TMC SCV Meetings: SEP 2008 – JUN 2009
Jun 4, 2009:
Management Forum: IEEE TMC Overview – Michael W. Condry (see the slides)
After-dinner Talk: Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Optimal Development Processes for Startups – John Carter (see the slides)
May 7, 2009:
After-dinner Talk: Great Project Managers: Delivering Value and Results, Earning Influence and Respect – Cinda Voegtli (see the slides)
Apr 2, 2009:
After-dinner Talk: Preventing Failure in Health Care IT Projects – Peter Hartzman, PhD (see the slides)
Mar 5, 2009:
After-dinner Talk: Top 10 List: How to Make DAMN Good Decisions – Burke Robinson (see the slides)
Feb 5, 2009:
Management Forum: Challenges of Management – Larry Reeves
After-dinner Talk: Manager in the Middle – ArLyne Diamond, PhD
Jan 8, 2009:
After-dinner Talk : Control or Results? How to Manage the Paradox and Achieve Greater Project Results – Randy Englund (see the slides)
Dec 4, 2008:
After-dinner Talk: SWOT Analysis – Chris Sims
Nov 6, 2008:
After-dinner Talk: Ten Business Books in One Hour for the Busy High-Tech Executive – Sean Murphy
Oct 2, 2008:
Management Forum: Multi-Generational Communications – Larry Reeves
After-dinner Talk: Managing Four Generation of Workforce – Barbara Miller (see the slides)
Sep 4, 2008:
After-dinner Talk: Walking on Hot Coal – Helene Dublisky
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MEETING SUMMARIES & BIOS
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Jun 4, 2009
Management Forum: IEEE TMC Overview (link to slides below)
Presented by Michael W. Condry, Member IEEE TMC Board of Governors
Overview of IEEE Technology Management Council
• TMC History
• TMC Mission
• Society vs. Council comparison
• TMC Member Societies
• TMC Services
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After-dinner Talk: Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Optimal Development Processes for Startups (link to slides below)
Presented by John Carter, former CTO at Livescribe
Goldilocks and the Three Bears: Two Case Studies of Optimal Development Processes for Startups (and large companies too)
How much process is just right for a rapidly scaling software development organization?
• Too much process can stifle creativity and slow down development resulting in products that miss the market.
• Too little process often results in changing definition, team confusion and resource misalignment,
resulting in delays in time to market.
In a little over 90 days a product development process was implemented in a startup organization of approximately 100 people that resulted in programs that beat their schedule estimates. This was achieved by a philosophy of “inch wide, mile deep’ implementation of only three key elements that if implemented well are necessary and sufficient to drive fast cycle time: Simplified Product Definition, Consensus driven cross functional Schedule, and Concept Management Review. And a single management metric – Behavioral Change – which supports the implementation of this methodology so one tangibly can see the behavioral change.
Nothing else. Nada.
The presentation will describe the case study of the implementation of these best practices, how the organization actually liked and leveraged the process, and the beneficial impact of the results. But this work is not just for start-ups – a contrast will be provided of a successful implementation of the same methodology for an organization of 6,000 engineers.
Specific examples of the metrics and deliverables will be presented, and attendees will gain knowledge that they can immediately begin implementing in their companies.
John Carter have been a CTO and consultant and a frequent speaker on topics such as Product Definition, Metrics & Performance Scorecards, Optimizing Processes, and Portfolio Strategy including Acquisitions. John was recently a CTO at Livescribe and at Klipsch Audio Technologies (and former Chief Engineer of Bose) – so he can give grounded presentations on best practices in Product Creation.
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May 7, 2009
After-dinner Talk: Great Project Managers: Delivering Value and Results, Earning Influence and Respect (link to slides below)
Presented by Cinda Voegtli
For a project manager in high tech, what makes the difference in how you’re perceived and what you can achieve? Where on this spectrum do you fall: Are you seen as unnecessary overhead; a competent details coordinator; a strong team manager and driver; or a business-savvy influential leader of critical corporate efforts? Even if you’re managing a smaller project, where you fall on that scale matters for getting what you need to get your project done.
How project managers are perceived and treated is somewhat determined by the company culture and expectations for the role. But a PM’s perceived value and success are ultimately determined by what place on that “role spectrum” they decide to play, and their courage and tenacity at fulfilling the role at that level. This presentation brings out the key factors Cinda has seen result in project managers being highly respected and valued (or not!) by executives and teams, due to how they handled the job and worked with the rest of the company. It will cover key factors such as executive-friendly communication, relationships with executives and functional groups, personal courage, technical understanding, business perspective, process savvy, ownership and initiative, and leadership – and what all these things look like put into action by truly great project managers.
