EKbana at the PM Hub Seminar

The topic was then brought to the front which was on How to deliver a valued product and building trust with clients. Similar groups were created and a knowledge sharing session went underway. The topic went about on how EKbana focuses on client retention and client happiness.

PM Hub is an organization recently founded in Kathmandu, Nepal that aims to bridge the knowledge gap between managers in the tech industry in the country. The 1st seminar took place in Kathmandu on the 21st of September. The seminar was a one-day event focused on the practical exercise of end to end product development for small to enterprise software applications. EKbana’s project managers were invited for the event and was represented by Ashish Bastakoti.

The event kicked off at a beautiful hotel at 9 am sharp, introductions were made for the next hour. The event was officially kicked off with a welcome remark from one of the organizers of the event. With the ice broken, and free-flowing conversations underway the first topic of discussion was brought up to the front. The participants were placed in random groups and the topic declared.

The first topic of conversation was on customer acquisition and how each company goes about winning contracts, how contracts were lost and how one gets projects underway. This lead to a group brainstorm and knowledge sharing session of how each company or individuals handle dealing with clients and how to keep clients engaged and happy. Along with how to handle estimations and bridge the gap between the clients and the team members. How to go about handing estimations of time and resources, for example, making the clients understand how a new domain requires research and allotting that time to the estimations while also providing incentives such as initial after-sales support.

Once this session was over, each individual was asked to write down a question that went unanswered to the entire audience. Once a question was posed, many answers on how each company deals with the issues were shared with the group.

The next agenda lead to a gaming session of Charades to create a more wholesome casual environment, many laughs and lighthearted moments were shared.

More discussions on how to handle issues with delivery, whether it was to do with time or other unforeseen circumstances. For building trust with the clients, discussions on how to keep them updated and what information should be shared were talked about. Along with how personal care and individual touches leads to growth and trust in the relationship between client and managers.

That discussion lead to another Q&A session about the topic with more information sharing. Which then was followed by a closing speech done by one of the organizers of the event.

The event was a great opportunity for us to learn about the direction of our company and how projects were managed as compared to others in the country. The PM practices used by different companies were more or less the same with few tweaks here and there. The practices were different on the basis of companies that provides services and the ones which sell products. Having learnt a lot, our representative Ashish felt that a framework should always exist in a company which has 100+ employees and targets 15–20 projects at a time. Various methods of Agile were discussed of which SCRUM and KANBAN where the major focus and what variations can be added to the framework to maintain a better Project Management flow across the Company.

The lessons learnt and the opinions shared will lead us to better our methodologies and be attempted practically, and a yearly event will be conducted based on the solutions provided and how effective those were so that the IT industry of Nepal can grow together and challenge the world.