Vic’s presentation focuses on the lighter side of project management, offering practical advice in a context that allows you to sit back and have some fun at the end of the day.

An IT project manager for 12 years, Vic offers a “real life” view of project management. A reminder that it really is possible—and OK—to have some fun at work and to celebrate our success!

Audience Takeaway: It’s ok to have fun at work and celebrate success.

Vic Alejandro is an internationally acclaimed humorist with 12 years of experience in stand-up comedy, writing, and acting. In addition, he has the unique distinction of being an IT project manager for 12 years.

Vic has appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, in feature films such as Raiders of the Damned with Richard Greico, and commercials for McDonalds, Comcast, & DISH Network. He is also featured in the book The Complete Idiots Guide to Jokes.

As a stand-up, he has shared the stage with the likes of Kevin Nealon, Louie Anderson, Daniel Tosh, Kathleen Madigan, and more.

He has been the closing presenter in symposiums for Mensa, Encana Oil & Gas, Roper Apparel, Great West Life & Annuity, The American Cancer Society, and more.

You’ll be sure to enjoy his unique blend of humor incorporated into real life project management situations. Don’t miss this chance to see someone say all those things you WANT to say about your superiors.

Most schedules are built bottom up from identified work effort. This approach lays the seeds for measuring performance as the passage of time and consumption of resources. The “perfect” schedule identifies the deliverables and their increasing maturity as a function of time and cost. But also, they are identified as a function of their increased technical performance against the needed capabilities and the requirements that implement those capabilities. This talk shows the step-by-step processes to build a schedule guided by this paradigm.

Audience Takeaway: Stop measuring progress by the passage of time and consumption of resource; start measuring progress by actual deliverables using the “perfect schedule.”

Glen B. Alleman leads a Program Planning and Controls practice in the aerospace, defense, and Federal contracting domain. In this position, Glen’s brings his 30 years experience in program management, systems engineering, software development, and general management to bear on the problems of performance based program management. Glen’s experience ranges from real time process control in a variety of technical domains to product development management and Program Management in a variety of firms including Logicon, TRW, CH2M Hill, SM&A, and several consulting firms before joining Lewis & Fowler. His teaching experience includes university level courses in mathematics, physics, and computer science.

Glen is the developer of the Deliverables Based Planning® method applied to its Aerospace, Defense, and Enterprise IT engagements. This method starts with proposal activities through program execution focusing on IMP/IMS, programmatic risk, Technical Performance Measures, CAM and PP&C mentoring and training, process improvement, DCMA Validation, and increasing the probability of success for mission critical programs.

Glen is a frequent speaker at PMI-CPM, PMI-COS, NDIA, and PMI General Conferences.

This session, facilitated by a RMP®-certified instructor, takes students through the process of planning, identifying, analyzing, handling, documenting, and communicating risks using qualitative methods in a real world project environment. The session combines real world experience with industry best practices to provide a unique and practical look at risk management.

Audience Takeaway: The audience will understand the risk management process from start to finish as applied to current projects in any industry and be exposed to concepts, tools, and considerations that will help them achieve successful risk management program implementation.

Robert Cone’s career spans more than 20 years in the aerospace industry, performing risk management, project management, project controls and business development. As Vice President and General Manager of Western Operations, Mr. Cone leads Space & Defense personnel in Colorado, New Mexico and California since 2005, consistently achieving strong business growth, organizational diversity, and awards and accolades.

With a career start in Aerospace Trade Development, Mr. Cone traveled extensively, supporting trade promotion efforts at the Paris Air Show, Farnborough Air Show, Asian Aerospace and others. For NASA, Mr. Cone has worked on the GOES-R, HRVDM, MTO, JIMO, ISS, and X-33 programs. Mr. Cone was a principal architect NASA’s Commercialization Programs in the mid 90’s. Mr. Cone also has extensive experience with NASA Human Space Flight programs, Missile Defense, and Air Force programs. He established and led Risk Management at the Missile Defense Integration and Operations Center (MDIOC) at Schriever AFB, an award-winning effort, including Northrop Grumman awards for “Supplier of Excellence” and “World Class Team Supplier,” as well as the 2007 Colorado Peak Excellence Award.

