Keynote: The Project Management Ecosystem is Changing by the Day – Are you Ready?

What used to be normal and acceptable yesterday is not enough today. The landscape ahead of us used to be clear, but things seem to be a little foggy these days. Our career paths, the tools we use, the knowledge and experience we need and even the expectations of all of us as project managers – nothing is the same today and it won’t be like it is tomorrow.

How to Facilitate Productive Project Planning Meetings

Saturday Session: 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM – Richard Maltzman & Jim Stewart
Rigorous planning is vital to your organization’s ability to oversee project execution and success. But project planning often tends to be done piecemeal, or not at all, often leading to missing and/or incomplete information and correspondingly poor results. As a project or program manager, you can help drive effectiveness of your projects if your meetings are well-run, to-the-point, yield clear direction and are results-oriented.

Driving Results with Design Thinking

Saturday Session: 8:30 AM – 10:00 AM – Rob Frohman, Mélanie St. James
Design thinking is a powerful framework enabling innovation and organizational agility. In this high-octane introduction workshop, participants learn the underlying principles of Design Thinking, connecting problem analysis, problem reframing and ideation to a unique business canvas, leaving the workshop ready to partner with stakeholders to make their ideas a reality.

Agile Estimating & Planning Workshop

Software engineering management expert JR Winder walks you step-by-step through agile estimating techniques you can use to understand the size of your project and how long it will take. You and your team will quickly come up with accurate estimates and you’ll be able to forecast completion dates based on how fast the team is moving. You’ll learn how to deal with changes in scope and priority while always being able to tell management, “This is when we’ll be done.”

Agile is King! PM Hybrid Methodology

Friday Session: 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM – James McKim
The origins of Agile methodology are in software development. But the methodology has been brought to non-software development endeavors because of the promise of reducing structure and time while not sacrificing quality. Project Management is one of the most recent disciplines to pick up on the Agile “craze.