I Told the Group Chat No, Then Stood on the Pier
I had clearly told the LINE group that I couldn’t make it this time.
On the evening of October 17, Elly Chen and I came up from Kaohsiung, ITPM caps on, and stood at Tamsui Fisherman’s Wharf without a single familiar face in sight. The project manager’s instinct kicked in: no map, so find the cake. Sure enough, far down the pier, someone was carrying a big cake in both hands. That has to be them, I thought.
When we walked up, the Taipei Chapter team froze for three seconds. Someone asked, “What a coincidence. How did you get here?”
Coincidence, my foot. It was ITPM’s twentieth birthday. How could I be absent?
A Pair of Startup Glasses, Twenty Years Old
The glasses I wore that night were bought in December 2006 at Baodao Optical, and their records can still prove it. That was our company’s second year, and the year ITPM was founded.
During our company’s twentieth-anniversary clean-up, we threw out sixty large boxes of stuff, yet I dug these glasses out of the clutter. The lenses have since been changed for reading, but the frame is exactly the same. I showed members a photo of me from twenty years ago, and someone said, “Even the glasses haven’t changed.”
I told them, “When I started the company, I thought: I’m going to use PMP to raise Taiwan’s competitiveness.”
Even I paused after saying it. The association I founded has lasted twenty years.
Lock Everyone on a Boat, and No One Gets Away
The party was organized by Yanfen, president of the Taipei Chapter, and her team. She told us the earliest idea was a yacht party with fireworks and music, the rich-kid kind of party at sea. They ran the budget, and cut it.
What survived the cut was the MVP: lock everyone on one boat. No escape. We could only watch the Tamsui sunset together and celebrate a twentieth birthday together. The scope was trimmed down to a single boat, and it became the most memorable version. The Tamsui Bridge had just opened; others get twin towers in a day, we got two bridges in a day.
The boat needed seventy people to break even, and sixty-seven showed up. I covered the gap with a red envelope.
Two Thousand Petitions, One Beautiful Failure
ITPM began on June 12, 2005, when sixteen PMPs sat down together. What I most wanted to do back then was push for a project management law.
We collected about two thousand petition forms and handed them to a legislator in person. The result? PMP was too obscure, and an international credential at that. Legislating it was nearly impossible. Round one: failed.
That failure is ITPM’s best origin story.
After the Failure, the Honors Grew
When the law went nowhere, we moved our energy to the local level. The association was registered in April 2006, and I served as its first and second chairman. Kaohsiung opened first, then Taipei, Tainan, Taichung and Hsinchu joined in. Five chapters, each growing in its own way, and twenty-five people were enough to start a chapter. Membership passed one thousand in 2009 and reached nearly fifteen hundred by 2010.
In April 2009, PMI recognized us as a Registered Education Provider, so we could award PDUs ourselves. That same year, after the 88 Flood, we called up 300 volunteers in 25 days to write the WBS for the disaster-area reconstruction. For once, project management was not a certificate. Someone really used it.
In October 2010, we received PMI’s award for outstanding contribution in Maryland. Standing on that stage, I thought: this kind of award should come home to Taiwan. That is how the Top Ten Project Managers Award was born. It is still running today, and those selected have mostly gone on to do very well.
Over twenty years the chairmanship passed from hand to hand: Chu Kuo-Chuan, Liu Kai-Kuo, Hung Chia-Chun, Yuan Ming-Yi, Chen Chun-Kuei, Chen Shih-Jen, and now Peter Lin as the eleventh. The trophies stay in a cabinet. What boarded the boat that night was people: I am the founding chairman, and with me were three former chairmen, Yuan Ming-Yi, Chen Chun-Kuei and Chen Shih-Jen.
The Members on Board Turned a Certificate into a Way of Life
Yayun, president of the Hsinchu Chapter, said the best thing about ITPM is that, whichever chapter you belong to, you can join activities across the island. Attend a lecture if it interests you, and bring the whole family when there is an event.
The president of the Tainan Chapter said he joined very early, back when he was pushing a stroller to meetings, and now his kids are in junior high and high school. Then he said something I want to hang on a wall: project management should be part of life. It is not just a license.
Sixty-seven people on one boat. Some came all the way from Pingtung, and some left Taichung before sunrise. Why? For a group of old friends they have known for eighteen, twenty years.
The Next Decade: Agile, AI, and Crossing Domains
Peter Lin, the eleventh-term chairman, made three points on the boat: change is the new normal, so keep moving; PMP needs to grow a pair of AI wings; and cross-domain integration matters, “the wool comes from the dog, and the pig pays.” Words like these sound ordinary in a slide deck. On a swaying boat, with the ground under your feet moving, who can pretend there is no need to change?
I added my own observation. PMI now takes members directly, so recruiting PMPs has become harder for us. There are two ways out. One is to combine with agile; more than half of today’s PMP exam is agile. The other is to combine with AI: teach people how to help companies adopt a successful AI project, not just use AI to automate an Excel sheet. That is ITPM’s differentiation.
Another twenty years? Too far away. Let’s get through the next ten first.
To PMPs Who Haven’t Joined Yet: Come Aboard
ITPM admits only PMPs. You can keep your certificate in the drawer, gain 60 more PDUs in three years, and still not gain a single person at your side.
PDUs are only the entrance, not the reason. The reason is that boat. Who will you walk your next twenty years with?
Next year’s national camp will be handed over to the Taichung Chapter. If you want a look first, visit pmp.itpm.org.tw, or email itpm-services@itpm.org.tw, pick a monthly meeting near you, and come sit with us.
ITPM, Happy 20th Birthday
There were two candles on the cake, and sixty-seven people squeezed into one boat, cutting cake and taking photos together.
In twenty years, a child grows into a college student. And an association? It grew into a boat, more crowded than any other, and warmer than any other.
ITPM, happy 20th birthday.
