Leading local and international project managers met in Hanoi on November 6 for the 7th International Conference on Project Management (ProMac2013), discussing issues affecting IT, education, finance and the nation's economy.

This year's ProMac conference attracted over 250 international delegates from 10 countries, with strong representation from R&D departments from the world's largest companies including Fujitsu, Hitachi and IBM Japan.

Teaching staff from universities across Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, India and Vietnam were also present.

This year's conference saw 60 topics discussed in groups by experts and project managers.
With rapid development occurring in many fields, there has been an increasing need to foster project management skills across many areas of economic development.

Bringing ProMac to Vietnam, the Japanese Society of Project Management (SPM) predicted the event would allow Vietnamese project managers to tap into Japan 's vast project management community.

Dean of FPT University Le Truong Tung, under the management of the country FPT software, said FPT University was the first one in Vietnam to introduce project management into tertiary and post-graduate training programmes, inviting project management experts from local companies including Viettel and CMC, to discuss their experience and knowledge with students.

Tung said that project administration in Japan was ranked the best in the world at mark 10, with Vietnam currently at mark 6.

He said his university was fully aware that students needed to be taught project management at university to enable a faster transition into the workforce and the ability to work on large scale projects.
Truong Gia Binh, chief of FPT shared his views on the challenge and opportunities in the field of project management in Vietnam .

Moving to information technology (IT) as the core platform for development, he said Vietnam faced significant challenges in IT development including low levels of high skilled IT workers.

Binh noted that these problems were partially discussed and progressed at Promac 2013 this year.
Chairman of SPM, Seki Tetsuro, said Vietnam was a potential destination for the global IT industry, with events like ProMac 2013, helping to identify areas of improvement and share inside knowledge.

The organising committee of PROMAC said it expected to see more project management units being taught in universities as a way to keep students in touch with changes in the industry.

The meeting was co-held by the FPT University and Japanese Society of Project Management and it concluded on November 9 in Hanoi.-VNA