April 10, 2008
Financial Services LIG Meeting

Wayne E. Mays, PMP

This presentation will illustrate Diebold's Project Management (PM) capabilities, Deibold's Proces and then show real-world applications to a security upgrade project at a financial institution.

March 31, 2008
IT LIG Meeting

Andrew Lavinksy, PMP, MCITP, IPSR

The IT Infrastructure Library is a proven blueprint for creating an effective and efficient IT Service Management system, but how does that impact the daily life of the project manager? This presentation will look at the similarities between the ITIL processes and project management processes, and will show how ITIL provides an effective framework for Project Portfolio Management. The presenter will then discuss some of the benefits of managing projects in an ITIL environment.

December 13, 2007
Financial Services LIG Meeting

Kelley Anderson, Carnegie Mellon University

How do you convince people in a mostly independent, decentralized working environment that project management is more than just bureaucracy? How do you take on the role of steward of project management processes without making people cringe every time they see you? At Carnegie Mellon University's central information technology organization we have implemented a PMO with a coaching and mentoring approach that has earned the respect of some of the most resolute skeptics. By starting with division wide portfolio management, offering basic project management templates, and working with interested project leaders on a one-on-one basis we have managed to spark interest in project management tools and processes, creating additional demand for our services. In this presentation I will explain the process we used to implement a PMO, discuss our approach, and talk about our challenges.

June 14, 2007
Chapter Meeting

Bill Proctor, President of Epicenter

Conflict in the workplace is an inevitable part of doing business, but conflict doesn't have to be a bad thing. In fact, properly managed, conflict can help your company be more cohesive, innovative, and growth-oriented. The purpose of this presentation is to highlight some of the strategies and techniques that can be used to effectively manage conflict as well as provide:

• A review of the five (5) key sources of conflict.
• A toolbox of commonly used conflict management strategies.
• Personal, practical, out of the box tips for effectively managing conflict with others.
• Conflict prevention techniques for minimizing or deflecting conflict in the workplace.

May 10, 2007
Chapter Meeting

Mark J. Marsico, P.E., PMP

Most people in the business world have heard of Six Sigma, and some even know that it was first implemented at Motorola and General Electric. But too many people think of it as just the latest buzz word to be used in the same sentence with "continuous improvement", much like Quality Circles and TQM in 1980's. Come be enlightened, and learn the basics about the method used to eliminate the madness: Where it is used. Why it works. And, what it takes to become certified.

April 12, 2007
Chapter Meeting

Tom Mattus

This presentation dives into the role of the leader and finds out how their actions can not only fail an initiative but their interpersonal relationships as well. This basic inability to connect with and get along with other people and the lack of emotional intelligence means the difference between a successful leader and one that fails.

March 26, 2007
IT LIG Presentation

Joe Kuhn, P.E.

Joe Kuhn discusses using High Speed Dimensioning to implement an Automated Oversize Billing Process for a transportation company.

February 8, 2007
Financial Services LIG Presentation

Kelly Trombetta, PNC Financial

Kelly Trombetta describes how Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies (COBIT) applies to project managers.

January 22, 2007
IT LIG Presentation

Ray Huber, Eaton

Ray Huber discusses the history and current status of Project Management in Information Technology at the electrical distributor Eaton.

December 14, 2006
Chapter Meeting

Carole Nicholes, retired VP of HR for Education Management

Are you feeling stressed? Unable to sleep? Hearing complaints that you are irritable?

It is that time of the year filled with the hustle-bustle of meeting year-end business goals, trying to cram in business and personal entertaining as well as enjoying the "holiday spirit."

It's the time we take stock of personal and professional accomplishments and our ability to create and enjoy a balanced work/life style. How do you rate yourself?

Carole Nicholes joins us to discuss Stress Management. She'll explore ways we can create a more balanced approach to our lives by focusing on the positive and negative impacts of stress. Through discussion, you'll have the opportunity to analyze your stressors and begin developing your individual goal to manage your stress for holidays and beyond.

November 9, 2006
Chapter Meeting

Andy Crowe, Velociteach

The majority of professional project managers generally share a common set of misconceptions about the knowledge and tactics that make the Alpha project managers highly successful. The Alphas work approximately the same number of hours as everyone else, face the same challenges, and deal with the same difficulties; yet they manage their projects, teams, and stakeholders in a way that takes them far ahead of the pack.

Building on a landmark survey of over 800 project managers from around the world, author Andy Crowe identifies the traits that make the Alphas stand out in the minds of the teams, senior managers, customers, and stakeholders who ranked them at the top. Through in-depth interviews, Crowe draws out common knowledge, attitudes, and practices of the Alpha project managers that contribute to their success.