Cinda Voegtli is Founder and CEO of the ProjectConnections.com service providing practical online resources and support to over 250,000 project managers, functional managers, and team members around the world. She has over 20 years of experience in companies of different sizes and radically different project environments, with titles ranging from developer to vice president. She started her career as a hardware and firmware engineer, moved into technical group leader roles, and then became Director of Hardware Engineering at a start-up. Cinda found herself unwittingly falling into (untitled) project management as she managed large releases there, and after the company was acquired made the official leap and managed release programs in 3 different product divisions. Since then she has worn many hats – including contract project manager, interim department manager, project and development process consultant, functional executive, company founder, and executive project sponsor – experiencing the myriad light and dark corners of the business-driven project universe, and still relishing and enjoying all the rewards and challenges.
Over time Cinda has worked on different types of projects to develop products, services, and systems, for areas including communications, medical, IT, factory automation, computer games, construction, and biotech. From all these years of projects she has developed a big passion for making “management stuff” practical, effective, so that we can all enjoy our jobs day-to-day as we work hard to get it all done. Her particular areas of interest are helping get boring, static project methodologies into dynamic, situation-specific use; achieving business-savvy and amazingly synchronized cross-functional teams; and bringing together the critical skills, attitudes, and experience that result in truly great project manager.
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Apr 2, 2009
After-dinner Talk: Preventing Failure in Health Care IT Projects (link to slides below)
Presented by Peter Hartzman, PhD
We will discuss issues that occur in Health Care IT projects that put them in extreme danger of failure. Peter Hartzman has been involved in many large and complex IT Health Care IT projects and will share his experiences with us. This is going to be a hot topic during the economic recovery as hospitals and health care groups shift to computer based information system in large numbers.
Peter Hartzman started his career building real-time monitoring systems for JPL (Jet Propulsion Labs) where Launch windows don’t allow for missed deliverables. Since then, Peter has worked in insurance, transportation, telecommunications, biotechnology, and healthcare. He has a PhD in Computer Science from the New York University.
Peter is a senior information technology manager with accomplishments in product and application development, operations, and marketing and sales support. He has run successful software development groups for years.
At NetForce, Inc. he conceived of, designed, and marketed a completely distributed adverse event reporting system for clinical trials which was acquired by Oracle. He has also designed and implemented a web-based security system to address HIPAA and support a single sign-on intranet for a highly integrated dialysis services company with 1200 clinics and 32,000 users.
As a consultant he has successfully delivered multi-million dollar systems integration projects in the transportation and telecomm industries. Peter is currently researching web-based practice management systems for healthcare.
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Mar 5, 2009
After-dinner Talk: Top 10 List: How to Make DAMN Good Decisions (link to slides below)
Presented by Burke Robinson, Stanford University
Burke Robinson will present his Top Ten List for making DAMN good decisions. Included on his list are: distinctions between controllable and uncontrollable factors, rewards for good decisions instead of outcomes, importance of framing and structuring, evaluating different alternatives across uncertain scenarios, the 5+/- 2 rule for decision analysis, portfolio value creation, joint venture risk sharing, the law of unintended consequences, irrational decision behaviors, and tuning up gut feeling. He will discuss examples of current political and economic decisions that could be improved by using these principles and practices.
Burke Robinson is a consulting professor in the management science and engineering department at Stanford University.
As a former director of Strategic Decisions Group, an international management consulting firm that he helped found, and a former director at the Institute for the Future, as well as currently the CEO of his own consulting business, Dr. Robinson has worked for over 30 years with the top management teams and boards of many leading companies worldwide.
Prof. Robinson leads a teaching team of thirty consulting colleagues who assist as guest lecturers in a dozen undergraduate and graduate courses. The focus of his curriculum is on how to make DAMN good decisions, with a heavy practical emphasis on tools for applying decision and risk analysis to business dilemmas.
His primary areas of process expertise are: strategic leadership and management, business development, risk management, and decision analysis.
He believes that success in an uncertain future world depends critically on making the right strategic decisions today. His unique approach blends qualitative structuring and quantitative analysis methods that enable leaders to transform their organization’s fears, uncertainties, and doubts (FUDs) into hopes, dreams, and action plans.
Prof. Robinson has a bachelor’s degree in social psychology from Stanford, a master’s degree in technology and human affairs from Washington University, St. Louis, and a master’s degree as well as a Ph.D. in decision analysis from Stanford. He also is a certified trainer for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).
http://www.burkerobinson.com
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Feb 5, 2009
Management Forum: Challenges of Management
Presented by Larry Reeves
During this Facilitated Networking, Larry Reeves will lead a discussion about challenges of management.
