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Breaking News in the Project Management World
Friday, August 22, 2008
Agile Project Management Emerges as Major Topic at 2nd UT Dallas Project Management Symposium in Texas
Agile project management was featured as a main stream topic at the 2nd UT Dallas Project Management Symposium in Richardson, Texas, USA during 18-19 August. The conference was held at the School of Management on the University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas) campus. Day one of the conference began with a welcome by James Joiner, Conference Chair and Director of the Graduate Program in Project Management, and Dr. Hasan Pirkul, Dean of School of Management, at The UT Dallas.
Following keynote speeches by Dr. David E. Daniel, president of UT Dallas, (see breaking news on 19 August) and Mr. George Consolver, Director of Strategy Process for Texas Instruments, attendees attended paper presentations in five streams: global PM, project governance, PM methods A & B, and Information Systems/Agile PM. The Agile PM track continued into Day two and featured presentations by leading experts on this increasingly popular new approach to managing projects in the software, systems and product development arenas.
David J. Anderson (pictured at right), President of Modus Cooperandi Inc. and Chief Process Scientist for Valtech, gave a talk on Monday entitled "Kanban - Creating a Kaizen Culture and Evolving a High Maturity Software Engineering Organization." David's talk focused on the use of Kanban, a popular "lean thinking" approach popular in manufacturing that is now seen as a significant innovation in managing agile work. This approach has been adopted at such firms as Yahoo! David Anderson introduced the first electronic kanban system at Microsoft in 2004 and has since extended the technique through is work at Corbis. David is also author of the successful book, "Agile Manufacturing for Software Engineering - Applying the Theory of Constraints for Business Results", which introduced ideas from Lean and Theory of Constraints to software engineering.
Tony Johnson, founder and CEO of Crosswind Project Management, presented a talk on Monday on the "Integration of Agile Development." According to Tony, "In our project environment today, projects get larger, more complex, and have more connections to other work throughout the organization. This creates a need for program management to handle more complex and inter-related work. As global competition and shorter time-to-market for products evolves, companies need to be agile to be at the front of the pack. Organizations need to blend these approaches together to effectively handle larger inter-related initiatives.”
Samir Ray and Dipesh Patel, experienced IT professionals who also consult on Agile PM, gave a presentation and led a discussion on Tuesday on the subject of "Managing Chaos in an Agile World" to a room full of over 50 attendees. The authors (in photo at right) provided an overview of some common characteristics and steps in an agile project, then discussed how agile projects inherently represent a more complex project management challenge than many traditional projects.
According to Ray and Patel, "Contrary to popular belief, this chaos is not bad. When managed using proper project management discipline, it can deliver tremendous value to your customers..."
Others who delivered presentations related to Agile PM on Tuesday, 19 August included Niel Nicholaisen ("Breaking the Project Management Triangle - The Purpose Alignment Model") and Greg Indelicato ("Project Management in the Adaptive Development Environment").
Tuesday's Agile PM track ended with a Panel discussion on the topic of "Traditional PM vs. Agile: Can they co-exist?" The panel moderator was Julie Chickering; panelists included Charley Seaman, Susan Fojtasek, Susan Hamilton and Will Whitfill of Motorola.
The 2 Day Project Management Symposium was held on the UT Dallas campus in Richardson, Texas during 18-19 August 2008. In addition to the Opening Ceremony with Keynote Speakers, day one included more 23 presentations over five tracks of topics, a networking lunch, and a Monday evening reception. Day two on Tuesday featured an opening keynote by Michael Kennedy, CEO of Targeted Convergence, 16 paper presentations, three panel discussions and closing keynote addresses by Ricardo Viana Vargas, Director-at-Large for the Project Management Institute (PMI), and Veikko Valila, President of the International Project Management Association (IPMA).
The symposium was sponsored by the Graduate Program in Project Management at The University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas), in cooperation with the Dallas Chapter of the Project Management Institute (PMI®) and PMForum, Inc. Papers and presentations featured at this year’s symposium will be available for download at http://pmsymposium.utdallas.edu, where additional information about the conference can be found. This annual event was intended to contribute to the productivity and success of organizations and industries in North Texas, and to local economic development. Individuals or organizations interested in participating in next year’s symposium should contact Debbie@utdallas.edu.
For more information about the Graduate Program in Project Management at UT Dallas, visit http://som.utdallas.edu/project/ . For information about the PMI Dallas Chapter, visit www.pmidallas.org. For information about PMForum, visit www.pmforum.org.
Following keynote speeches by Dr. David E. Daniel, president of UT Dallas, (see breaking news on 19 August) and Mr. George Consolver, Director of Strategy Process for Texas Instruments, attendees attended paper presentations in five streams: global PM, project governance, PM methods A & B, and Information Systems/Agile PM. The Agile PM track continued into Day two and featured presentations by leading experts on this increasingly popular new approach to managing projects in the software, systems and product development arenas.
According to Ray and Patel, "Contrary to popular belief, this chaos is not bad. When managed using proper project management discipline, it can deliver tremendous value to your customers..."
Others who delivered presentations related to Agile PM on Tuesday, 19 August included Niel Nicholaisen ("Breaking the Project Management Triangle - The Purpose Alignment Model") and Greg Indelicato ("Project Management in the Adaptive Development Environment").
Tuesday's Agile PM track ended with a Panel discussion on the topic of "Traditional PM vs. Agile: Can they co-exist?" The panel moderator was Julie Chickering; panelists included Charley Seaman, Susan Fojtasek, Susan Hamilton and Will Whitfill of Motorola.
The 2 Day Project Management Symposium was held on the UT Dallas campus in Richardson, Texas during 18-19 August 2008. In addition to the Opening Ceremony with Keynote Speakers, day one included more 23 presentations over five tracks of topics, a networking lunch, and a Monday evening reception. Day two on Tuesday featured an opening keynote by Michael Kennedy, CEO of Targeted Convergence, 16 paper presentations, three panel discussions and closing keynote addresses by Ricardo Viana Vargas, Director-at-Large for the Project Management Institute (PMI), and Veikko Valila, President of the International Project Management Association (IPMA).
The symposium was sponsored by the Graduate Program in Project Management at The University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas), in cooperation with the Dallas Chapter of the Project Management Institute (PMI®) and PMForum, Inc. Papers and presentations featured at this year’s symposium will be available for download at http://pmsymposium.utdallas.edu, where additional information about the conference can be found. This annual event was intended to contribute to the productivity and success of organizations and industries in North Texas, and to local economic development. Individuals or organizations interested in participating in next year’s symposium should contact Debbie@utdallas.edu.
For more information about the Graduate Program in Project Management at UT Dallas, visit http://som.utdallas.edu/project/ . For information about the PMI Dallas Chapter, visit www.pmidallas.org. For information about PMForum, visit www.pmforum.org.
