PMFORUM Breaking News

Reported by A. Matt Piazza in Seattle, Washington, USA

Day 2 of the Microsoft Office Project Conference 2007 included a lively keynote address by Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO. His timely message rang true to today’s demanding marketplace: Project Management and People Ready Business. He articulated Microsoft’s broader vision for the future of Project and Portfolio Management, and how current investments in Project 2007 can help individuals and enterprises prepare for the next wave of innovation and business productivity.

This vision included a world of work changing due to increasing competition as well as global, financial and economic risks, and enterprises in the future that need to manage their project portfolios very efficiently. Successfully organizations will evolve from pure project management thinking to ‘work management’ based scenarios that span organizational boundaries and maturity levels, enabling project managers and information workers to manage vast amounts of data, information, and work in meaningful ways.

These organizations will also enable data entry for various management systems to be entered in the worker’s ‘home’ environment. For example, we saw how a developer working in Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) everyday continued in this ‘home’ environment to also enter time worked without switching to another application. The work environment, not the worker, moved the data from one application to the timesheet application!

Steven A. Ballmer is Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft Corporation, the world's leading manufacturer of software for personal and business computing. Ballmer joined Microsoft in 1980 and was the first business manager hired by Bill Gates. During the past 20 years, Ballmer has headed several Microsoft divisions, including operations, operating systems development, and sales and support. In July 1998, he was promoted to President, a role that gave him day-to-day responsibility for running Microsoft. He was named CEO in January 2000. Together with Bill Gates and the company’s other business and technical leaders, Ballmer is focused on continuing Microsoft’s innovation and leadership across the company’s seven businesses. Microsoft’s goal is to provide an integrated platform to enable a seamless experience across a wide range of computing and non-PC devices and services.

The Seattle event is one of two Microsoft Office Project Conferences scheduled for 2007; the second will be held in Madrid, Spain in early December. According to Microsoft, these conferences aim to enable individuals and organizations to develop a better understanding of the end-to end capabilities of the Microsoft 2007 family of products and to help further advance their Project Management Potential. For more information or to register, visit http://www.msprojectconference.com.

A. Matt Piazza International Correspondent USA based in Texas A Matt Piazza, PMP, is an international correspondent for PMForum based in the Dallas Ft. Worth metropolitan area of north Texas, USA. He is also principal consultant for Delta Solutions, a project management consultancy specializing in project management office (PMO) and enterprise project management (EPM) services. Matt has over 20 years experience in professional project management. He has a B.S. in Industrial Distribution from Texas A&M University and an MBA from Southern Methodist University in the USA. He has been employed in various PM leadership and support positions by ADP, EDS, Rapp Collins, Raytheon, TI and several other major US technology firms. He is a former president of the PMI Dallas Chapter and the DFW chapter of the Microsoft Project Association. He has a PMP® certification from PMI®, and is a Microsoft Project Enterprise Black Belt expert and instructor. More information about Matt Piazza can be found at http://www.pmforum.org/pm%20forum%20team/index.htm#Piazza Matt can be contacted at piazzam@deltasol.net.