Larry recently retired from Data Domain where he managed hardware platform qualification for de-duplication storage appliances. Previously he managed hardware teams at Brocade Communications, Auspex Systems, and Tandem Computers. Larry has a BSEE from Oklahoma State University, and holds 4 patents in fault-tolerant features for multi-processor computer systems. Larry is Secretary of the SCV/SF chapter of the Technology Management Council, and an IEEE member for 36 years.
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After-dinner Talk: Manager in the Middle
Presented by ArLyne Diamond, PhD
Decisions and demands come from above and the manager is the one responsible for seeing to it that staff deliver the deliverables in a quality and timely manner. On the other hand, we are living in an age when “knowledge workers” do not like taking orders from others, and want to spend some of their work time on creative projects that have nothing to do with the deliverables. The manager is in the middle, trying to maintain some balance between the tension of differing needs.
When I interviewed 50 C level executives about managing for creativity, I was told that it was middle management that stifled creativity. CEOs hoped that new ideas would “bubble up”. But, the bubbles were smashed down. During a speech I gave about Managing for Creativity, a member of my audience, a retired Director reminded me that the manager in the middle couldn’t afford to allow her staff to use some of their time on projects that had not been authorized from above. Managers at all levels in an organization are answerable to those above them and they need to learn how to manage their boss effectively as well as be sensitive to the needs of those for whom they are responsible.
To complicate the task, managers are managing distant teams, those from other cultures or other generations with different values, expectations, and behaviors. They need to be aware of and sensitive to this diversity, while motivating and holding others accountable.
Too, managers are being asked to be leaders, as though charisma and great personality would be the inspiration for motivating others. Very little training is actually given these dedicated men and women, most of whom were promoted from technical positions as rewards for intelligence and hard work technically. Who taught them to be managers? How are they to become inspirational leaders?
I will share with you some of the problems and solutions I’ve learned from my work with managers, directors and C level executives. Together we can develop more effective strategies for getting the best out of ourselves and others.
Dr. ArLyne Diamond is a prolific writer and outstanding public speaker. She has been working with individuals, teams, and executives in the High Tech field for well over twenty years. Dr. Diamond is a Professional and Organizational Development expert and her clients range from CEOs to entry level workers. She counsels, coaches and mentors those wishing to fast track their professional growth; teaches leaders and managers how to manage people, processes and projects; and deals with conflict, compliance issues, and re-engineering of systems. In addition to her work with organizations, Dr. Diamond teaches master’s level courses at Universities in California.
Audiences describe her as warm, engaging, and practical. Not only does she provide her audience with useful information, she involves them in the process and enables them to share their experience with their peers.
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Jan 8, 2009
After-dinner Talk: Control or Results? How to Manage the Paradox and Achieve Greater Project Results (link to slides below)
Presented by Randy Englund and Robert Lauridsen, PhD
Managers want control AND results, but therein lays the paradox. Since paradoxes live in a frame of reference, change the frame of reference, and you can dissolve an apparent conflict between control and results. Which will you emphasize when the two outcomes conflict at the point of paradox? This presentation covers the nature of paradoxes as they apply to project-based work and then provides a new perspective, frame of reference, tools, and recommendations to work through the paradox in order to ensure that greater project results are the outcome in practice.
The objectives for this presentation are to:
• Identify the nature of paradoxes and how controls negatively impact achieving project results
• Explore a frame of reference that allows for both control and results
• Change thinking processes to focus on what is most important for business success
• Learn how to establish values and tell stories that avoid conflicted messages
• Apply a set of ideas, leading practices, and case study examples to project-based work,
such that increased productivity can be fostered and realized immediately
Randy Englund is Executive Consultant for the Englund Project Management Consultancy ( www.englundpmc.com). He learned many of his lessons while a senior project manager at Hewlett-Packard Company for over 20 years. He’s the author of three best selling business management books, including Project Sponsorship: Achieving Management Commitment for Project Success, which positions him to “bring the concepts from way up there, to right down here, equip you with the tools, and empower you to act.”
Robert Lauridsen, Ph.D., consultant, trainer and author of Boss Talk: A Manager’s Guide to Exceptional Productivity and Innovation, is considered an expert in developing accountability cultures (www.lauridsengroup.com). His leadership program, Execution Power, featuring the Committed Communication System, offers a coherent perspective and integrated management tool set that supports leaders in closing the gap between strategy (goals) and execution. The tools and perspective offered guide leaders in generating and maintaining strategy-focused, high performance cultures.