By interviewing not only the Alpha group, but also other sub-groups of project managers, Crowe uncovers and explains the underlying factors related to attitudes and beliefs, communication, project alignment, approach and organization, management of priorities, issue management, relationships and conflict, and leadership.

Crowe also delves into the myths and realities surrounding the world's top project managers, as well as the underlying traits that make the Alphas stand out among their peers. The book is filled with knowledge, skills, and techniques that all project managers can incorporate into their management style.

May 11, 2006
Chapter Meeting

Lee R. Lambert, A PMP Founder

This presentation will examine the power of the PM tools and techniques in providing "facts" to support the management decision making process. Attendees will learn how to prepare and present information to the decision makers that says YES, but when examined clearly really means NO. Bottom line: Provide the decision makers with comprehensive cause-and-effect information that will indicate YES is NOT always the best answer.

May 11, 2006
Healthcare SIG

Pat Vaia, PMP

Most customers are focused on their strategic and daily decision-making efforts. A need for any process change is the furthest thing from their mind. When was the last time a customer told you "We've always done it this way, what do you mean we have to change?" The discussion will include a basic outline to assist project managers and their staff in guiding a customer through process change identification and establishing operational, business process, activity and deliverable goals for the identified process changes.

April 13, 2006
Chapter Meeting

Everett Rodriguez

Effective communications on project teams is essential for project succes, and inter-personal communication is influenced by numerous actors. In this presentation, one factor of communications, a person's culture, will be examined. This presentation will look at the various dimensions of culture and how these dimensions can affect communications, team relationships, and overall project performance.

February 9, 2006
Chapter Meeting

Robert Ferguson, PMP

Many people have experience with failed measurement programs. The SEI has an approach that we have demonstrated in a number of situations with very good results. The talk will describe the basics of goal-driven measurement and why this approach is often needed.

January 12, 2006
Chapter Meeting

Michael H. Celender, M.S.

This program deals with leading and managing people who do not work in the same location as you. It will cover the following objectives:

• Understand why remote leadership will only become more important into the future
• How to realize the advantages of multiple locations and remote work
• How to overcome the negative effects of distance
• How and what work practices need to change

November 10, 2005
Chapter Meeting

Audry Murrell, Ph.D.

We often think that the success or failure of an idea rests in the content of the idea alone. However, getting people to accept and support a good idea is also about relationships. This talk focuses on the importance of "issue selling" for the acceptance and adoption of innvoative solutions to organizational projects and problems. The importance of relationships, agenda building and collaboration are key factors that can enhance any project managers success in getting his/her team to adopt innovative and creative solutions.

January 13, 2005
Chapter Meeting

Brien Palmer and Warwick Powell

The session will discuss a practical model for engaging support for change and a range of directly applicable tools, and reference some real-world case studies

November 22, 2004
IT Sig

Derek Vent, PMP

A framework for creating a segmented structure to control your project.

November 11, 2004
Chapter Meeting

Paul Russell

This educational presentation is designed to help attendees understand the reasons why projects fail in today's competitive marketplace. Studies have found that many projects never start out on the right foot or come to a screeching halt due to budgetary constraints, unclear objectives and technical issues, all items that can be avoided if properly planned from the start.

October 14, 2004
Chapter Meeting

Carl Pritchard

Every meeting, every facilitation is an opportunity to make the project look better or worse. It's an open door to enhance or damage one's career. And the differences between average and stellar presentations can be small.

September 9, 2004
Chapter Meeting

Kathleen (Kitty) Haas, PMP

Many organizations engaged in information technology (IT) projects are striving to improve project delivery by using more rigorous risk and quality management techniques. Toward that end, IT management teams sponsor formal Project Quality and Risk Assessments for vital IT projects.

September 9, 2004
IT-SIG Meeting

Fred Arnold

The use of IT outsourcing as an accepted approach to projects delivery places greater responsibility upon Owners to assure that their approach to goverence is prudent.

May 24, 2004
PMO Roundtable

Fred Arnold

OPM3 stresses thorough understanding and Knowledge of Organizational PM & OPM3 by users.

May 13, 2004
Chapter Meeting

Steven C. Rollins, PMP

If you are a project manager in today's business world, chances are you are being asked to perform a multitude of tasks, and/or projects simultaneously. What can you do about this while enjoying your work and adding value to the business your serve?

April 08, 2004
Chapter Meeting

Rudolf Melik

This presentation focuses on the IT infrastructure requirements and business processes that need be automated and centrally tracked in order to ensure project scope is well managed. The proposed scope management workflows are based on CMMI and PMBOK's discussions on this topic.

