PM Insight Sunnyvale

If you want to develop and maintain high-performing teams in a world where remote working is becoming the norm, you need to make a concentrated effort to keep every team member – including yourself -- feeling happy, healthy, and connected. Start by providing ample opportunity to socialize, use the right collaboration tools, set up team agreements, celebrate wins, reduce microstresses, and ensure the structures are in place to continue building relationships. LitheSpeed’s Lisa Mabli will help you identify opportunities to improve connectivity, morale, and productivity in remote teams. 

Humans have a tendency to focus on whatever is being measured and modern leaders have numerous models to choose from when configuring their teams’ performance management expectations.  So why do many teams still report misunderstandings around goals and metrics?  How is it that some teams can achieve their metrics but still feel unsuccessful?  When leaders jump too quickly into detailed planning, even goal planning, their vision of “why” remains fuzzy and misalignments between metrics and true success become almost inevitable.  After all, OKRs, KPIs, and similar systems are tools that are only as strong as their users.  

This talk imbues attendees with a personal understanding of the importance of beginning with “Why” (and then Why, Why, Why, Why!).  Driven by the most common reasons teams fail, the talk shows how clear connections from the original vision to effective metrics, referencing OKRs, KPIs, and other popular approaches can protect against those failure points.  Get ready for a return to basics that will prepare your team for a turboboost towards true success!

One of the fastest ways to build business value is to accelerate cycles of learning through rapid product launches and customer engagement.But using Agile methods for tangible products is not simple or straightforward.  Despite the gains in Agile software methodologies, those delivering tangible products, for example mobile telephone handsets & medical devices, are still living in a waterfall world.  Can you imagine the chaos agility could impose on manufacturing, if not managed?

There are certainly different challenges between software and tangible products, but there is also a lot to learn (and apply) from the success of companies that have implemented Agile techniques in their development process.Key to doing this is managing dependencies between a platform and subordinate projects, between related projects, and even fixed corporate calendar events.

You can learn more at the Atlassian’s blog post written on the topic:“How to take an agile mindset to rigid waterfall projects”.

Projects take too long. And if you are not doing software development, Agile methodologies may be hard to adapt. Or, you are doing software development and must use Waterfall. How can you be Agile?

CBPM is a methodology developed at Intel Corporation to manage their semiconductor projects. Since then, it has been applied in multiple domains, from Waterfall software development to construction, medical devices, defense projects, IT infrastructure, and many others. It is a domain-agnostic Agile process, which allows the project manager to be Agile in any effort. In an Agile fashion, teams plan and monitor projects, ensuring that there are no surprises while being able to quickly adapt to changes. A very Agile approach.

Project managers rely, as do all leaders, on people who do not report directly to them to achieve the project objectives. They are well positioned to develop competencies for leadership roles in many settings: corporations, government, non-profit and volunteer organizations. In complex, multi-phasic teams that develop new therapeutic agents, the project manager often functions as both the COO of the project, working directly with the accountable technical or business leader, and as the problem solver who may fill in unexpected staffing needs.  The “soft power” of this position presents an opportunity to impact the organization’s goals in unique ways beyond the conventional areas of scope, time, cost, quality and risk.

This session will focus on identifying and developing collaborative skills that will enable the participants to better diagnose their organizational environment and navigate to appropriate outcomes in both corporate and non-corporate settings. These skills are critical to creating engaged teams, avoiding burnout and delivering results that build a sustainable future for real people.