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Dec 4, 2009
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SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:
Board Elections for Year 2009
Current board will nominate candidates for board elections for year 2009 at the December 4, 2008 meeting. You can also enter your nominations from the floor at the meeting.
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After-dinner Talk: SWOT Analysis
Presented by Chris Sims, Technical Management Institute
SWOT analysis is a tool commonly taught in business school to examine internal strengths and weaknesses as well as external opportunities and threats. It was originally conceived to help corporations formulate high-level business strategy, but it has proven useful in a broad range of situations. SWOT is an excellent tool for evaluating business opportunities such as starting a new business, entering a new market, pursuing a new development project, or allocating resources in areas such as recruiting or training.
This workshop will teach you how to do a basic SWOT analysis, using your career or your company’s business as a practical application. You will learn a valuable analytic tool and gain insight into your own career or company.
Chris Sims is a teacher, coach, facilitator, consultant, coder, agile evangelist, and all-around geek. He is the founder of the Technical Management Institute and the Bay Area Engineering Managers Support Group. He enjoys teaching engineers how to lead people, projects, and teams. For the really curious, a longer bio can be found here: http://www.technicalmanagementinstitute.com/bio.shtml
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After-dinner Talk: Ten Business Books in One Hour for the Busy High-Tech Executive
Presented by Sean Murphy
Spend an hour and leave with a summary of key business insights and some rules of thumb for successful innovation in Silicon Valley. The recent downturn requires engineering managers to become more versatile and assist their firms not only in cutting costs as a part of the technology and product development process but also to assist in revenue generation by working with customers directly on new product specification prior to committing a new product to development. High tech firms are relying more on technology acquisition and partnering for new product differentiation, which requires engineering managers to offer their perspective as a part of cross-functional teams making these decisions.
This talk, despite its title, is not a series of book reports but a review of key concepts from a set of books that provide the terms, the metaphors, the parables–in short the language–that successful businesses use to develop their products and monitor their introduction. Although some of these books are old they still provide succinct guidelines for the decisions organizations have to make when deploying or introducing new technology.
Sean brings a superb array of talents and skills to any situation involving new technologies entering new markets with new value propositions. Not afraid to ask the insightful question, Sean provides insights and approaches based on many years of helping early stage companies and based on years of operations research work in very large organizations. Art Monk, CEO Inflexion Point Analytics Authors like Clayton Christensen, Geoffrey Moore, Peter Drucker, and William Davidow provide a strategic framework for high technology business; they explain how the world works. Steve Blank’s “Four Steps to the Epiphany”, Doug Hall’s “Jumpstart Your Business Brain” and Michael Gerber’s “E-Myths Revisited” offer valuable perspectives on business; they explain how teams need to view the world. Finally, Peter Cialdini, Al Ries and Jack Trout offer useful insights and rules of thumb for how to influence and act as a change agent both within a company and externally.
Sean Murphy, CEO of SKMurphy Inc, is a recognized expert on technology adoption. Prior to SKMurphy, Sean Murphy has worked in a variety of roles in the last twenty-five years: software engineer, engineering manager, project manager, business development, product marketing, and customer support. Companies he has worked directly for include Cisco Systems, 3Com, AMD, MMC Networks, and VLSI Technology. He has a BS in Mathematical Sciences and an MS in Engineering-Economic Systems from Stanford. His blog is http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/
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Oct 2, 2008
Management Forum: Multi-Generational Communications
Presented by Larry Reeves
During this Facilitated Networking, Larry Reeves will lead a discussion about challenges and pitfalls of Multi-Generational Communications.
Larry Reeves has 25 years experience in leading hardware teams to deliver server, storage networking and data appliance products to market. He has a broad background in electronics, power, mechanical, and agency approvals.
Larry recently retired from Data Domain where he managed hardware platform qualification for de-duplication storage appliances. Previously he managed hardware teams at Brocade Communications, Auspex Systems, and Tandem Computers. Larry has a BSEE from Oklahoma State University, and holds 4 patents in fault-tolerant features for multi-processor computer systems. Larry is Secretary of the SCV/SF chapter of the Technology Management Council, and an IEEE member for 36 years.