February 12, 2004
IT-SIG Meeting

Harry Stefanou

The presentation will focus on the vision for the future and a current status of PMI’s research program. The importance of research to the practitioner and the profession will be discussed .

January 08, 2004
IT-SIG Meeting

Timothy D. Bidlack, PMP

Applications and Infrastructure must be designed for reliability. The Reliability Program will be discussed to illustrate how to assess the gap between an application's stated requirements for stability and operational availability and it's ability to meet those requirements based on the design and implementation.

January 08, 2004
Chapter Meeting

Alan Koch

The Agile Methods have generated a lot of interest in the software development industry. Anyone who is committed to employing disciplined project management methods

December 11, 2003
Chapter Meeting

Dr. Justin Kelley
PMI Standards Project Specialist

U.S. job satisfaction has hit a record low with less than half of all Americans satisfied with their jobs.

October 07, 2003
IT-SIG Meeting

Lisa Marie Kruszewksi
PMI Standards Project Specialist

What will OPM3 do for your organization? It can:

• Help your organization understand its organizational project management maturity.
• Identify ways to translate strategies into successful, consistent, and predictable project outcomes.
• OPM3 will help you do the right projects the right way!

October 09, 2003
Chapter Meeting

Amy Wong
Managing Director of The MetricMaps Group

Creating the Balanced Scorecard is only the foundation of developing and executing a strategy. The Management Reporting provides the plumbing of the strategy; it enables and regulates the flow of information to determine how the execution and implementation are going. By tying these key points in with Project Management, managers can correlate their day-to-day decisions with the overall goals of the strategy.

September 11, 2003
Chapter Meeting

Jack Shanks
Management Solutions

The presentation will center on “how” to manage a vendor once a contract has been executed. The presentation will address: Problems associated with managing a vendor; Solutions to be implemented; the two key roles and responsibilities connected with the management process; Keys to roles and responsibilities; A step-by-step process for the contract management cycle.

February 13, 2003
Chapter Meeting

Rex Gatto, Ph.D.
Gatto Training Associates (GTA)

This presentation will delve into two very important dimensions for project managers; communications and problem solving. In the area of communication the speaker will address: How to effectively communicate; Four styles of communication; How to effectively listen. In the area of problem solving the speaker will explore: Ten secrets to problem solving; How to hold productive meetings.

January 09, 2003
Chapter Meeting

Chuck Lanigan
PNC Bank

This presentation looks at web-based and other collaborative tools and technologies that you and your organization can use to help manage projects, tasks, and information. The presentation provides an overview of peer-to-peer products from companies such as Groove Networks, Zaplet, and NextPage, as well as workflow and KM (knowledge management) applications from companies including Lotus and Atomica.

December 12, 2002
Chapter Meeting

Vicky Haney, PMP
VBH Project Consulting, Inc.

It doesn't matter if your development project is an application for the marketing department, an e-commerce site or a major ERP implementation, finding out what the customer really needs is essential. Corporate software is designed to serve and support business needs, but how well it accomplishes that leaves much to be desired. As a whole, the industry falls short of its own ambitions with high defect rates and immature development processes. The top four success factors for an IT project are: Customer Involvement, Executive management support, Clear statement of requirements and proper planning. About 50% of all software development problems are related to insufficient or inaccurate requirements.

November 14, 2002
Chapter Meeting

Ravi Madhavan
Katz Graduate School of Business

Post-merger integration is among the most complex of management challenges. For example, in the proposed HP-Compaq merger that has been in the news recently, nearly a million person-hours have been devoted to the planning of the post-merger integration activities-imagine how many million person-hours the execution will need!

September 12, 2002
Chapter Meeting

Mark Paulk, Software Engineering Institute

This program provides an overview of the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model for Software (CMM) and ISO 9001, followed by a comparison of the two. The CMM describes the principles and practices underlying software process maturity and is intended to help software organizations improve the maturity of their software processes in terms of an evolutionary path from ad hoc, chaotic processes to mature, disciplined software processes. The ISO 9000 series of standards deal with quality systems that can be used for external quality assurance purposes. ISO 9001 is for use when conformance to specified requirements is to be assured by the supplier during several stages, which may include design, development, production, installation, and servicing. ISO 9000-3 provides guidelines for the application of ISO 9001 to the development, supply, and maintenance of software. The CMM and ISO 9001 are driven by similar concerns with quality and process management and intuitively are correlated. he questions are frequently asked, "What level in the CMM would an ISO 9000 compliant organization be at? Can a Level 2 (or 3) organization be considered compliant with ISO 9000? Should I base my software process improvement program on ISO 9001 or the CMM?" This program compares the CMM and the pertinent ISO 9000 documents: ISO 9001 and 9000-3.

