 Hey everybody this is Christian Buckley with another MVP Buzz Chat and I'm here today with Mario. Hey great to have you. It's my pleasure to be here. And I'm just commenting that Mario you're the first person I've interviewed as part of the series that's from South America one but from Brazil. But also I believe you're my first project portfolio management expert that I've interviewed as part of the series. So welcome on both fronts there. Why don't you introduce yourself who you are where you are what you do. All right so I'm based in Brazil. I live in São Paulo and I work with project management for the last 20 years. We were discussing in the beginning here about Microsoft Project. We use a bunch of different tools SharePoint to manage projects, projects online. And now I like new projects for the web a lot. We've been using Power Platform and with these years working with project management different projects in engineering in IT also nonprofits. We work with project management for nonprofits and education. I started understanding that we have to combine methodology with the right tool and teach people on how to use that. So we have the people the processes and the tools and this is what we do. So I created a couple of methodologies based on different needs. So a methodology for a nonprofit methodology for small projects methodology for engineering projects. And then we started embedding these methodologies into the tools. So we have a project online accelerator based on engineering and IT for example. We developed an accelerator for a new project for the web and a couple of other tools. And it's been really nice because then people can start using the methodology without having previous training. They are guided through the methodology as they click in a specific tool. And this is what we've been doing here in Brazil. We have clients all over the world. We have another company in Canada. It's a subsidiary of my company and we also work in the Middle East a lot and some clients in Europe as well. We were talking so I started out my career. I've been in IT for almost 30 years and about the first half of my career was spent predominantly in project and portfolio management space. And I found my way into SharePoint but into collaboration technology and knowledge management and building out portals is kind of in that role. And just like you said, this is funny. I'm sitting here, I'm writing an article on provisioning for SharePoint and Teams. And a lot of the learnings and takeaways I have of going and building out and orchestrating a provisioning process as part of a broader governance strategy comes from a lot of what I used to do back in building PMOs, project management organizations for clients, for companies that I work with, building centers of excellence around project management and business analysis. And as you said, I used to always say that I don't care what your methodology is, just have a methodology. Have a process for moving projects forward and then go and adapt and build or buy the technology that best fits that. And that's been something, I know we're both Office Apps and Services MVPs that I've kind of carried over into the collaboration space, which is the technology is less relevant than, let me phrase this right, it's better to have a good technology fit for the way that your organization collaborates than try to force fit the culture of the organization into technology. And if you agree with that or not. Sure, I totally agree with that. I think we'd need a methodology to establish a process, but the thing is that as we see digital transformation nowadays, we have new business models, also new organizational structures. I believe that people are getting confused because of the many methodologies you have Scrum, Agile, Dispin and Agile, Kanban, every other different approaches we have and also many different tools. It's very confusing for the end user, although people like us MVPs or other people that are IT professionals, they have a better understanding about the tools and how to use each of those tools in different scenarios than the user does not know that. And it's been very challenging right now because of the COVID crisis. So thinking about NGOs, for example, the non-profits, I am a volunteer for non-profits since I was eight years old. And because of the COVID crisis, I thought we should help them more because they are really struggling here in Brazil. I don't know about the other countries, but they are not receiving donations. They have very low maturity in process and management and they don't have the tools that they use it to meet in a physical space. And now they have to find out what would be the tools. And when I create webinars for that, we created some manuals and other things. It's hard for them to understand, even providing training and coaching them, this kind of stuff. So that's when I started to think about project management as not only project itself, but as management solutions and trying to create the processes inside the tool. So we're doing that in teams. It's nice that you do that. Maybe we have to talk more about it. But we created ways that you can create agile teams using specific templates. You can also have the right tabs in each specific team. Otherwise, information is just a bunch of information and you'll get really confused using Microsoft Teams, for example. For those that are wondering too, this is a problem that certainly is an issue with most technology areas, all these other OEMs out there. I spent a number of years working with Rational Software, which was acquired by IBM. So working in that IBM Rational Software world and a little startup that I started in business schools in the late 90s. So much of what we did was because you have these software configuration platforms, these visual modeling tools and you open it up and it's this blank canvas and people would struggle, like, where do I even begin? Here, experienced engineers, like, how