, and unspoken resistance—leading to predictable failure during execution. Provocation: “If commitment was real, execution wouldn’t be surprised.”

Let us create high-performance project teams and PMOs. Especially in a world where 70% of transformation initiatives fail to deliver lasting results, organizations need more than traditional project management—they need change that truly sticks. This session explores the intersection of neuroscience, strategic leadership, and project intelligence to help PMO leaders build high-performance organizations that sustain transformation long after implementation.

Drawing on cutting-edge research in behavioural science and organisational psychology, this presentation reveals why most change initiatives fade and introduces Strategic Project Intelligence (SPI) as a proven framework for embedding lasting change. Attendees will discover how the brain responds to transformation, why resistance occurs at the neurological level, and how to design PMO structures that align human behaviour with strategic execution.

Through practical frameworks like ChangeEASE™ and the Strategic 5 Senses™, participants will learn to transform their PMOs from administrative functions into strategic centers of excellence that drive continuous value creation. This session goes beyond theory to provide actionable tools for building buy-in, managing resistance, and creating a culture where high performance becomes the new normal.

Whether you are leading enterprise-wide transformation or repositioning your PMO for greater impact, this session equips you with the intelligence and frameworks to make change stick—permanently.