April 11, 2002
Chapter Meeting

Carl Pritchard

PMI changed the perspectives on Risk Management radically with the Guide to the PMBOK 2000 edition. Adding new areas and amending the old, PMI changed the way project managers look at risk and how they're expected to communicate it to management. Carl Pritchard (author of "Risk Management: Concepts & Guidance - 2nd Edition") comes to Pittsburgh to enlighten on how we can take advantage of PMI's changes and how the new practices for effective risk management afford new opportunities to engage organizations in a healthy discussion on risk.

March 14, 2002
Chapter Meeting

James Rozum, Senior Program Manager at Marconi Communications

This presentation is intended to help initiate ideas of how to measure software quality attributes that can quickly aid project managers in their decision making processes and help deliver a project on time, on budget, and with an commensurate level of quality. Using his nearly 20 years of experience in the field, the presenter will demonstrate how he was been successful in measuring software quality with examples from projects from his past.

January 10, 2002
Chapter Meeting

Bartholomew O. Nnaji, Ph.D.
Alcoa Foundation Professor in the School of Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh

This presentation is intended to help initiate ideas of how to measure software quality attributes that can quickly aid project managers in their decision making processes and help deliver a project on time, on budget, and with an commensurate level of quality. Using his nearly 20 years of experience in the field, the presenter will demonstrate how he was been successful in measuring software quality with examples from projects from his past.

January 10, 2002
IT SIG Presentation

Jerry Longstreth
Project Management Team Member, Facilities and Asset Management Team
SAP Project
Bayer Corporation

October 11, 2001
Chapter Meeting

Karen Tate, PMP

President of Martin Tate

September 13, 2001
Chapter Meeting

Dan Faux, PMP
Sam Provil, PMP
Edward Rosenstein, PMP
Patrick Walsh, PMP
Larry Mack, PMP
Terrence L. McArdle, PMP

The PMI Pittsburgh Chapter has sponsored and supported a unique venue for the sharing, learning, and benchmarking of Program/Project Management Office initiatives of well known companies from the Pittsburgh region. Participants have included PMO management and staff from companies like Mellon, Marconi Communications, FedEx Ground, PNC, UPMC, eJiva, Inc., PCI, Pittsburgh Project Management Center, EDS, Symphoni, and others. The group has been selected to present insights related to their implementation of this "roundtable" concept and its benefits to PMI members and other participants. September's Pittsburgh Chapter presentation will be a summary of the paper to be given at PMI's annual symposium in November.

September 13, 2001
IT SIG Meeting

Mahesh Guru

June 14, 2001
Chapter Meeting

Edward Mechler

The presentation focuses on familiarizing project managers with PMI Standards, the Organizational Project Management Maturity Model Standard (OPM3), and quantifying qualitative models. PMI Standards are setting the stage for the future of Project Management implying that project managers, in their busy schedules, should keep abreast of developing standards. One particular PMI Standard, OPM3, has the potential to be even more encompassing than PMBOK. The presentation reviews the Standards of PMI and the potential and development of OPM3. In the conception of OPM3 it was decided to enhance the Social(Qualitative) Model with an Engineering (Quantitative) Model. The presentation reviews the quantification process to date, while describing the basic concepts for quantifying models.

May 10, 2001
Chapter Meeting

Frederick A. Arnold

There are PMOs, and then there are PMOs. Over the past 20 years there have been very successful project management organizations applied to large and small projects in numerous industries. A key factor that must be addressed in the establishment and implementation of a PMO is the determination of the basic mission of the organization as well as the overall business environment in which the organization must operate. The presentation will address certain factors that are common within successful project management organizations - including Project Management Offices and Program Management Organizations, and lessons-learned from different approaches.

April 12, 2001
Chapter Meeting

Rodger Blair

This presentation will focus on the cost and ROI attributes of SEI/CMM-based software process improvement (SPI). In particular, the presentation will develop experiential estimates for expected ROI and SPI costs for taking an IT organization from the Software Engineering Institute's (SEI) Capability Maturity Model (CMM) Maturity Level 1 to Maturity Level 3, based on research of documented cases in the software process management literature. Moreover, the presentation will close by specifying a high-level model for how an IT organization goes about approaching the task of improving its software development process and the corporate executive pre-requirements for doing so, based on the SEI CMM.

February 8, 2001
Chapter Meeting

Marilyn McCauley
McManagement Group

Have you ever wondered how to incorporate earned value management concepts into your projects? Our speaker will address this topic as well as:

• Twelve Reasons Why Programs Fail
• Program Management Principles
• Earned Value Managements' Role in Project Management
• What is Earned Value Management
• The Value of Earned Value Management