Archive for April 9th, 2012

The Agile Business Analyst

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Live Webinar – April 16th 2012, 12:00-1:00 PM EDT
Offered by ASPE (REP 2161) 1 Category A PDU – Free PDU
This is a 1 hour seminar and attendees will be awarded 1 PDU for participating

There is a lot of confusion, misconceptions, and heated debates about the role of a business analyst in Agile projects.

Think of it this way: Agile projects, like all projects, have requirements—and requirements are not just “user stories.” There is a need to go from high-level stories to the detailed requirements needed to implement specific functionality.

In this web seminar, we will explore the role of a business analyst in that requirements-development process, and discover other ways a business analyst adds value to an Agile project throughout its life cycle.

Presenter: Kris Ashton (LinkedIn profile)

Click to register for The Agile Business Analyst

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Live Webinar – April 13th 2012, 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT
Offered by: Global Knowledge UK (REP 1999)
Duration: 1 hour 1 PDU / 1 CDU Credits: 1 PDU Category A – Free PDU

Note: Although Global Knowledge is an REP this opportunity may not have a course number Contact Global Knowledge for further information.

In this hour-long webinar by Global Knowledge instructor and ITIL Expert Michael Scarborough (LinkedIn profile), you will learn how to study for and succeed in passing ITIL Intermediate Exams.

You will learn:

  • How to approach an ITIL Intermediate exam
  • The true/false approach and why it works
  • How to study for the ITIL Intermediate exams

Click to register for How to Study for and Pass ITIL Intermediate Exams

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Live Webinar – April 11th, 2011 11:30 am – 12:30 pm EDT
Presented by: Instantis
Duration: 1 Hour 1 Category B PDU Free

Staying the course, even with consistently strong operational performance, is no longer enough to compete and survive in a world characterized by rapid change. Organizations and their leaders must adapt to intensifying competition, business climate change, and customers that are constantly demanding more for less. As a result, executives won’t sleep well at night until they are more comfortable with their organization’s speed and agility with respect to business strategy course adjustment and execution capabilities.

Strategic projects, programs and initiatives are the agents of change within an organization. As a result, business-driven PMOs charged with enabling or delivering successful transformational projects and programs can make the difference between thriving organizations and those that fail to survive.

The problem is that PPM initiatives and PMOs don’t have a consistent track record of success. Their failures can be traced to their inability to identify and address six critical “business alignment” success factors.This Webinar will define and contrast business-driven PMOs with traditional PMOs, describe the six critical alignment success factors and offer some suggestions on how to get started with business-driven PMO systems.

PDU info as detailed by Instantis:
Category B PDU
Title is Ultimate Guide to Business-Driven PMO
Number of hours: 1
Company Name: Instantis
Company Address: 3005 Bunker Hill Lane, Santa Clara, CA 95054
Phone Number: 1 (408) 986-8800
Website: http://www.instantis.com/

Click to register for The Ultimate Guide to Business-Driven PMO Success

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Live Webinar – 2 Successive Wednesdays
April 18th & 25th, 2012 – 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm EDT
Presented by: The Gabriel Institute
Duration: Total of 4 Hours (2 events 2 hrs each) 4 Category C PDUs – Free PDU

This is a MUST TAKE opportunity – If you are setting up your own teams this provides a terrific framework to help you understand the strengths of your potential team members placing them in the roles that will make your projects even more successful. I took this session and was very impressed with the usefulness of the material and the “payoff” it provided!

For those of you setting up agile teams with strong roles – This helps you understand the strengths of your team and set up the best matches to make your projects even more successful!

– Edmonton PM

NOTE: This registration is for 2 consecutive Wednesdays – The instructional segment is delivered in four modules, each one contact hour, given in webinar format in two, two-hour sessions. This course is also approved for four hours of HRCI recertification credit

When work requires close collaboration, even the most extraordinary individual effort is no substitute for great teamwork. TGI Teamabilityâ„¢ is a completely new online behavioral assessment for hiring, workforce planning, coaching, and team-building. Project Managers need to be able to create strong teams. Many teams are strongly role based and a solid understanding of Teamability will assist in choosing and developing agile team members.

The Gabriel Institute has created technology that reveals how people will perform when working with others to solve problems, overcome obstacles, and achieve common goals. In short, it measures Teamability: the ability to connect with others to form a productive team.

Individual strengths can lead to a personal triumph, but a team is greater than the sum of its parts. TGI Teamabilityâ„¢ identifies behaviors that impact quality of team interaction and ‘fit’ to job responsibilities: the ‘who fits where’ and the ‘why’ of winning teams. With Teamability, you can reliably hire ‘the best of the best’, identify and resolve team performance problems, and build a strong, resilient human infrastructure

There are many ways to measure skills, talents, and traits, but teaming metrics are unique. It took 25 years of research and testing – including 9 years of software development – to produce TGI Teamabilityâ„¢ reports, which are the foundation of TGI’s Role-Based Approach to selecting, structuring, managing and motivating teams.

