Description:

The Forum’s mission is to provide a community for women interested in the Project Management profession, focused on mutual growth and sharing of knowledge through informal meetings, networking and mentoring. Through mutual sharing the group seeks to provide insights into Project Management issues common to multiple industries. This interaction enables participants to make significant positive changes to their work environment.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is delivering new insights − previously hidden in vast pools of data − to add intelligence to many products and services that ultimately transform the way organizations and machines interact. AI can improve productivity of internal applications, increase revenue, reduce costs, and improve products and services with added functionality or communication modes. With such a wide-ranging application, enterprises also are struggling to understand what this means to them, how to go about identifying the key areas of benefits and modus operandi of going about it technically and culturally. One key to success lies in deciding what problems to solve and identifying a narrowly defined problem that is widely acknowledged within the organization as a pain point. The project should be practical, with adequate funding and access to data. From here on identifying the right tools, talent and methodology can set you on the right path. Also, Data analytics initiatives usually lead to significant changes in the organization’s procedures and culture. Acknowledging and accommodating for this early is imperative. All this, though, does not have to be overwhelming and daunting for the execution leader. This can be broken down into simple to steps to approach, assess, align and achieve.

PM Insights Foster City - 

Managing Projects with Risk Up Front

We are all familiar with the artifacts of project management: goals, product backlogs, schedules, charts, risk lists, etc. As project managers, we are trained to use these tools on projects, with the understanding that they increase the likelihood that our projects will be successful. But many, perhaps most of us, have seen projects fail even as project management "best practices" were humming along. The schedule on the wall does not match the reality of what is being done, the chart tells management about what has happened, but not whether the project is in trouble, and the risk list sits in a drawer, only to be pulled out afterward to explain convincingly why the project failed.

What if, instead, we begin by actively engaging with the reasons our project might fail and then use that insight to determine what we need from a schedule and which activities should be moved to the project's front. This talk will explore the relationship between commitment and risk identification, the cost of being late, and the role of language in creating committed teams that deliver faster and more reliably.

PM Insights Foster City - 

Networking for Career Success:

Leveraging a Hi-Touch Approach in a Hi-Tech Valley

We all know networking is key for career advancement and for fast, effective job searches, but are you doing it as well as you could be? Come and find out how to bring your networking to a whole new level!