Like the weather, in many organizations people complain about the lack of Resource Management, but no one does anything about it. If you can’t implement - at least - a basic-level set of functions and services to track and forecast your resource usage, then your firm will be stuck forever in the time-warp of level 1.7 PPM Maturity. In this session, Michael Hanford, Research Director, Gartner, will discuss why resource planning is essential in today’s world, and then help you find a starting point, and gain initial traction around resource usage. His presentation will outline what to do first, how to sell upward, and cautions on going too far or not far enough.

There is no longer disagreement about the importance of resource planning to portfolio management. Portfolio management without a robust resource planning process is static, leaving out the most powerful levers for improvement. With all that is now known, most companies still self-identify as being poor at resource planning. Many of these companies also claim they are not mature enough to take on such an initiative. Resource planning is where you start portfolio management, not where you end. Resource planning is a key driver of portfolio selection and is a necessary condition for improvement in execution. This keynote presentation will elevate the traditional status of resource planning within portfolio management, and will make the case for getting started sooner rather than later.

How about a Resource Planning set of system deliverables that (1) produces a vehicle that management can use to instill a disciplined planning process, (2) can act as a galvanizing communication device for stakeholders and execs, (3) replaces spreadsheets with data integrity and accuracy, (4) provides strategic resource planning ratios that show you what projects you can do and can’t do, and (5) supports the sustaining maintenance cost information required for compliance with SOP 97-2. Tom Hughes, SVP of Engineering at Emulex, a network components manufacturer, has done just that. Arriving in 2003 via an acquisition, Hughes recognized that Emulex’s numerous acquisitions and growth had yielded weak processes that left the executives unclear about what and where they were spending their dollars. Tom developed a simple spreadsheet that helped, but only provided information on who and what programs resources were working on. Soon, he found himself “owning” the Resource Planning problem at Emulex, involving a constantly changing pool of 300-500 resources, with a mission to provide a “consistent oar” in steering toward a solution. With the assistance of PRTM and armed with process and the PDWare product, Hughes developed a capacity planning system that is a crowning achievement in his career, and a major contribution to Emulex.

Brad Hedstrom, Director of Programs and Portfolio Management in the Molecular Biology Division of Life Technologies, was rated as the #1 Industry Speaker at the 2009 Resource Planning Summit. In 2009, he told the tale of how a poorly planned staff reduction created serious portfolio problems. The division didn’t have the information to distinguish resources crucial to future projects from those who were not because they could not forecast ahead. In addition, fiscal year planning was incredibly complex with 1000+ people, 150 different skills, spread across 230 projects, and housed in 5 business units and 145 cost centers. Prior to deployment of a new process and software solution, fiscal year planning took many weeks. Now it’s less than a week---and the division is able to forecast resource requirements six quarters out. In 2010, he will revisit this story with new findings emphasizing the items that resonated so strongly with the 2009 attendees: The Bubble Chart, the Python who ate the Pig problem, and the centrality of Resource Management to a successful Portfolio Strategy.

Are spreadsheets mind-numbing? Can you really digest a decision made by gut-feel? Does decision-by-advocacy really advocate healthy decision making? Do you need a good BS detector (for BiaS detector, of course) in decision meetings? Are uncertainties treated with certainty? Good portfolio decision making is a balancing act between all of these factors (and more); yet too few organizations bring a healthy equilibrium to strategic portfolio decision making. At Inspire, a value-based methodology was adopted that strikes a just-right balance between approaches that are too rigid vs. those that are too amorphous. Dr. Ward Peterson, SVP of Scientific Affairs will describe his journey through “the valley of analytic frustration” to the “peaks of false confidence”—from spreadsheet modeling to business cases to scorecards and other methods before arriving at the enlightened science (and art) of value-based decision making.

Christine Holton Cashen is a magical personality that will captivate you while she is dishing out valuable solutions to tricky workplace situations. She even-handily pokes fun at both men and women, while offering insights on dealing with difficult personalities. For instance, she nails the troubling passive aggressive co-worker in your organization. She also offers humor as an antidote to the psychological flimflam of the world of projects, and her counsel for us not to be too hard on ourselves are welcome words. What isn’t welcome is when she leaves us abandoned at the end of her Keynote.

What happens when world-class product-development and project management systems are staffed by people who are worried or fearful about speaking up? David Maxfield, VP for Research at Vital Smarts, discovered, after examining 2,200 projects and interviewing over 1,000 executives and project/product managers, that significant and unnecessary cost overruns, failures, reductions in scope----and career damage occurred when managers and team members failed to “speak up.” Maxfield will reveal the research findings on the 5 Situations where a conspiracy of silence causes the most damage. Terms such as “Skirting” and “Project Chicken” will be added to your vocabulary. A short survey instrument will be offered so that attendees can assess how their project measures up against the 5 Crucial Project Issues. Happily, he will propose 5 Best Practices to objectively and unemotionally raise the issues that are right now endangering you and your project.

Two years ago at Medtronic’s Spinal & Biologics Division , the product development environment was plagued by missed product launch dates, a lack of consistency in product execution, and no one single and prioritized project list that stakeholders would salute. That’s when a PMO was built, and Coleman Grimmett, Senior Program Analyst PMO,was there at the beginning, heading up the Resource Planning mission. Progress was swift. With consideration given to capacity limits, a single product development list was agreed to, 300 project team members and 20 project leaders were chosen from 3000 resources, and Resource Planning tools and processes were benchmarked and selected. Soon after, product development results came tumbling out of the PMO: (1) Projects were trimmed, (2) more focus was placed on understanding what Medtronic’s true capacity was, and (3) predictability improved, which increased confidence levels among customers, sales, and the market. Another benefit was an increased ROI on the resources invested, since people were no longer pulled every which way. But, one of Coleman’s proudest achievements, was that the speedy implementation was managed so that everyone’s Comfort Zone was respected.