do I start going and building the model? How do I start building these visualizations? And so we built these guides to start people out, asking them basic questions, defining the workspace and start to put together these visual models. And again, that learning is, I think, has gone into what I've done in the SharePoint space, what I did in the Project Portfolio Management space. Just as you said, that's where the methodology helps. I used to tell my direct reports that went through, that were PMs, the Project Managers, and I sent dozens of people through PMP certification process. I got my MBA. So I look at that as a Project Management degree. So I did go through and do the certification myself. But I encouraged people to my employees to go through that process. I used to tell them, I said, I want you to learn everything about this. And I never want to see you attempt to apply 100% of what you've learned into every project. Find the pieces that make sense. Do what's logical, what fits, again, the needs of the project, of the organization that you're working with. You can't force fit the PMBock, the body of knowledge for Project Managers onto every single project. And you'd see some people approaching things that way. They would go through their checklist. You're like, this isn't relevant. That checklist, that stage of that generic methodology does not apply to this project. You have to refine it. You have to apply what makes sense for that project. And that's what we're seeing with organizations. That's the problem with collaboration. I think people look at a tool. They get confused because they think they have to apply everything, turn on every feature. And you might have three business units in an organization that might use Microsoft Teams very differently because of the nuances of the subculture of that business unit to the overall organization. So you have to be thoughtful about that. That one way of doing things, even within a single company, is often not the right way to do things in that company. Yeah, that's just hashtag truth. That's my truth. That's really true for most of the organizations. I think that we can use methodologies as best practices, accelerators, as we say. And then based on that to start changing, because in a way, when you have a blank canvas, it's very overwhelming. You have to start from scratch, and you don't know what you're going to use. So you have to try to find out what would be methodology that is the right fit for your organization. And then it starts improving on that. I believe this is very related to the culture. So getting feedback and getting people involved, then you can improve the processes, improve the tools that you have. And it starts tailoring. I believe that Spotify did that very well. That's why we have that Spotify method. You probably heard about it. And it was not intended to be a method. Selling this method as a certification or book or guidance. They developed that to use inside the company. And then people start changing and doing everything that they need to make it flexible and adaptable to the organizational needs. So when you have customers that come to you and ask, well, how do we get started? What is your process with helping an organization to see to recognize what that culture is of what's going to meet the needs of that organization? So what's your methodology for working with a client in that way to help them kind of figure out their path? Yeah, basically we have three ways we work with the clients. The first is that we receive a request for a proposal. And they already did their homework. Maybe they hired at a consulting company and did everything that they have to elicit requirements and detail what they need. Then we just provide the solution, which would be design the architecture and everything we have to put in place to satisfy the needs described in that request for a proposal. This is the easiest one, let's say. Then we have the ones that they don't know exactly what they need, but they already have some processes. In this case, we suggest that we are going to help them in elisting requirements and also in mapping their processes, understanding their culture, the environment. And usually we provide an assessment. We have a small guide for that. It's a one to two weeks assessment. And based on this, they are going to receive a report related to their maturity in management, in project management, and technology readiness based on what they have. And they can use these requirements so that they will build their own request for a proposal and then have something implemented. And the third way, we usually adopt this to smaller organizations where they have nothing. And in this case, maybe it doesn't make sense to do any kind of assessment because they are very small organizations or medium organizations. Then we provide what we call a toolbox. This is the accelerator based on best practices, start using this. Once you get proficient on using this methodology and the tool implemented, then it will be able to ask for changes, improvements, and do anything that is particular to your organization. I think that's where so many organizations struggle with that change process. I mean, I look at that and I've had this conversation again and again and again with clients, with companies that I've worked with, and just let them know that they're frustrated. Well, this is just not meeting your needs. I was like, well, you know, we can change it. If it's not working, let's change it. Let's discuss what's not working. That's part of ongoing operations is change. Again, there are tool providers that are out there where they make any change to the way they use their technology, very difficult, but that is not Microsoft technology. I mean, obviously, there might be features that you want that are missing from a tool and there's a process to go through and provide feedback back to Microsoft. But as far as how you use the tools and the