Mr. Cone has an undergraduate degree in International Business and an MBA focused on Management of Science, Technology and Innovation. He participated in NASA’s Graduate Study and Professional Development Programs. He has been editor and publisher of NASA publications, policy documents, Congressional testimony, technical reports, and public education documents. He has held policy, analysis, legislative affairs, intellectual property, technology transfer, proposal, software and IT positions in government and industry.

The truth is that most people don’t like being forced to change or being outside of their comfort zone. Some automatically resist change, even when it’s in their best interest. Many worthy and necessary projects struggle when resistance shows up. Imagine being empowered to permanently change individuals, teams and organizations to be more resourceful, cooperative, and innovative? What if you could not only help people who want to change yet struggle to acquire new habits, but also unblock those who unconsciously get in their own way (as well as the way of your project)?

You not only would unlock hidden productivity in individuals, teams, projects and your entire organization, giving your company an amazing ROI opportunity and competitive edge, but also improve morale, save careers, and sometimes change lives. Few initiatives in business are truly win-win-win. I invite you to join your senior colleagues to participate and learn more about the brain science and innovations that have led to a 90% success rate at increasing the plasticity of personality, group dynamics, and business culture, and discover how this empowers change leaders and project managers to create amazing, measureable business results.

Audience Takeaway: It is now possible, thanks to neuroscience, to transform people at work so that they are permanently less resistant to change and more resourceful, adaptive, and cooperative in everything they do, making organizational change faster, easier, and highly successful.

Michael is the public face of Key Change Institute. Over a 30 year career as an executive, management consultant and thought leader, Michael has developed expertise in human development, advanced learning techniques, and business effectiveness. He has led large IT, process redesign, and cultural change projects on three continents. He has created several award-winning products and has patents in learning. In addition, Michael served in leadership positions at several startup companies on their way to market success.

Michael is a Board Member and Sr. Fellow of the futurist think tank, The DaVinci Institute. He speaks on several topics: Changing people Who Don’t Want to Change, the Future of Learning, Career Management, and Nonverbal Communications at Work. He is sought out as an expert and has appeared as a spokesperson on local and national TV.

Enterprise IT organizations are increasingly adopting Agile methods for deployment of enterprise-wide IT systems and solutions. The widely subscribed 2001 “Agile Manifesto” never mentions the words “measurements” or “metrics.” This leaves project managers with little more than burn-down charts and velocity calculations for performance measurement “instrumentation” in their Agile projects. Unfortunately, enterprise stakeholders often require much more in-depth and detailed project performance metrics in exchange for their commitment of resources and budget support for the project.

The authors of this presentation have developed an approach that utilizes a simplified Earned Value Measurement (EVM) approach to complement the simplicity of Agile projects’ performance monitoring. Without adding unwarranted complexity, our approach applies simplified EV metrics, to respond to stakeholder forecasting requirements, and which provides enhanced performance measurement needed by Agile project managers.

Audience Takeaway: Three main takeaways for the audiences: 1. Project managers can apply simplified EVM to Agile projects to regain forecasting and performance measurement capabilities not previously available for these projects. 2. Applying simplified EVM to enhance Agile project predictability is easy to do and provides significant risk reduction for Agile projects and project managers. 3. Stakeholders will be more supportive of Agile methodology projects if project metrics can provide reliable forecasts of end-state EAC, completion dates, and running EV, CV and SV.

James B. Forman, MBA, PMP, is Manager, Project Recovery Services in Microsoft’s Enterprise Services Division. He received his BSEE from the University of Michigan, his MBA from New Mexico State University and his Masters Certificate in Project Management from George Washington University. Mr. Forman has been a project management practitioner for more than 25 years, leading numerous project teams in the Aerospace, Defense and Information Technology industry sectors. In addition to leading project teams, Mr. Forman teaches classes in the practical application of project and program management to Microsoft Services professionals. He has published and presented papers at numerous PMI convocations including four Global Congresses.

