PMFORUM Breaking News

Reported by David Pells and Nelson Soucek in Plano, TX, USA

Three project management experts presented and signed copies of their project management books at the 1st UTD Project Management Symposium in Plano, Texas, USA on Monday, August 6.

Mark Kozak-Holland, well-known author of the project management books in the Lessons from History series, presented and signed copies of his popular book for IT project management entitled Titanic Lessons for IT Projects. He is also the author of Winston Churchill, the Agile Project Manager; Project Scapegoats, Lessons from the Titanic Project; and Churchill’s Adaptive Enterprise. His newest book, .Project Lessons from The Great Escape. (Stalag Luft III) explores the historical events surrounding the escape project using modern business analysis methods, extracting lessons learned that can be applied to modern business projects. A frequent contributor to PMForum and the online eJournal PM World Today (www.pmworldtoday.net), Mark Kozak-Holland is a Senior Business Architect with HP Services in Toronto. He regularly writes and speaks on the subject of emerging technologies and lessons that can be learned from historical projects. He can be contacted via his Web site at www.lessons-from-history.com.

Russell Martinelli, co-author of Program Management for Improved Business Results, was on hand to promote the new textbook and management reference published by John Wiley & Sons publishers in the USA. The book is co-authored by Mr. Martinelli, Dragan Milosevic and James Waddell. The book contains sections (collections of chapters) that establish the business context of programs and projects, discuss program management planning and execution processes, present program management metrics and tools, review roles and responsibilities of program managers, provide guidelines for organizing for program management, and contemporary examples from industry. Based in Portland, Oregon, Russ Martinelli is manager of program management methodologies at Intel Corporation and a recognized expert in the field of program management. He is also chairman of Intel’s Global Program Management Community of Practice, an adjunct professor at the University of Phoenix, and the co-founder of the Program Management Academy (www.programmanagementacademy.com).

Thomas F. Shubnell, PhD, presented and signed copies of his new project management book for IT executives entitled The Art of Installation and The Science of Implementation. The new book is a flexible and useful project management guide for both veteran and new project managers. The methodology provides specific steps with explanations and Quality Assurance questions for each phase. Dr. Shubnell presents a new approach for project leaders to accept change, embrace change, advocate change, instigate change, react to change, and even incite change in the project team and the organization. Thomas F. Shubnell Ph.D. is the author of fourteen books and numerous articles, is a frequent speaker at industry conferences, and has over thirty years of experience on IT projects. He has been a Programmer, Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), and has managed projects for PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP and Ernst & Young LLP. Tom is currently a Principal with The CCI Group, an information services firm that delivers senior level and strategic consulting solutions to healthcare providers, based in Plano, Texas. Dr. Shubnell holds a Ph.D. in Information Science, M.A. in Management, B.A. in Psychology, and A.A.S. in Information Systems. He has achieved Fellow status in the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and is the current President of the Dallas-Fort Worth HIMSS Chapter. His personal web site is http://www.Shubnell.com

These three authors gathered at the PMForum table during the lunch break to sign copies of their books, meet with conference attendees and pose for photos. Each of them also presented papers at the symposium, as follows:

• Kozak-Holland – “Titanic Lessons for IT Projects”


• Martinelli – “Program Management: a Framework for Collaboration”


• Shubnell – “Project Success: How to obtain it; how to maintain it!”

Copies of their presentations and papers will soon be posted and available at the UTD conference website at:
http://som.utdallas.edu/project/project-symp.htm and at: http://www.pmforum.org/library/presentations/index.htm.

The 1st UTD Project Management Symposium was at the Plano Convention Center, 2000 East Spring Creek Parkway, Plano, Texas, USA. The 1 day symposium, attended by approximately 200 people, featured speeches, professional presentations and discussions in the following tracks:

Track 1 – Program & Portfolio Management
Track 2 – Project Management: Critical Organization Success Factor
Track 3 – Software Development & Agile Project Management
Track 4 – PM for Product Development, including small projects
Track 5 – The Role of Project Management in Corporate Governance
Track 6 – Project Management in the Global Economy

The conference was sponsored by the Graduate Program in Project Management in the School of Management’s Executive Education Center at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), (http://som.utdallas.edu/project/); along with the PMI Dallas Chapter (http://www.pmidallas.org/index.phtml); and PMForum, Inc. (www.pmforum.org). A 2nd UTD Project Management Symposium has now been announced for August 4-5, 2008 and is expected to be twice as large as this first year’s event.