The Board in a Crisis Economy
By Barbara Ettorre
The world is in financial turmoil, and America is in the middle of a still-spreading economic contraction – some say it will be the worst since the Great Depression. The $700 billion financial rescue plan is now the law of the land, but we don’t yet know if it is enough or how long it will take to right ourselves; some are talking 2010 and beyond.
Snap judgments are already being made by politicians about where to assign blame. With the glaring exception of anyone associated with the Bush administration, do not expect anyone within the Beltway to accept any culpability for America’s debacle.
About the Author:
Barbara Ettorre
Author
Barbara Ettorre is a principal at The Dilenschneider Group, a strategic public relations firm in the USA, which she joined in 2003. Among her areas of expertise are corporate governance, boards and CEO management issues. Ms. Ettorre was executive editor of Board Alert, a high-level newsletter targeted to Fortune 1000 directors and chief executive officers. She provided content on seminal themes of corporate governance, Sarbanes-Oxley, executive compensation, CEO succession, regulatory scrutiny and ethics. She regularly interviewed and met with directors and current or former Fortune 500 CEOs. She also interacted with consultants, academicians, attorneys and other expert sources. Prior to Board Alert, Ms. Ettorre was a senior producer/director at Office.com, a business website for small and mid-sized companies. She provided senior-level expertise, story development and article ideas to a team of writers she supervised. Ms. Ettorre was editor of Management Review, the flagship magazine of the American Management Association (AMA) for executive and senior management readership. The publication offered articles on governance, business strategy, leadership, ethics and other key management topics. In addition to her work for Management Review, Ms. Ettorre was editor of President, a quarterly AMA newsletter directed to CEOs and presidents of large and small AMA-member companies. Ms. Ettorre has been an associate editor of Forbes, a senior writer at Personal Investor, and a business reporter for both the New York Times and the New York Daily News Tonight. As a business reporter for the New York Times, she covered a wide range of industries, including retailing, merchandising, the Seventh Avenue apparel industry, fabric and textile manufacturing, consumer products and cosmetics. Ms. Ettorre began her career in New York as a reporter for Women’s Wear Daily. She holds a masters degree from The Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and an undergraduate degree in English from Southern Connecticut State University.
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Project Management to the Rescue: No Bailout Necessary
By Michelle LaBrosse, PMP®
As I watched the last two months of news, filled with the campaigns bantering back and forth and the doomsday headlines about the financial crisis, I had to shake my head and wonder – why can’t our government and the financial giants on Wall Street and around the world use the principles of Project Management to be effective?
If you listen to the news long enough, you would think being effective is difficult or impossible. Nothing is further from the truth! With Project Management, anything is possible. As an entrepreneur who runs my own business, I balance a budget, develop new products, and serve my customers, and I have found that even when the economy isn’t doing well, there is always opportunity. To tackle those opportunities, you need tools in your toolbox; Project Management is an optimal tool for times like these.
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About the Author:
Michelle LaBrosse, PMP
Michelle LaBrosse, PMP, is the founder and Chief Cheetah of Cheetah Learning. An international expert on accelerated learning and Project Management, she has grown Cheetah Learning into the market leader for Project Management training and professional development. In 2006, The Project Management Institute, www.pmi.org, selected Michelle as one of the 25 Most Influential Women in Project Management in the World, and only one of two women selected from the training and education industry. With a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering, and an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, LaBrosse has done extensive postgraduate work with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Advanced Educational Studies and with the University of Washington Industrial Engineering Program in accelerating adult learning with respect to meeting core business objectives. Michelle is a graduate of the Harvard Business School’s Owner & President Management program for entrepreneurs, and is the author of Cheetah Project Management and Cheetah Negotiations.
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This Project Needs a Leader – Now!
By Jeff Oltmann
What Matters Most?
Technical competency is not the most important skill for a project manager. Neither is building a good schedule, nor monitoring issues and tracking down open action items. First and foremost, project managers must be effective leaders.
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About the Author:
 
Jeff Oltmann
Jeff Oltmann is principal consultant at Synergy Professional Services, LLC in Portland, Oregon (www.spspro.com). He is also on the graduate faculty of the Division of Management at Oregon Health and Science University. His specialties include strategy deployment, operational excellence, and project portfolio management. Jeff is a seasoned leader with over 20 years of experience managing successful technology programs. He ran the Program Management Office (PMO) and a $60M project portfolio for IBM’s xSeries development facility in Oregon. Jeff’s hands-on program management experience includes program budgets over $100M and worldwide cross-functional teams of over 100 members. Jeff welcomes your questions and ideas. You can contact him at jeff@spspro.com or read previous articles at www.spspro.com/resources.htm.
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How to Overcome Shiny Objects and Other Distractions
By Lonnie Pacelli
It’s Monday morning and Joe gets up at 6:00. He showers, eats breakfast and makes his way to the train station to catch the 7:20 into Chicago. During the 40-minute train ride, Joe takes out his planner and lists out all of the things that he wants to get done for the week. He writes down all of the people that he needs to call, meetings that he needs to schedule, and reports that he needs to write. By the time the train pulls into Union Station, he has his entire week planned out and is feeling very good about his plan. His 20-minute walk from the train station to his office is pleasant and energizing, and Joe arrives at his office ready to get going on his plan.
