We congratulate Beatrice Monique Rich and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Ralf Woll from the Chair of Quality Management at the Brandenburg Technical University Cottbus for their module "Project Management". The BTU Teaching Prize is awarded once a year to university lecturers in recognition of their exceptional commitment. Modules are proposed by students and lecturers. Subsequently, the selected modules will be presented to a jury in a public university presentation and evaluated according to defined criteria. The module by Rich and Prof. Dr. Woll stood out from three other nominated modules and convinced the jury.

The page "Online PM Courses" by Dr. Mike Clayton offers various courses on the topic of project management, including traditional and agile project management. In addition to these courses, a lot of information and materials are available on this site for those interested in project management. Especially worth mentioning are the short videos "Project Management in under 5". Dr. Clayton explains relevant project management topics in less than five minutes. These videos are published monthly and are ideal for getting an insight into a specific topic. For those project managers who prefer to read rather than watch videos, the site provides a number of articles.

Guest article by Julian Knorr, IAPM Network University Official and founder and board member of Onestoptransformations: At the age of 24, my school days were not too long ago. Nevertheless, I grew up in a school system in which there was a very clear distribution of roles: the "knowing and older teacher" explains to the "younger and untaught pupils" topics and facts which the pupils (mostly without questioning this at all) should regard as given and internalise. This system is basically the same for further training in (traditional) companies: Younger employees are trained by older managers (classical hierarchy system) and the knowledge is imparted top-down. In addition, experienced coaches and trainers are engaged to give the teams additional knowledge and new impulses.

The project management standards and methods of the International Association of Project Managers (IAPM) are recognized by the Procurement Office of the German Federal Ministry of the Interior: In the public tender of the Procurement Office of the German Federal Ministry of the Interior for "Consulting and Support Services for Project Management", the competitive tendering procedure were published. The tender is divided into three lots: Individual project management, large-scale and multi-project management as well as project management of security-relevant projects.

You may have heard the term blockchain in connection with Bitcoin, for example - but what role can the use of blockchain play in normal companies? Is this a technique that project managers have to deal with? In recent years, project management has been shaken by many new developments, techniques, strategies and methods. Some novelties establish themselves, others go down in the history of management as nice attempts. So what is blockchain technology, what does it have to do with project management and is it worth dealing with this phenomenon? In the modern economy, cost reduction, increased efficiency, transparency and digitization play a decisive role.

In a guest article Ines Bahr writes about the digital transformation in the company Capterra: If a company misses digitisation, it risks significant competitive disadvantages compared to its digitised competitors. Large companies have recognised this and are already supporting their business processes with cloud systems. Many start-ups also use cloud technologies and benefit from the numerous advantages. However, German SMEs in particular are still struggling to outsource processes to the cloud. Many companies gallop directly into software selection without having set up a digitisation strategy and, above all, without really having understood digitisation.

On the online platform Kommune 21, Dr. Andreas Zamperoni, Principal Project Manager at msg, and Michael Kandel, Senior Manager at m3 management consulting, report about their experiences with Smart City and agile networks. m3 management consulting is a member of the msg group. The article deals with how agile management can be used to establish successful network projects that can make a decisive contribution on the way to the Smart City. The web platform Kommune 21 deals with all topics of interest to the modern community, including of course the concept of the Smart City. Below is a summary of the article.

Digitisation and modernisation are phenomena that are penetrating ever faster into more and more areas of the economy and everyday life. In fact, the constant change has never been more noticeable than it is today. Industry 4.0 is no longer a vision of the future, it is catching up with us quickly. Companies of all industries are therefore forced to deal with digitization, globalization, modernization and new technologies if they want to remain competitive and economical. The term industry 4.0 refers to a summary of many phenomena that develop simultaneously and have common intersections. The Internet plays a role in many processes - not only as a source of information but also as a sales market, advertising space and communication instrument.

The blog of the IT information and news site IT-Daily.net published an article about successful change management and external consultants, in which the author deals with the role of consultants in times of globalization and digitization. These two circumstances continuously determine and transform the working environment of most people. Executives and managers everywhere are busy recording, analysing and responding to the current consequences of digitisation and globalisation. Restructuring is initiated and evaluated, forecasts for the future are prepared and repeatedly changed. Below is a summary of the article. Especially in the IT sector, the effects of global and technical changes are quickly becoming apparent. Anyone who is not in a position to react quickly as a manager here will soon be a thing of the past and can watch familiar structures become obsolete and impractical.

Worldwide, the pressure to produce and innovate increases continuously. That circumstance also affects the information and telecommunications technology sector, among others. In order to remain competitive, companies must deploy their employees efficiently to avoid revising or inactivity. This is where resource management comes into play, which is closely linked to skill management - which employees are available and what are their skills? Resource management does not only offer these operational benefits, but also a clear strategic advantage: Project managers and managing directors already know at the planning stage what capacities are available in addition to various projects and daily business.

Knowledge and the application of lean management are required in many projects - and this form of management is a subject that is highly discussed in the professional world. But what does lean management actually mean? The term and the idea behind it had its origin in the automobile industry in Japan - and already in the 1950s. There, the principle of continuous improvement and the reduction of divisional thinking were called for. The implementation of a so-called "lean production" was generally important. These principles of streamlining were then applied to planning processes, plans, administration, procedures and management in general. Lean Management, which began under the term "Lean Production", is always about improving the entire system. Through lean management, both the administration of a group and its value chain should function more efficiently, faster, leaner and thus more economically.

Project management is a profession that is in a constant process of change. People who choose a career as a project manager should be aware of this. It helps them immensely in their professional career if they are interested in new technologies, innovative methods and creative processes. Some trends arise and remain only a few months, others continue for years and decades and change project management sustainably and continuously. What are the current trends and what do we have to be prepared for? Project manager certification bodies like us, the IAPM, also have to keep up with the times. Current trends are therefore reflected in the preparatory seminars of our trainers.