— disruptive markets, complex product development, cadence, boundary conditions

Speaker: John Carter of TCGen Inc., Scott Elliot of TCGen Inc.
Meeting Date: Thursday, June 5, 2014
Time: 6:00 pm Networking; 6:30 pm Management Forum/Guided Networking; 7:00 pm dinner; 7:30 pm Presentation
Location: AMD Commons Building / AMD Campus, Sunnyvale

 
Summary:
Management Forum / Guided Networking: Bring Your Management Challenge; Arrive by 6:30 PM to join this exciting Management Forum. Following informal networking is a guided discussion typically related to the topic of the evening’s after dinner talk, or of general Technology Management interest.
Light Dinner: This month we’re continuing with our light dinner format — typically sandwiches, salad, drinks, and cookie or similar light dinner.

Presentation: Agile Project Management in a Waterfall World
Companies are dealing with increasingly disruptive markets, but they are often strapped with heavy weight, bureaucratic processes. Agile software management methods have helped teams become faster, but until now these methods don’t work well within the traditional phased development environments (waterfall).

You will be shown, with case studies, how select agile components (sprints, retrospectives, and burn down charts) can be tailored into a new project management model for complex product development. The attendees will also be presented the relevance of cadence, standup meetings and other foundations of the agile methodology in waterfall environments to give you a fresh approach to managing projects.

Attendee Take-Aways:

• How to create the Boundary Conditions to clarify and represent project risks
• How to break a project into Sprints that balance overhead with agility
• How to apply the principles of cadence and stand up meetings for project managers
• How to create a fact based event timeline
• How to perform fact based retrospectives that benefit the team during (not after) a project

Bios:
John Carter
As Principal of TCGen Inc., John Carter is a consultant to management on project and portfolio management and currently serves on the Board of Directors of a public company, Cirrus Logic (CRUS). Prior to that, he created the product development process used at Apple, the ANPP (Apple New Product Process). John was the co-inventor of the Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones before he was Chief Engineer of Bose.

John Carter was a distinguished Keynote Speaker at 2013 PMI-SV Symposium. He earned his MS in electrical engineering from MIT; and co-authored a book “Innovate Products Faster”, published in 2012.

Scott Elliott
Scott Elliott holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of California and became a Senior Member of the IEEE. He was with the Hewlett Packard Test and Measurement Group (later Agilent and soon to be Keysight Technologies) for 23 years as an engineer, an innovator and a technology executive. He invented several key microwave and optical technologies used in HP instruments, led an optical device R&D group, managed a high-speed semiconductor wafer fab, and started a global consulting practice to help HP’s instrument customers with product innovation, manufacturing, and supply chain optimization.

Dr. Elliott has been consulting independently and with TCGen Inc. for 14 years, helping many technology companies to innovate and grow. He is a frequent speaker and has over 50 publications on technology and technology management.