Bijan Nikravan, PhD., PMP, is Director of Project Management Excellence (PMx) in Microsoft’s Enterprise Services Division. He received his Bachelor of Science and post-graduate degrees in Electrical/Electronic Engineering, and Control Engineering, from University of Huddersfield and Aston University in Birmingham in the UK. He also holds a Ph.D. in Robotics from The University of Leeds, UK. Dr. Nikravan joined Microsoft in 2001 as a Senior Project Manager. He has over twenty years of professional experience in the IT field. Prior to joining Microsoft, he managed his own software consulting company in London, UK, focusing on UNIX and Sun centric solutions.

Time is a commodity that seems to be in short supply. Deadlines are missed, workdays are longer, and goals are not achieved. Yes, we live in a busy society. Yet, in our busyness, are we doing the right things with our time at the right time to achieve the most results?

Delegation is both an art and a science. Delegation mastery is one of three aspects to effective time management. While Delegation Mastery should be the easiest, it is difficult and one that most managers struggle to master. Abdication is the end result of most delegation. They delegate to a team member, yet don’t know how to follow up and ensure the team knows what to do and how to deliver. Why can an individual give a task to one person and achieve success and give to a different person and the result is failure? The key is communication. The author Jim Rohn states: “True communication is the response you get.” Delegation Mastery will address the “how” of communication, as people have different learning and listening styles, yet most managers communicate in one way only.

Audience Takeaway: This workshop will address different communication, listening and delegation styles required to ensure a project is delivered on time and on budget.

Janna Hoiberg offers her clients over 25 years accomplishment-laden experience in managing and operating successful small businesses. As an Executive/Business Coach, she has helped start up ventures, as well as companies with $13 million in revenue increase their profits, improve their systems, strengthen their teams and grow their companies significantly. Janna has been successful because of her vast array of executive and leadership positions in various organizations, offering an abundance of Marketing, Operations and Sales experience to her clients.

Janna’s success with her clients is well known. She has worked with businesses to help them grow their revenue by over 60% in 18 months. A contractor doubled their business for two consecutive years. In addition, an advertising executive grew his revenue by 30% in six months; a services business doubled their revenue in the first month of coaching and a contractor improved profitability by over 232% in one year.

Janna was awarded the Colorado Springs Business Journal’s Best Business Consulting Firm for 2010. She also received the coveted ‘ActionMAN’ award for taking the lead within ActionCOACH to ensure her clients are benefiting from Social Media by making sure they fully utilize the tools needed for success as well as ensuring the support of ActionCOACH’s 14 Points of Culture – specifically Balance. This is congruent to how she works with all her clients to ensure they think out of the box, and learn new ways to grow their businesses. Her vision is to make a difference for business owners and to be used by God to impact lives.

This highly interactive, working session is designed to maximize the experience of all PMI Symposium attendees. Participants will learn a framework for creating compelling messages that get to the point, capture their listener’s interest, and influence them to take action. At the end of the program, participants will…

Delegation is both an art and a science. Delegation mastery is one of 3 aspects to effective time management. While Delegation Mastery should be the easiest, it is difficult and one that most managers struggle to master. Abdication is the end result of most delegation. They delegate to a team member, yet don’t know how to follow up and ensure the team knows what to do and how to deliver. Why can an individual give a task to one person and achieve success and give to different person and the result is failure? The key is communication. The author Jim Rohn states: “True communication is the response you get.” Delegation mastery will address the how of communication as people have different learning and listening styles, yet most managers communicate in one way.

Audience Takeaway: Learn a framework for creating compelling messages that get to the point, capture their listener’s interest, and influence them to take action

Brad Holst is recognized as a leading thinker in defining and teaching the best practices for presentation and conversation delivery, both live and over virtual communication channels, including web-based meeting platforms and telepresence.

Brad is a masterful teacher, coach, and consultant, with a rare level of business acumen based on his prior leadership roles with three market-leading companies: The Walt Disney Company, The Clorox Company, and Armor All Products.

At Mandel, Brad leads the company’s client-centered research and solution development efforts and has delivered winning training and coaching solutions for a diverse cross-section of global clients, from start-ups to top names in the Fortune 50.

Brad is in high demand as an executive communications coach, consultant, keynote speaker, training designer, and facilitator. He particularly enjoys working with sales and marketing groups globally and has a proven track record of successful work in Europe, Asia, and North America.

