Exhibiting at the first ever two-day APM Annual Conference
On the 5 and 6 June, the Firewood team were excited to showcase our products and services at the APM Annual Conference in Coventry. The event was a great opportunity to meet with fellow professionals and learn about the challenges facing the profession. The highlight was the inspirational speech by Yvonne Thompson who is the new President of the APM, who reflected on the importance of networking.
This year there was a strong theme around ‘generational’ differences in the workplace which was discussed and debated across both days. These “in the old days…” vs “not in this day-and-age” debates are very common at family dinner-tables and have been a hot topic of conversations, and TikToks, for years. However, the conference offered new insights; exploring how global events and technological advances have shaped these differences. Some speakers provided fresh perspectives on managing these differences effectively to achieve better outcomes. These insights are particularly valuable for us at Firewood, given the breadth and diversity of the projects we work on. Our stakeholders span across the generational spectrum, so having a greater contextual understanding of how this can influence behaviours within a project environment is a definite advantage.
It was also encouraging to see the emphasis on project assurance, such as Andy Bevington’s workshop on ‘How to utilise the value of assurance’ and hear stories of the positive impact of assurance on project success. This was a timely opportunity for our product team to demonstrate an updated version of our SaaS-based Firewood Assurance Service Tool (FAST™). We received tremendous feedback and as assurance becomes more recognised as a core pillar of successful project management, FAST™, which combines best practice processes and frameworks for a wide range of assurance activities, truly proves it’s worth.
Overall, the APM Annual Conference provided an excellent occasion to engage with the project management community, and at Firewood we believe in building strong connections with our peers to deliver lasting change. We very much look forward to the next one and can’t wait to meet you there.