PMINJ - 2011 Nov Meeting

As a Project or Program Manager, have you ever had difficulty convincing a stakeholder of an action that needs to be taken? Because you're watching the project so closely, do you sometimes see trends that others don't see? Have you ever had a bottleneck or roadblock, but you can't convince someone that it's real?

It's been said that 80 to 90 percent of a Project Manager's time is spent communicating. How can you leverage metrics to clear road-blocks, back up your points, and promote progress in important areas of your projects, programs, and portfolios? In this presentation, you'll hear some stories about how common issues that project managers face can be solved using metrics. You'll also get some down-to-earth examples of how to measure elements of your project in spreadsheets. In this presentation, Henry Will shows you how to apply the old saying “If you want to improve something, measure it!” You will be able to step away with a tool bag of techniques to increase the value and effectiveness of your communications. After all, if we're going to spend so much of our time on communications, let's make it work for us!

Henry Will, PMP is currently responsible for a PMO at IBM, working to achieve audit readiness for the Lender Services organization. Henry’s project management experience began with his involvement in the early 1980’s in Military Avionics projects, and continued through years of industrial and consumer product design (including video games and a Veterinarian Blood Chemistry Analyzer for which he shares the patents).

Henry is the founder and leader of PMLessonsLearned.com, a group of hundreds of project managers from around the globe dedicated to helping other PMs increase project management knowledge and effectiveness and build productive business relationships. Launched in 2006, the group holds several conference calls a month for and by Project Managers. The calls rotate each month through sharing lessons learned, PMP Exam Preparation, and a PM Job Shop call. Henry is the host of the monthly PM Best Practices calls.

In recent years, Henry’s project management work has focused on business applications (Banking, Financial investments, Pharmaceutical, Industrial, Manufacturing and Publishing). Mr. Will has worked on projects lasting from 7 weeks to 4 years in product and software development in both local and global environments.