Organizations of every type and size experience the cost and pain of human performance failings, and are highly vulnerable to the ‘collateral damage’ that results from hiring the wrong people. TGI Teamabilityâ„¢ makes it possible to reliably select high quality team players, and to match their job responsibilities to the way they envision themselves serving their team (their ‘Role’).

TGI Teamability was designed from its very beginnings to measure and predict the quality of a person’s team interaction.

TGI Teamability can greatly reduce the costs and risks associated with errors in hiring and promoting, while delivering significant business value by matching people to the functional mission of their team. It is also highly effective in analyzing and solving team performance problems.

This certification course is a comprehensive overview of Teamability and CHI methods. It prepares learners to provide basic support to users of TGI Teamabilityâ„¢, and to apply for an optional Certification. Certification requires passing a written examination and meeting TGI’s modest standards for ongoing participation.

Course content includes:

  • Participant’s own Teamability Report at no additional cost
  • Four contact hours of training, including all materials
  • Readings to be completed during course attendance
  • Brief written certification examination to measure comprehension of course materials and applications (optional to complete)

PDU Category C documentation details:

Process Groups: Executing

Knowledge Areas: 9 – Human Resources

  • 9.2 Acquire Project Team
  • 9.3 Develop Project Team
  • 9.4 Manage Project Team

As a Category C ‘Self Directed Learning Activity’ remember to document your learning experience and its relationship to project management for your ‘PDU Audit Trail Folder’

Click to register for What Is Your Teamability? Understanding the Natural Roles that Your Team Members Best Fill with a Role Based Approach

Avoiding Communication Pitfalls

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Live Webinar April 11th, 2012 11:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT
Duration: 1 hour live webinar Credits: 1 PDU Category B – Free PDU
Presented by PROJECTinsight (Metafuse Inc)

What is the number one job of the project manager? Communicate! Communicate! Communicate!

Everyone says it’s important and yet good communication can be hard to come by. What can you do to avoid communication pitfalls and keep everyone in the loop?

Webinar Objectives:

  1. Identify symptoms of poor communication
  2. Use the communication model to assess breakdowns
  3. Describe steps to improve project communications
  4. Define best practices to implement within Project Insight

Who should attend:

  • Project managers
  • Project team members
  • Project sponsors & function/business unit managers,
  • Portfolio managers,
  • Project Leads,
  • Subject Matter Experts
  • Business Analysts,
  • Scheduling Specialists and ….
  • Other business stakeholders.

Click to register for Avoiding Communication Pitfalls

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Live Webinar April 17th, 2012, 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm EDT
Webinar Duration: 1 Hour Credits: 1 Category C PDU – Free PDU
Presented by: Linkage

  • Can we quantify the value of a highly inclusive environment?
  • Can we measure the impact of inclusion and diversity on an organization’s ability to collaborate and innovate?

These intriguing questions have been at the source of Cisco’s latest thought leadership initiatives.

They’ve recently completed a series of groundbreaking primary research studies to explore and quantify the links between inclusive business practices, effective use of collaboration solutions, and the value driven from the intersection of inclusion, technology, and collaboration.

In this engaging, interactive session you will:

  • explore the data and key take-a-ways from the survey of 816 cross-industry line leaders, as well as groups of CIOs and CDOs from organizations of all sizes
  • understand the impact of the “In-Factor” on driving collaboration and innovation
  • discover how you can leverage this critical data within your I&D strategies

Shari Slate (LinkedIn profile) is Chief Inclusion and Collaboration Strategist within Cisco’s Americas Sales Organization. She is responsible for making inclusion relevant in the revenue generating arm of the business and leveraging inclusion to create value for Cisco, its partners, and customers.

In addition to driving an inclusion strategy designed to attract and select new talent, develop and engage existing talent, and create an inclusive environment within the sales organization, Shari’s team leads thought leadership focused on the tangible business value of inclusion and the links between inclusion, collaboration, and innovation.

PDU Category C documentation details:

Process Groups: Executing
Knowledge Areas: 4- Integration 9 – Human Resources

  • 4.3 Direct and Monitor Project Execution
  • 9.3 Develop Project Team
  • 9.4 Manage Project Team

As a Category C ‘Self Directed Learning Activity’ remember to document your learning experience and its relationship to project management for your ‘PDU Audit Trail Folder’

Click to register for The In-Factor: Links Between Technology, Inclusion & Collaboration