Have you ever been lost? Leaders face detours and unexpected one-way streets all the time—and we’re expected to maintain a steady course! So how do pioneering leaders reach a destination without going over the river and through the woods (and out of their minds)? By using a GPS, of course! Amy Knight will show you how to create your own Leadership GPS—Guiding Principles and Strategies to help you stay true to yourself and more confidently lead your team through any detour. With stories, games, and interaction, Amy will foster an environment in which you can explore and be creative. You will walk away with tools and ideas to calibrate your own GPS to navigate your next adventure.

Audience Takeaway: Audience members will walk away with ideas and a plan to create (and lead by) their own leadership guiding principles and strategies.

Amy Knight is a dynamic and engaging speaker who brings close to 20 years of project management experience to her workshops and presentations. She’s served clients in an array of industries from travel services to financial services, and her passion for making leadership fun shines through. Her easy and pragmatic style comes from years of hard knocks combined with having checked a few things off her “life list” like professional musician, triathlete and stand-up comedian. Amy works as a Business Applications Manager for Janus Capital Group and as a leadership and inspirational speaker for clients nationwide. Next on Amy’s list—tap dancing!

Back for an encore presentation of “HicCuPs in Leadership”! What do a 100 pound weight loss, a team mutiny and improv comedy have in common? Nothing. Everything! Leadership is a choice. And in today’s environment, it’s easy to be a manager, but it’s exemplary to be a leader. Every project, every initiative has its hiccups in execution. But when the hiccups start, leaders don’t reach for the sugar, they reach for what really cures – Honesty, Creativity and Persistence! Through a series of anecdotes, stories and games, Amy Knight will provide solid reminders of why and how these core principles should be practiced daily and relied upon consistently. You will walk away with renewed focus and ideas for curing your own hiccups.

Audience Takeaway: Honesty, creativity and persistence can cure any hiccup.

Amy Knight is a dynamic and engaging speaker who brings close to 20 years of project management experience to her workshops and presentations. She’s served clients in an array of industries from travel services to financial services, and her passion for making leadership fun shines through. Her easy and pragmatic style comes from years of hard knocks combined with having checked a few things off her “life list” like professional musician, triathlete and stand-up comedian. Amy works as a Business Applications Manager for Janus Capital Group and as a leadership and inspirational speaker for clients nationwide. Next on Amy’s list—tap dancing!

Any project that requires a new or creative solution, agreement between diverse and independent stakeholders, or faster, more effective execution needs collaboration. As leaders, today's project managers need to know how to facilitate collaboration on their teams. While collaboration is a team sport and developed skill, most workers have little formal training in how to do it well. Use these seven collaboration techniques to provide an attractive environment for your collaboration team leading them to an effective and productive result.

Audience Takeaway: Use these seven collaboration techniques to create an attractive environment for your collaboration team and energize them to reach creative, well accepted results, and project plans that execute.

Susan McMillin is a Senior Project and Portfolio Manager in Office of Information Technology at the State of Colorado. She is a Certified Project Management Professional, PMP, and a Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP). Ms. McMillin has been facilitating collaboration as a project manager for over 20 years in high tech in government and private industries including aerospace, IT, manufacturing, and environmental restoration. Her passion is to use project management to build happier, more productive work places where people achieve extraordinary results in an environment they love.

Most people consider meetings a waste of time. Yet most project managers spend almost half of their time in meetings. Therefore, making each meeting as effective as possible is very important. This presentation will discuss what constitutes an effective meeting. It will discuss the four stages of project meetings process (Setting expectations, Preparation, Facilitations and Follow-up) and will offer some tips on what to do for each stage.

Audience Takeaway: Tips on how to facilitate meeting effectively.

Helen Raleigh, CC, CFA, PMP, MBA, has more than 10 years experience in the financial services industry ranging from Business Strategy, Operations to Risk Management. She previously worked for Citibank, DaimlerChrysler Financial Services and State Public Pension Fund. Some key projects she worked on include the Sale of Chrysler Group to a private equity firm in 2007 and the introduction of the SMART car to the US market in 2008. Currently, she is the Senior Project Manager of the Business Project Management Office at Aurora Bank FSB. She earned a Master of Science degree from the State University of New York at Oneonta and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Wyoming. She served on the board of the Colorado Chartered Financial Analyst Society from 2009-2011. She is also an active member with Toastmasters International and is a certified Competent Communicator. She won the 2nd place of the 2011 Denver division International Speech Contest.

