Letter to the Editor:
Greetings and Contribution from Germany

May 15, 2009

Dear David

Sorry for my late response. My certification job is very busy. I was invited by a globally working German company to certify their local project management personnel in Santiago and in Kuala Lumpur. At home in Germany, we certified till end of April more than 1.000 certificants in all 4 IPMA levels. We reached this number last year in June.

My feeling in these days of the worldwide finance crisis is that we from the small PM World should invest in nearly all types of branches the idea,

• select the best experts,

• train them in PM,

• certify them in order to find the final bests,

• give them the internal re-organisation project of the internal business and work flow by reducing the controlling activities.

Such a Revitalisation Project used the weak business period to consolidate the strength for the next increasing phase. While mostly everybody is only waiting for this springtime, but is not enabling to start immediately and with full speed. With the first glooming of a sunrise he will receive only contracts with very small chances for suitable profit. He must work for not cost covering conditions, because the ordering companies need to buy as cheap as possible, because he needs each earned dollar first of all for himself. The same thinking follows the banker with his credit conditions. All three partners have only "zero money". This "double killing effect" (DKE) hinders buyer, seller and banker to recover soon. --- The winners are those how used the bad time to revitalise themselves.

David, take this as my first contribution for your PMForum and PM World Today as your "youngest Global Advisor".

Please do me a favour and put me on your distribution list via email.

Herzliche Grüße / Best Regards
Klaus Pannenbäcker
Germany

Editor’s response: We were very happy to receive this email from Klaus Pannenbacker, former president of both the German Project Management Association (GPM) and the International Project Management Association (IPMA). While I have been led to believe that Klaus was retired, I am happy to see that he is not only still quite active but willing to contribute to PMForum and PM World Today now. This is great news as he brings 40+ years of PM related experience to our network.

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