features that are available to you, Microsoft expects you to go in there and to build process and again, use it differently. We always joke in the SharePoint world when people say, well, how do you do X, Y, Z? And the answer is, it depends. It depends. It's a great answer. It's a catch-all for just about every technology. But we use it and we joke about that phrase, but as it really depends on what you're trying to accomplish, the outcomes, what your methodology is. I mean, all those things can take two companies with the exact same install, the same platform can go in very different divergent directions based on, again, what that change process is. There are certainly organizations that are good at change that can recognize that and have a process in place already for reviewing. I share examples. There's one of my favorite stories I've used in a number of talks, but kind of a scrum method. I installed a whiteboard on the wall, the highly trafficked hallway, and instituted a daily standing meeting for my team where we would go and kind of knock down the list, like here are the priorities, here's the active projects, new requests over on the side. We're not even thinking about those. Any new requests come in right on the side, but it was a way just to get people's heads clear on this. These are our marching orders. This is your world right here until we agree that something over from the side list gets inserted here. It's not reality. This is reality. This is what we're working on. This is what we're communicating. It did a lot for getting people, helping them to focus on that path forward. I found something, not having a standing meeting, but having a similar clarity of purpose that shared understanding of this is what we're trying to accomplish. Here's what it is. It doesn't mean you might not have on a weekly meeting 20, 30 things which are potential changes to that reality, but you have that process of a weekly meeting or twice a week meeting where you're going through reviewing where are we on progress on these things? What can we do now? Yeah, I see that's a high priority, and those of us that are in the project world, of course, I think it's things automatically about building out the plan for those things, but in what order. Even so, it's why I'm a big fan of Kanban and a lot of these tools and where we've matured with the technology, how much easier it is to sit there with projecting with a laptop and drag and drop based on the priorities, based on the discussion of the team, and what was a priority today at the end of the week when we provide feedback on progress might rearrange those priorities because of the daily constant change of our understanding of what needs to be done and when and by whom. So I think it really is kind of a golden age for project management because we do have so many different tools. Yeah, I just think it's an exciting time. It's one of the reasons why I'm getting back involved with the project team and what they're doing. Microsoft is doing, though, they've got multiple irons in the fire, just in the project management space. Are you doing anything? Are you working with the Azure DevOps as well? Yes, it's interesting because I see a lot of non-IT people using Azure DevOps because of the Kanban boards and also the other automations that you can do with DevOps. In our company, we integrated DevOps with Project Online. So actually, we do high level planning, which is something very nice because as a PPM, you have portfolio level. And in this level, we want just to see a timeline and more or less working hours and how we're doing on Budget. And from the working point of view, you just want the cards and your daily activities. And this is interesting because there is a long time discussion in project management about that. You go to Agile versus traditional project management and new hybrid approaches that people created. And when you don't have the tools, it's very confusing. I remember maybe six years ago, we already have Agile and I was working in a very large project. I had an MPP file in my computer, Microsoft Project Schedule. And I had three different teams. It was in the same building, but three different teams with those stick nodes on the wall. The stick nodes were different from the tasks that I had in my scheduling Microsoft project. And I had to report to my sponsor using another Excel spreadsheet, which was different from the schedule and from the stick nodes. So it takes me a lot of time, maybe two days a week just to update and get the power points, this kind of stuff. And when we see the tools we have now, and there is a Gardner report about that mentioning that 80% or 75% of the project management tasks will be automated, collecting information, updating tasks, all this stuff. And when I read that, I believe it was last year, many people in the project management world, PMI and so on, they were asking if we are not going to need project managers anymore because 80% of the tasks will be automated. And in fact, we need more project managers now, at least in our company, in our customers, we see that because as we don't have this overhead anymore, the project managers can work in their real job. They are talking to stakeholders, they are checking requirements, scope, talking to vendors, all of this. In one of the companies here in Brazil, we work with a very large company here. And we have a saving of 80,000 hours per month due to automation. So it's a lot of people, 200 people were only creating reports. And when we say that as a successful case, they ask, were they fired? No, they were not fired. They are now doing what they were supposed to do. They were not in the field, they were not talking to the team members. And because of that, we had delayed projects, we had projects over, but yes. Now that we automated this with methodology and the tools, they have more time, managers, to do what only they can do, analytical thinking, problem solving, this kind