Are your emerging leaders prepared for roles that will directly impact business results?

Effective leaders know how to align their teams, foster collaboration, and build team member commitment. But what often happens is that people get “promoted” to management positions without even an inkling of development. Instead of being able to rapidly garner team member commitment and transform that into action, they get bogged down focusing on project management tasks and putting out fires.

If your emerging leaders are like many other new and mid-level leaders, they are probably enthusiastic and willing to learn, but struggling to reach their potential. They may not even know that they impact team member engagement, retention, productivity, and commitment more than any other factor in the organization.

Imagine the results if your emerging leaders were able to guide their team based on the key objectives of the organization, ignite higher levels of engagement and productivity from their team members, and perform more effectively, enabling their managers to focus on more strategic opportunities.

Based on Sal Silvester’s book Ignite! The 4 Essential Rules for Emerging Leaders, this breakout session will show you the four essentials that every leader must be, know, and do.

Audience Takeaway: During this interactive and engaging session, Sal Silvester will share his observations and recommendations on: The 4 Essentials to Generating Team Member Commitment and Igniting the Potential of Your People; Mistakes New Leaders Make (and how to avoid them); Secrets to Making the Transition from Peer/Individual Contributor to Leader; and The opposing Characteristics Every Leader Must Exemplify to Be Successful.

Sal Silvester is the founder and president of 5.12 Solutions (five-twelve) and author of Ignite! The 4 Essential Rules for Emerging Leaders and The Ultimate Goal Setting Guide.

Working with teams and leaders is Sal's passion, and his unique perspective has been nurtured through his experience over the past 19 years as an Army Officer, an executive at Accenture, and founder of 5.12 Solutions. He has led and managed teams in the desert of Kuwait, the mountains of Turkey, and in the offices of many clients on process improvement, organizational change, and training projects.

Sal knows what it means to be a team member and a leader. He is a graduate of the US Army Ranger and Airborne schools; he has managed consulting engagements and competed on Adventure Racing Teams. He is an avid rock climber and mountain biker and has competed in six marathons and is an Ironman Triathlon finisher. Sal was also selected to be a member of the Denver Chamber 100 and a semi-finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year.

In addition to working with corporations, Sal is a member of Rocky Mountain Rescue, a nationally recognized search and rescue team based in Boulder, CO. Additionally, he has served as an adjunct faculty member at the Community College of Denver, teaching business management and marketing courses. Sal is also a member of the Society for Human Resource Management and the American Society for Training and Development.

Intelligent Disobedience is the ability to successfully counter the directions of management. It means to challenge, pushback and make suggestions to management that defend the integrity of your projects against the expectations of your stakeholder and includes pivotal actions for true success as a project manager. Like the seeing-eye dog training environment that embraces “Intelligent Disobedience” to train their dogs to “protect and ensure the safety of their masters,” project managers need to know how to “disobey their masters” as a means of “saving the business”. Intelligent disobedience requires courage, solid presentation skills, and political awareness in addition to insight on the projects they manage. It requires a sense of balance brought forth with a sense of humor – after all you are comparing yourself to a dog as a means to be successful! This presentation is fun, informative and will provide you with an alternative way of looking at the challenges you face as a project manager.

Audience Takeaway: Attendees will examine methods for proposing potentially unpopular directions or opinions, discuss approaches for successfully dealing with senior managers and stakeholders and propose a decision making process for when you should ‘bend the rules’ or alter processes – leveraging common sense over common processes on an exception basis.

Dr. Jimmie West is a specialist in project, program, and strategic portfolio management, organizational assessment, and the development and implementation of professional development programs in leadership, strategy, and the practice of project management. He has experience working with people with various skill levels from front line project managers to senior level executives in organizations.

