PM Insights Foster City - 

Igniting Behavior Change Thru Technology

in the New Normal

The events of the past year have created a change in the competencies and behaviors necessary for professionals to succeed and is the starting point for a wider paradigm shift on how we train employees. More than 120 million workers in the world’s 12 largest economies need to be upskilled in the next 3 years. Micro-competencies like authenticity, vulnerability, inclusivity and agility will become even more important than functional experience or fancy academic degrees. Those competencies require learning delivery that involves more than rote memorization and digital quizzes.  In addition, technology exists now to address individual learning styles. In other words, technology can adjust to people rather than the other way around. We invite you to imagine, what if you could learn how to switch off unwanted behaviors or habits and become your ideal self with minimal effort? Although habit change has been nearly impossible historically, today, new developments in AI and technology are making it possible for learning to adapt individuals’ behaviors, making learning both fun and creative.  We invite you to join us and explore how ‘real time’ learning through technology support and just in time messaging is replacing traditional classroom training.

PM Insights Foster City - 

Overcoming Executive Inaction – Using the
Cost of Decision Latency to Reverse Analysis
Paralysis

According to the highly respected CHAOS Report, released every two years by the Standish Group, delays between questions and answers drive huge, negative impacts into project outcomes. It is counter-intuitive but the value of a shorter decision-making time-interval is greater than the value of a higher-quality decision. In Lean, and therefore Agile, this is recognized by the pairing of two concepts – Deferred Commitments and Last Responsible Moment.

Every PM knows methods and tools alone – even great ones like Lean, Project Management and Agile – cannot reduce those costs unless senior decision-makers make timely decisions and take action.

During this reality-based, technically-sophisticated webinar you will learn how to quantify the cost of decision-making delays and gain insights to demonstrate the pragmatic steps your leaders must take to avoid what management guru Peter Drucker summarized as, “Culture eats Vision for Lunch!”

PM Insights Foster City - 

Easy Estimation

“How long will that take?” A simple question, yet one of the hardest to answer. Traditional estimation fails because it takes the wrong approach to solve the wrong problem. We will uncover how and why relative estimation leads to better predictability. You will learn and practice the Easy Estimation With Story Points technique. This provides better predictability while spending less time estimating.

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!

PM Insights Foster City - 

Appreciative Inquiry Management

Appreciative Inquiry focuses on the strengths of the people under management and forms processes around those strengths. This is the opposite of the conventional practices which look for deficits and seek to strengthen the skill of individuals to fulfill the deficits. The deficit focus drives negative comments which drives lower morale and turnover. A positive focus drives process changes around the good skills sets which the people possess.

Appreciative Inquiry Management, though simple in theory, is difficult to manage as it requires a shift in mindset often unattainable without coaching and feedback. It requires a strong willingness to change processes based upon the skill of the individuals within the organization. Without an agreement to provide feedback with the assumption of good intent, it is impossible to implement.

PM Insights Foster City - 

Agile and DevOps – Better Together

Among the two critical trends in software development, the key ones are
adoption of a product-centric approach and second is combining Agile and DevOps to accelerate time to capability, improve product quality and thereby user experience.

In this session, my focus will be to share my experience on how we bring
agile and DevOps together to deliver the same values for our customers.

PM Insights Foster City - 

Battling Distractions During Crisis:

What’s
Your Focus?

Crisis is a distraction for everyone. It pulls us away from our life focus and towards something else. We must discipline ourselves to stay focused in times of crisis so we can stay focused in times of crisis. Are you implementing strategic plans that give you direction for today and increase your potential for tomorrow?

Anupama will share some insights into what one needs to put behind and what needs to be put before us, based on her own experience during this critical time. It’s critical that you include your team as part of your strategic thinking. Before you can implement your plan, you must make sure that you have the right people in place. If you practice strategic thinking, others will listen to you and they will want to follow you.

PM Insights Foster City - 

An Introduction to Web3

A catchy VC term or the next generation of the internet? Through this discussion we will take a look at Web3, the technology behind it, and its future use cases (and no, it's not just jpegs).

PM Insights Foster City - 

Carrots, Sticks, and Magic

Catalyst, visionary, lubricant - these are the hats we wear as PMs. They are also how we define great leaders. Software teams, executives, marketing, and sales teams all look to the PM as the core instigator of change, driver of productivity, and persuader for possibility. Your customers rely on you to bring amazing products to market that solve hard problems and entertain like magic.

Good Project Managers recognize all the knobs and levers they control and can see to leverage the controls to drive the success of their products - but it takes learning and mastering a diverse set of skills (including self awareness). These skills aren’t standard in any curriculum. Leadership requires that we take ownership of outcomes, motivate teams, remove or lubricate frictions, and understand the psychology of all our stakeholders.

That sounds like a lot of responsibility - how do we succeed? Join us for the answers.