One of the many skills required of a project manager is the ability to ask searching questions and persevere until a clear answer is obtained. Many of the pitfalls in projects could be avoided if questions were articulated fully and if the answers were given clearly and in detail. Too often areas of a project that should be clearly defined are not. Assumptions are made about who is responsible for what and, even worse, assumptions are made about what exactly the business objectives are and what benefits the project will deliver to the organisation.

The team of PMI Budapest Chapter truly believes in the importance and power of communication, because it’s something that’s required in almost every step of business. We also believe that social media has to be a fully integrated and planned part of your project’s communications management strategy. Let us share with you some of the major benefits you can tap into and leverage on while connecting the social media with your project management practices.

The PMI Budapest, Hungarian Chapter's international conference "Art of Projects" was held on 5 November as the largest project management event of the year in Hungary. Fascinating presentations and discussions of current project management topics, workshops, networking and professional gathering of the local community contributed to making this day a celebration of project management.

In her speech, keynote speaker Deena Gordon Parla, PMP, 2015 PMI Board of Directors, chair of the Strategy Development Oversight Committee, stressed the importance of developing a culture of project management, cultivating talent and defining processes, in order for organisations to capture value and gain a competitive advantage

Peter Graham, associate partner and European leader for policing, Global Business Services, IBM, shared his experience on managing large-scale programmes and shared insights on how to drive success for a sensitive project with high security concerns for the satisfaction of all stakeholders.

Agile is always a very interesting topic for a conference. Bob Small, agile coach, Verizon Enterprise Solutions, New York, USA, gave the audience a good example of the corporate's agile journey and underlined that an agile mindset is essential to achieving agility, not the tools and methodology.

Mark Kozak-Holland, PMP, certified senior consultant at HP Services, Toronto, Canada, and Lessons-from-History book series founder and series editor, delivered a very intensive presentation and master class. He stressed that contemporary project management reflects processes and techniques, and can be rounded out with historical project case studies, which can bring a wealth of lessons providing fresh stimulus and thinking to solve today’s problems. The future is in the past, building the case for historical lessons in business.

The Art of Projects conference values performing art and considers that well-prepared, well-designed "projects" are behind artistic work. This year’s special guest speaker was Zsolt Kudich, Hungarian award winner for nature and fine art photography. His latest project (developed in collaboration with his wife Réka Zsirmon) unveils the natural wonders of protected areas of the Danube River. They photographed 14 nature conservation areas in eight countries alongside the Danube and completed 12,000 kilometres over four months. The result of their project was presented at the Danube Nature Parks photo exhibition at the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium. The conference gave participants the chance to admire these wonderful photos.

The prestigious Project Manager of the Year award was granted 15 times this year and represents the award for the whole project management community of Hungary, as all Hungarian project management–related professional associations are represented in the Award Committee (Projektmenedzsment Kiválóság Tábla). Hungarian Minister of Economy Mihály Varga is the main patron of this committee.

This year’s award was granted to László Balaton, PMP, head of Project and Portfolio Management Office, Erste Bank Hungary, for his project management experience and excellent communication and people skills. He excelled in managing the “foreign currency credit settlement" project, a critical project this year for all local banks due to its fixed closing date, direct impact and mandatory communication flow with a huge number of customers, and changing conversion rules based on political decisions.

Finally, the PMI Budapest, Hungarian Chapter awarded the best diploma essay of 2015. Volunteers from the Budapest, Hungarian Chapter rewarded winners – students and the supervisors who assisted them in the preparation of their essays – with selected books from the PMI Marketplace and free admission to project management workshops and forums for a full year.

Sándor Kathi, MSc, Department of Management and Corporate Economics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, and his supervisor, Dr Zoltán Sebestyén, were rewarded for an essay on "Relevance of Scrum Project Management Methodology For Non IT Projects."

Source: http://www.associationhq.com/pmi/e-link/EMEAElink143.html#community2