Matt Rissman, SVP e-Channels and Customer Solutions at Bank of America, found his organization under pressure to do more work or explain specifically: Why not! Polling his managers and finding that everyone was maxed out eventually was not accepted. Truth be told, he had no proactive way to find out what his people were doing. He had summary information, but it lacked granularity about what was going on. “I was cut by both sides of the sword: I couldn’t get support for not doing additional initiatives, and I couldn’t convince executives that we could do important special projects.” He thought about giant spreadsheets, but instead chose a set of processes that won the day. Rissman will describe the surprising ease of implementation and why, as well as the unanticipated by-product of Executive Views that his organization now relies on.

While many organizations have a process for determining how best to use limited resources to meet portfolio goals, few actually have portfolio management capability. An enterprise portfolio management system only can’t boost your performance if it’s not built to meet your organization’s specific needs – and, can actually undermine success if it forces you to fit within its rigid requirements. Portfolio management goes beyond software. A sustainable, cost-effective development program depends upon well-defined operational processes, coupled with an IT system. This session will use real case studies to explore practical lessons learned to design and implement a development process that leads to successful portfolio management.

Today every manager must learn to lead geeks. Geeks deliver and support the technology that drives efficiency, effectiveness, and competitiveness of real businesses. Yet, most managers and executives find that geeks are difficult to fathom and even harder to lead. Paul Glen, Founder of C2 Consulting, is one of us. He has been a programmer, a product manager, a project manager, a resource manager, and has been involved in dozens of software development and deployment projects. In his presentation, Glen will explain why geeks are different from other employees, and why different strategies are required to lead them. Mr. Glen is the author of Leading Geeks: How to Lead and Manage People Who Deliver Technology.

Despite significant progress over the last decade, project success rates are still dismally poor. Only about a quarter of projects are completed successfully. The rest are cancelled completely or are finished substantially late, over budget or missing major functionality. When used well, traditional IT project management approaches provide excellent information about what happened, but they’re lousy at predicting the future. In this presentation, Glen will describe why projects fail, and identify the five leading indicators of project success, and show you how to use them to predict the future, prevent problems and emerge a hero.

Carolyn Bellisio, Director of Strategy, Planning, Controls and PMO at Liberty International Underwriters, needed help with planning project resources to allocate the right people to the right projects at the right time. Accuracy and updating issues associated with manual spreadsheets were evident and effective resource planning was not in place. In January, Carolyn implemented a process and tool set that is making a dramatic improvement in portfolio management, project management discipline, as well as time tracking. Her implementation of a web browser time tracking/approval system provided accuracy in reporting, and provided management with a quick visual that alerts all parties to the software development “trip wires” that endanger successful completions. Go to Red refers to the alerts in Red that a single resource planning chart/dashboard now provides execs and project managers to over scheduling, missed skills, resource training requirements, and where projects are suffering from not getting the resources they need. At the September Summit, Carolyn will share how she has begun to use the Red to better manage project resource demands and report on project status transparently.

Abstract coming soon

Jeff Thomas is Vice President of Instrument Development at IDEXX Laboratories, Inc., a $1B Nasdaq company in southern Maine, that develops, designs, manufactures and distributes products for veterinary, and food and water testing markets. In his organization, Jeff manages a wide range of engineers, including mechanical, electrical, optical, reliability and systems engineers. His remarks at the Summit will center on his philosophy of what it takes to bring products to market. His central theme is that the critical issue is matching the organization’s capacity to its projects. Jeff will tell attendees why he abandoned spreadsheets as a method for managing capacity planning, and how another approach has yielded results in allowing IDEXX to determine which top projects can be completed successfully.

Outstanding technical managers are characterized by their mastery of Emotional Intelligence (EI). They use their emotions, moods and feelings to work for them. These EI project managers stay motivated in difficult times, bounce back quickly from setbacks, and handle well the troubling issues involving customers, team members and stakeholders. Last year, Dr. Hank Weisinger outlined the overarching themes of EI. This year, Terry Schmidt, Founder of ManagementPro and a co-author with Dr. Weisinger, and who teaches Emotional Intelligence at MIT, will present his practical consulting experience in the implementation and employment of EI in IT and Product Development environments.. His presentation will outline practical response strategies to handling the most difficult product and project management situations identified in their recent research. To be effective may require changed behavior, but the payout will be your new ability to deal more effectively with hostile stakeholders, gain trust in team relationships, and manage anxiety in turbulent times.

The triple constraints in portfolio management are strategic alignment, value/benefits and demand/resources. In the investment portfolio, we focus on value, where we look for the best return on the cash available. From the demand angle, the focus is on resources and capacity. The available resources and capacity are first defined. Resources are then allocated to projects until the capacity is reached. The issue is: which projects get the limited resources? With structured, integrated demand management, we can develop a portfolio of high-value projects, while staying within the defined capacity. Dr. Shan Rajegopal, Head of the PPM Practice for Pcubed in Europe, will highlight, with case examples, how some companies get the best value from their projects through a rational system of project selection, demand management and portfolio management processes, using a robust PPM tool as the core of a multi-functional system.