Chapter News

Before talking further about the Chapter’s initiatives, we first need to highlight the rather luxury position the Chapter was in when it started. From day one, we were a financially healthy association. This was primarily due to an excellent starting number of memberships, and also because of the supportive agreement reached with the PMI Benelux Chapter, by which the Dutch membership contributions for 2001 were transferred to the PMI Netherlands Chapter, next to financial contributions by some sponsoring organizations. This allowed us to build up a cushion against financial risks associated with several initiatives and projects.

 

And did we have projects? Definitely! Of course, the annual PMI Benelux day, which we continued to organize together with the now PMI BeLux Chapter. From then on, the project manager for organizing the PMI Benelux day was appointed in turns by the Netherlands Chapter or the Belux Chapter, and locations were alternately in the Netherlands or Belgium.

 

For the Board members, it entailed a lot of preparative work the evening before, but also a high level of fun and bonding. Even our partners were involved in gathering the seminar handouts and the organization of the partner program.

 

          

 

Also, we started a project for the Dutch Translating of the PMBOK Guide (version 3). There were many interesting peer-to-peer discussions about the proper translation of certain commonly used project terms. We noticed that finding a Dutch translation for those terms was not always that easy (Scope = Inhoud en reikwijdte). Later, we learned that the logistical consequences of this project, the storage of the printed copies and mailing of the book had been ‘out of Scope’. This resulted in one of the board members piling up 400 copies of this voluminous book in his garage, answering mail-order requests, ensuring payment and arranging for wrapping and shipping of the books. Those were the days when being a board member entailed all your ‘great ideas’ coming back to you like a boomerang!

 

                                                                                  

So we learned! It led to the currently still existing cooperation between the Netherlands Chapter and Van Haren Publishing, a then relatively small publisher focused on the niche market of professional standards. They were willing to take over the storage and logistics of the remaining publications of the Third edition translation and then sponsored and worked actively together with the Chapter in realizing the publication of the PMBOK Guide Fourth edition Dutch translation.  

And we learned again! The major effort of translating the whole PMBOK Guide was great for the project team members when discussing all the nitty-gritty details of the PMBOK Guide. But perhaps the full PMBOK Guide translation was not the best ‘entry level’ publication to get novice PMs and other stakeholders interested in PMI’s standards and the local PMI Chapter. To continue our efforts in having something tangible but easily accessible for promoting the PMI Netherlands Chapter and PMI’s standards in the Dutch region, we decided to create “A Pocket companion to PMI’s PMBOK Guide”. The aim was to provide stakeholders a quick intro to PMI’s PMBOK Guide, next to promoting PMI as an organization and more specifically, the PMI Netherlands Chapter. Two Chapter volunteers, Paul Snijders (U), and Anton Zandhuis, initiated this publication. Through our PMI network, we came across Thomas Wuttke, a PMBOK Guide expert who had already published German translations of subsequent PMBOK Guide editions. To reduce the complexity of this project we decided to take a two-step approach. First, we created an English reference document to ensure having a manuscript fully aligned with the then published new PMBOK Guide 4th edition. The second step was creating the Dutch translation, “PMI’s PMBOK Guide in een notendop” using the English manuscript as a reference. This was done by Anton Zandhuis together with Rommert Stellingwerf and Andre Legerman.

Of course, with Thomas Wuttke on board in the author team, and he being a member of the Munich Chapter, the subsequent German translation ‘Eine Zusammenfassung des PMBOK Guide – Kurz un Bündig’ was a no-brainer.

This appeared to be a very successful publication, as it was much easier to digest for the public than the complete PMBOK Guide as a whole. It became such a success that translations to Spanish and French were added next to the Dutch and German updated versions based on the Fifth PMBOK Guide edition.

Later on, many other initiatives followed, like the ISO21500 standards initiative. On this occasion, the PMI Netherlands Chapter sponsored a representative on behalf of the Dutch ISO (NEN) delegation, Rommert Stellingwerf, for drafting these global PM standards; an initiative that is continuing today.

So … that’s the story. How it started as an idea some 20 years ago, which acted as the seeds from which, like tulips, the PMI Netherlands Chapter started growing. Since then it has seen many periods of flowering. 

As ‘Founding fathers’ this whole ‘Chapter adventure’ did bring us many personal opportunities for learning, sharing and delivering a contribution to the growth of the PM profession in The Netherlands. We enjoyed this whole trip a lot and we’re still in contact with each other as friends.

As proof, below a picture of us celebrating the 15 years since the birth of our ‘baby Chapter’ and we hope to see many years to come.