Dr. West has 25 years of practical experience as a practitioner, educator, facilitator, consultant, mentor, and instructor. This experience includes the private and government sector as well as in the collegiate academic environment. He has experience in developing project management professional development curriculum, delivering applied learning experiences over a wide range of topics, and conducting organizational maturity assessments. He is currently serving as an assessor/evaluator for the Project Management Institute’s Global Accreditation Council for project management programs at colleges and universities.

Dr. West received his doctorate in adult education from the University of North Texas. He has been a certified Professional Management Profession (PMP) since 1995. He is a certified practitioner for the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI) and the Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI). He also has received a Master’s Certificate in Project Management from George Washington University and an Advanced Certificate in Project Management from Stanford University. He is currently a member of the adjunct faculty for the University of Maryland College Park.

Conflict is an essential part of every project. It may be normal, nasty, or nice, but there will be conflict. Every participant has a different set of needs and expectations. Somehow, you have to pull it together, and if you fail, the project may fail due to lack of support from key stakeholders, especially if the conflict turns nasty. If there is a lack of conflict because everyone is being nice, it is likely that some important issues are not being surfaced in a timely manner, and there will be a long-term price to pay. To be a great project manager, you must add conflict to your plan, encouraging constructive conflict before any destructive conflict sets in.

The Colorful Leadership conflict model uses material developed and tested by Human Synergistics. It zeros in on workplace conflict, identifying aggressive, passive, and constructive patterns. There is no attempt to end the conflict because that cannot and should not be done. Instead, it focuses on techniques for turning the nasty stuff into constructive conflict that works to the long-term benefit of all participants. Conversely, if people are being too nice and too passive it identifies ways to turn up the heat a bit, encouraging some debate.

Audience Takeaway: The Colorful Conflict model helps you to quickly assess the level of conflict and offers techniques for moving it from destructive to constructive conflict.

Steve Wille, author of Colorful Leadership, has over 25 years senior level experience in corporate computer technology management. In 2002, he took a three year sabbatical to write and teach classes on leadership and team development for project managers. He is now back in the corporate world managing software development projects and processes. Steve's MBA degree is from Regis University in Denver, and his BSBA degree is from the University of Denver. He is also a PMP and a member of the PMI Mile Hi Chapter.

We will discuss processes for inspiring and maintaining leadership trust through techniques specific to the science and operational workings of the human brain. We will explore methods for fostering trust between project leaders and project team members as well as trust between members within the project team -- specifically aligned with a brain-based approach. Participants will be presented with tools and techniques to improve project and team trust on this understanding.

Audience Takeaway: Audience members will walk away with a practical understanding of how to improve and maintain trust within the project team environment. Specific techniques for leading with the brain in mind will be presented.

Dr. Wood is a performance/leadership development consultant and leadership success coach – the principal and founder of 21C Leadership, LLC. His mission is to provide performance and leadership solutions unique to our 21st century business environment. In that role, Dr. Wood performs research, diagnosis, and delivers remediation actions for individual leaders and teams that are looking to enhance their workplace performance. He provides and delivers a variety of leadership and performance improvement workshops to meet those challenges. Additionally, Dr. Wood provides results focused, brain-based leadership and individual success coaching.

Dr. Wood is a member of the Project Management Institute Mile Hi Chapter and has been a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) since 1998. Additionally, he is a member of the NeuroLeadership Institute and is a certified Results System coach through the NeuroLeadership Group.

Transforming an organization to be Agile is no small undertaking, yet the benefits of success are significant. In this interactive workshop, you will learn how to build a comprehensive strategy for sustainable Agile success. We will combine John Kotter’s 8-step model for leading change with the Theory of Constraints, and add proven patterns from successful Agile transformations at large organizations. During the session, participants will apply the framework to build a “strategy map” that applies to her/his own organization

Audience Takeaway: Participants will learn a thorough framework for building an Agile transformation strategy and use it during the session to build a strategy designed for their specific organization.

Brad Swanson is a Certified Scrum Coach (CSC), Certified Scrum Professional (CSP), Certified Scrum Master (CSM) and Principal Consultant at Propero Solutions. He has 17 years of experience in management, project and program leadership, product management, and software development in both start-ups and large companies, and regularly speaks at international conferences.