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About the Author:
Lonnie Pacelli
Author
Lonnie Pacelli is an internationally recognized project management and leadership author and consultant. Lonnie has over 20 year’s leadership expertise as an executive, project manager, developer, tester, analyst, trainer, consultant, and business owner. During his 11 years at Accenture he built leadership expertise consulting with many Fortune 500 companies including Motorola, Hughes Electronics, and Northrop-Grumman. During his nine years at Microsoft he continued building leadership expertise through development of some of Microsoft’s internal systems, led their Corporate Procurement group, managed their Corporate Planning group, and led company-wide initiatives on Continuous Fiscal Improvement and Training Process Optimization. He has successfully implemented projects ranging from complex IT systems to process re-engineering to business strategies. Read more about Lonnie, subscribe to his newsletter, see his books and articles,
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Looking in the Business Mirror –
What Kind of Team Member are You?
By Donald A. Pillittere
If your work experience is anything like mine, you’ve probably been to hundreds of business meetings. And at many of them, you’ve been amazed at the incompetence of the other participants in the room. Silently asking questions like: Did they really promote Philip to Vice President when he cannot make an intelligent decision to save his life? Teresa doesn’t understand the interconnections between the various functions and how they affect the end customer? Jim knows nothing about customer needs, how our products work, and the time involved in creating leading edge technology - only what it takes to save his own sorry behind.
Where do they find these people? I’ve often told myself that if I was making the decisions, my company would make more revenue and people would enjoy coming to work. Then before delusions of grandeur took over, I asked myself, “What kind of team member am I?”
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About the Author:
Donald A. Pillittere
Author
Donald Pillittere is currently Director of Product Engineering and Program Management with Transonic Systems Inc., a leading provider of biomedical flow measurement products for clinical and research applications, where he manages R&D activities for the development and deployment of a medical flow measurement product portfolio. He also manages the Phases and Gates process for adherence to health, safety and EMC regulations. Mr. Pillittere has consulted on a wide range of projects including the launch of a new CD-authoring product and the redesign of a factory site. As Worldwide Product Manager for the Eastman Kodak Company’s Professional Division until 2004, Mr. Pillittere managed the development and introduction of numerous award-winning products that exceeded sales projections and profitability goals. With Kodak, he also held positions in the Health Sciences Division and with Kodak Health Imaging Systems, Inc. Mr. Pillittere has taught graduate courses in Operations Management, Manufacturing Strategy & Tactics, Managing Manufacturing Resources, and Supply Chain Management as an Adjunct Professor in the College of Business at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) since 1999. He has a Bachelor of Science degree from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo in Electrical Engineering; and an MBA from RIT in the USA. He can be contacted at dpillit1@rochester.rr.com.
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Reaching the Peak of CMMI: How Fast Can You Climb?
By Henry Schneider
Witness the incredible speed at which an international giant achieved the pinnacle of CMMI ratings…then learn how your organization can follow in their footsteps!
While implementing the CMMI at Maturity Levels 2 and 3 usually contributes to some level of improved performance, successfully implementing Maturity Level 5 enables an organization to begin to truly optimize their performance. This distinction is even more noteworthy when an organization is able to successfully mature rapidly. A division of a large international systems integration company headquartered in Seoul, South Korea (LG CNS, LG Insurance Sector) reached this pinnacle in October 2005 having successfully reached Maturity Level 5 after achieving Maturity Level 3 just twelve months earlier. Though this speedy rise cannot be accomplished by every organization, there are certain attributes, practices, and lessons learned that can be applied to help manage change, improve processes, and rapidly transform performance.
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About the Author:
Henry Schneider
Author
Henry Schneider is the President and Senior Principal Consultant at Process and Product Quality Consulting, LLC (http://www.ppqc.net). He has over 30 years experience in software and systems development as a developer, systems engineer, project manager, trainer, consultant, and assessor/appraiser (ISO 9000/TickIT, SW-CMM®, and CMMI®). Henry is a SEI authorized CMMI High Maturity Lead Appraiser and Intro to CMMI Instructor, former Vice President for the Society for Software Quality, and on the editorial review board for ASQ’s journal, Software Quality Professional. He can be contacted at henry@ppqc.net.
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The Unique Value of a Matrix Projects Manager
By Michael Szwarc
A projects manager in a matrix organization has a very important function – to lead the project and to reach its objective while maintaining the overall resources(time, work, money, etc.). The success of the project manager in his position increases the value of the company. However, the projects manager has the potential to add significant valueto the matrix organizationin which he works. Sometimes this is a special and unique contribution compared to other managers. In this article I will present this potential and recommend a number of ways to strengthen it.
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About the Author:
Michael Szwarc
Author
Michael Szwarc is currently a project manager at GreenRoad Technologies which develops technology-based service solutions to driver safety. His former positions include leading several development groups and project management (with more than 10 years of experience). Michael has been involved in development and assimilation of different organizational processes in the areas of project management, HR management and training programs. Michael can be reached at michael.szwarc@gmail.com
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