Interview with Ricardo Triana

PMForum: Mr. Ricardo Triana has been elected as part of the PMI Global Board of Directors for the 2010-2012 term. Ricardo has over 15 years of solid experience in Project, Program and Quality Management, is an experienced instructor in Project Management and Interpersonal skills, and has an impressive curriculum as volunteer of the Project Management Institute. Prior to being elected a Director-at-large for PMI in 2009, he has held several positions in the PMI global communities/projects. He was the first Latin American to become president of the South Florida Chapter, a huge milestone for the Hispanic community in Miami.

Born in Colombia, a Mexican citizen, fluent in English and Spanish and with several other languages in his toolbox, Mr. Triana has either lived or worked in almost every country of our region which makes him a very good example of a Global (or better yet Latin-American) citizen. He is the third Hispanic that has ever achieved the director-at-large position of PMI, after Ms. Yamile Jackson (Colombia-2005) and Mr. Ricardo Vargas (Brazil-2007). In this interview with PMForum, Ricardo offers his valuable vision on Project Management in Latin America and also talks about his constant work as a volunteer.

PMForum: How did you get into the Project Management Profession? Your initial background in Language Arts is not a common starting point for Project Managers however you have succeeded in leading to a successful career in Project Management. How has this happened?

Ricardo Triana: You are right, my initial studies were in an uncommon area for someone that looks to be in the project management field. To become a teacher in Language and Arts I had to take a lot of courses on pedagogy, management and interpersonal skills, while to become a Software Engineer my courses were more about processes, logic and IT.

I really think that combination of skills and knowledge became with time one of my greatest strengths; if you think about it, most of our time as project managers is spent on communicating, managing changes or transferring knowledge to business stakeholders. So there is no day that I don’t use those skills in my job.

PMForum: What is your vision on the state-of-the-art of Project Management in Latin America?

Triana: Latin America has come a long way to accept Project Management as a discipline. That is for real and that goes beyond playing with schedules and gantt charts. This is due to the fact that large multinational companies came to the Region and they brought the vision of using world-class practices and optimization of resources (economic, material and human) to ensure regional projects were obtaining the benefits they were conceived for. Coincidentally, in those countries that haven’t been impacted so much by the crisis (Brazil, Chile or Peru) the growth of Project Management (in terms of certifications, courses, professionals, experience, job openings) has increased during the last several years at the same rate that companies are becoming more competitive at a regional or global level.

To read entire interview (Spanish) or (English)


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