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After-dinner Talk: Managing Four Generation of Workforce (link to slides below)
Presented by Barbara Miller, Virtual Connection
For the first time in history, there are four generations in the workplace: Seniors, Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials. Managers and teams are finding it challenging working across generations. Each generation has different values, work styles, work ethics and work goals. The presentation will address these challenges by: helping managers understand how to work with members of each generation, helping teams understand their co-workers, helping HR develop systems such as recruitment, retention, orientation, performance management that appeal to each generation.
Barbara Miller has thirty years of experience consulting to private, public and non-profit organizations. She has worked successfully in such varied cultures as The U.S. House of Representatives, financial institutions, health care systems, high-technology, rapidly growing entrepreneurial companies, public sector agencies, educational institutions and grassroots non-profit agencies. She has extensive experience working at all levels in an organization: CEO, mid-level manager, professional staff, support staff and union personnel.
Her recent clients include: Hewlett Packard, Intel , Agilent Technologies, Sun Microsystems, Lucas Digital, The California Academy of Sciences, Stanford University, and Harvard Healthcare. Barbara has extensive experience facilitating virtual meetings. She has led a virtual, global, finance, project team responsible for redesigning their work, restructuring their department. She has taken virtual work to another level by successfully conducting experiential workshops on video-teleconferencing with participants in four different locations.
Barbara’s consulting work has included helping organizations to plan strategically, manage change, build teams, re-organize work flow and reporting relationships to improve productivity, downsize and merge. Barbara is able to bring a unique perspective to her clients because she has been a manager in four organizations. She knows first hand about the day-to-day realities and pressures experienced by managers. Thus, her recommendations are both theoretically sound and pragmatic. She has also designed and conducted seminars on leadership, managing change, communication skills, selection interviewing, performance review systems, women in management, career development, conflict resolution, empowerment, self-managing teams and managing individual differences, virtual leadership and virtual team building and work-life harmony.
Barbara has authored a number of published articles on management topics including work-life balance, selection interviewing, performance review systems, self managing teams and managing a congressional office. She has also authored and published a workbook, ReInventing Work: Innovative Strategies Relinking Life and Livelihood to Benefit Business and Staff. This workbook has been published in Hebrew and Japanese and can be purchased at www.ArtemisManagement.com
Barbara has a Master’s Degree in Management Science and Women Studies from George Washington University. She has taught organizational theory and change management at the University of San Francisco’s Master’s Degree program in Organization Development and Human Resources. Barbara founded Artemis Management Consultants in 1981 after working in a number of internal organizational development positions in finance, healthcare and the U.S. House of Representatives. She co-funded Virtual Connection in 2002.
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Sep 4, 2008
After-dinner Talk: Walking on Hot Coal
Presented by Helene Dublisky, Omega Coaching
The topic helps people to understand their own pre-disposition to conflict situations, and to be able to identify their own “automatic behaviors” toward conflict situations, to learn about the life cycle of conflict (and the functional and dysfunctional behaviors associated with each) and then to learn about different strategies for dealing with conflict. It would be an interactive session with participants doing a quick self-assessment and having time during the session to examine the dysfunctional behaviors involved in a particular conflict situation.
Helena Dublisky, Omega Coaching is a certified business coach and information technology management consultant with over 20 years experience in both large established and smaller startup organizations. Her background in executive and high tech positions allows her to understand the unique challenges faced when introducing organizational change, and also provides a basis to connect with highly specialized professionals in an effective manner. Clients who have worked with Helene report that they have greater access to power, creativity, and leadership, and are able to live more peaceful, centered lives. Companies that engage her benefit from having powerful leaders and teams able to make effective decisions, smoothly coordinate action, courageously resolve conflict and consistently deliver on promises. Simply put, organizations develop leaders that people want to follow! Helene works with people in a way that increases their capacity to learn and generate new actions, and bring creativity and innovation to old problems and familiar concerns. She helps them master the ability to challenge current ways of viewing the world and explaining situations that keep them stuck in ineffective action. People learn to recognize their own and others’ blind spots and become more powerful observers of opportunities and action. Helene holds a Master’s degree in the Dynamics of Organizations from the University of Pennsylvania and is an adjunct professor in the Masters in Information Systems program at the University of San Francisco where she teaches classes in Mastering Organizational Politics, Managing Projects and Change, and Managing Human Resources. She is the co-author of IT People: Doing More with Less to which she contributed the chapter on Understanding and Mastering Positive Political Skills. She has served on the Advisory Board for the Master’s in Computer Information Systems at LaSalle University and is a graduate of Philadelphia’s Leadership, Inc. Helene has been certified by the International Coach Federation as a Professional Certified Coach, and by the Newfield Network as an Ontological Coach. http://www.omegacoaching.com/hdublisky.htm
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