of stuff. And as a result, the organization has a competitive edge and they now have more projects. They still need those project managers and maybe even more project managers. So I believe that some organizations are still struggling with adopting best practices, investing tools, the proper tools. And this is a big mistake. You have to really think about it. You do not want to invest, I don't know, $10,000 in a tool or maybe something like this. And because of that, you need 300 wasted hours of work, for example. So as you mentioned, project management is really exciting times because PMI calls this the project economy because now we have project managers in marketing, in financial, human resources, everything that you can imagine. We have Microsoft Project implemented, for example. We mentioned DevOps. We use Project and DevOps in a media company here in Brazil. And non-profit, we have a non-profit managing their grants through Microsoft Project in the projects. You can use it for everything that is temporary, that's the thing. Well, we always joke, but it's just the truth that for the longest time, the most popular project management tool out there has been Microsoft Excel. And for a lot of it, and a lot of that usage is like you said, it's these non-traditional project management organizations in every part of the organization. And I think where the technology has finally caught up to the promise that's been out there for a long time. I got involved with one of the first SaaS-based project management solutions, a company I'm familiar with based out of the San Francisco Bay Area called Project Arena. So back in 99, I think 99, 2000. But anyway, one of the, you're talking with their CEO and getting to know that their vision for project management, moving off of the Microsoft Project or some of the other tools of the time, the desktop tools, they were really, the promise was, well, you're shifting the responsibility to provide updates on tasks to the people that actually own the tasks. That's one automation that happens with this technology that they had talked about 20 years ago. And the other one was that all these organizations really are interested in was starting to do the attribution of the activities and to be able to start to see the data. How long is it actually taking to complete each of these different tasks? That's a huge benefit that every aspect of an organization can benefit from. It doesn't matter if it's specific project management organization, a project-centric organization. If you go and have that, again, that methodology, if you're in marketing organization, there's still, you have a high-level methodology for moving projects from beginning to middle to end. Operations much the same way. Support organizations closing out tickets. There's a methodology in place for that. And being able to go in and start over time tracking that, assigning, looking at the severity of issues, the time it takes to close, assigning dollar values based on just time alone to each of those. How many people were involved for how much time? You have a better idea of what that ticket, closing that, what that marketing initiative really cost our organization. And over time, are we getting better? Is the time it takes to deliver that, to close that ticket, to finish that project, is it decreasing? So are we saving money through a lot of these initiatives? That's where I think project management technology is really benefiting. That's why I say we're coming to this golden age of the technology because we're finally being able to see that without needing to have a whole team of technologists, puppet masters, making sure everything's running. Like it really does kind of run on its own now. Obviously, you still need to have people that own the projects that still, as you said, you still need project managers. But you're right. We're focused less on making sure that we're cracking the whip so that people are updating their tasks, providing their time sheets, and just making sure that the project plan hasn't been corrupted or overwritten or whatever it else, that we can move away from, again, I'll put it in the SharePoint world. We always talk about people making sure the lights are on, the servers are running, and that on-premises version versus the cloud where now it's running, and so I can instead focus on what were we trying to do in the first place with the technology? Why do we spend all this money on this technology? It's to collaborate more to kind of all those other things, and how can we now drive more business? So, yeah, I completely agree with that concept. Well, Mario, people want to find out more about you and get in touch with you. How can they reach you? Well, you can reach me on LinkedIn, Mario Trenting. Maybe I'll have to write this spelling, but you can also find me at Trenting.com, which is our company. We're based here in Brazil, but we also have a company in Canada and in Portugal, and we work mostly with project management solutions. And you can also find me in other social media. I have a YouTube channel, but it's in Portuguese, so you have to learn a little Portuguese and Spanish. We have project management videos there. And I have a couple of published books. You can find me on Amazon.com. I have books in Spanish, Portuguese, and English about project management, and a new project for the web book coming soon. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for your time. It's great finally connecting with the continent of South Africa, South America. So I really appreciate your time today. And hope to get more of, I know there's a lot of MVPs down there, you know, and why it's taken so long just to find one of you. And it's not like we're even that much of a time difference here. I think you're maybe like an hour or two ahead of me is all. So one hour, yeah, one hour, not so bad. Yeah. Well, really, really appreciate the time and great talking to you. My pleasure. Thank you a lot.