A Good SOW: The Key to Starting a Consulting Project Off on the Right Track
Mark Reinsager

SOWs serve as project blueprints, providing key information required for executives to approve the Professional Services contract while at the same time protecting the consulting firm in terms of scope and payment.

This session will cover specific items consultants should include in your SOW, including best practices on how to cover “fixed bid” and “time and material” requirements in your SOW.

Defining Business Requirements
Chuck Tryon

One of the first challenges for many newly launched projects is to capture a set of business requirements to feed into a product design processes. This is especially true for reengineering, software development, outsourcing or package selection initiatives.

Unfortunately, this activity is often so poorly understood that it becomes a nebulous search for undefined matter. Before we can understand the business requirements on a project, it is vital that we first create a common understanding of what ARE business requirements.

This presentation provides a requirements framework that distinguishes between essential policies and rules, the apex of business requirements, and solution characteristics that describefive various elements of an intended solution. Each type of business requirement is defined and their relationship in a requirements management process is explained.

Based on over two decades of research by Tryon and Associates, this presentation concludes with specific factors that will help both a project and the total organization be more successful “understanding business requirements.”

Management by Project (MBP): A Bridge Between Agile and Classic PM
Garry Booker

Our version of MBP is a two-step process that is simple yet surprisingly sophisticated:
Step 1: translate goals and objectives into a set of "intended outcomes."
Step 2: translate intended outcomes into a set of "discrete actions" that are owned by front-line decision makers.
We will demonstrate MBP for Agile projects, traditional projects, and small groups. We will also introduce a "radically simple" version of a classic project management skill, called Earned Value Management (EVM). Classic EVM is associated with very large traditional projects, but radically simple EVM can be applied easily, for example, to each iteration of an Agile project. Whereas classic EVM deals with "corrective action" to achieve cost/schedule performance, radically simple EVM deals with something more basic: getting work done through improved project focus.

Project Management: Breaking the Code
Diane Hayes

Project management has been around forever... just look at the Pyramids, the Statue of Liberty, the Olympics. The project management evolution continues with PMI, PMBOK, PMP, PMO, PMIT... and that's not all! Join us as we crack the codes on project management basics, program offices, professional certifications, educational opportunities, local chapter activities, and more.

Introducing Agile Into Project Management
Tina Mangham

Many trends have come and gone in the software development industry, each of which have provided unique perspectives and tools to help aid in managing an IT project. What if you could pick and choose what you needed to help bring your client business value as soon as possible? Agile can help you do that. Agile is more than a new method, it's a mind set. By definition, being "agile" is to "move quickly and lightly" and to "be able to handle change readily". There many different "flavors" of Agile in use today (i.e. XP, Scrum, etc.). This presentation will cover a brief history of the emergence of Agile in the software industry and will briefly introduce you into some of the methods that can be utilized to manage your software project.

Risk Management
Jim Bolley

Risk Management is a forward focused discipline. Reacting to problems that have already occurred is not effective Risk Management.

Jim Bolley’s course presents effective tools for risk planning, evaluation and mitigation. Understanding risk probability and impact prepares Project Mangers for situations before they occur. Knowing there are “good” risks as well as “bad” risks, can help you manage the factors that make good things happen with projects.