Michael Nir

1/19/2016 - Chapter Meeting Keynote and Education

The Agile PMO practical value driven change leadership in projects and portfolios

Conclusive research findings inform us that many PMO roll-outs are disbanded in two years. Yet. we repeat the same mistakes in our PMO implementations - wasting money, resources and time. In this presentation we explore the causes for PMO blunders. We investigate the many pitfalls the PMOs fall into, and together answer questions such as: -What is the strategic role of the value driven PMO in business
-What are the different useful roles a PMO can undertake?
-What is the pivotal role of the PMO in portfolio and resource management?
-How can the Agile PMO contribute to the marrying of Waterfall top down and Agile?

Key take away, a PMO must deliver value to the organization constantly. Value isn't template, tools and processes rather it is the ability to finish the right projects faster!

John G. Stenbeck

1/29/2016 - Workshop

Masters Course: Estimating & Risk Management in an Agile World

More than ever before Estimating and Risk Management must be well understood, professionally executed and integrated into project planning and execution. You must be able to apply key techniques while your team is developing their estimates so your project will drive to success… not failure!

John Laurence Busch

2/16/2016 - Chapter Meeting Keynote

Project Management Presentation: Building the First "Steamship" in History

Historian and author John Laurence Busch will attempt to re-calibrate your mind before showing why the proposition of making the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by a "steamship" was met with a mixture of skepticism and fear.  Then he will show how Captain Moses Rogers used a variety of project management techniques to complete this revolutionary vessel... nearly two centuries ago!  
The presentation is based upon his book, "STEAM COFFIN: Captain Moses Rogers and The Steamship Savannah Break the Barrier."

Trish Kelley

2/16/2016 - Chapter Meeting Education 

PDU Reporting Rules Update

PMI Global is changing how we must report PDUs beginning 12/1/2015

Kimi Hirotsu Ziemski

2/18/2016 - Workshop

Killer Competencies that Drive Your Success!

Learn how to leverage technical expertise with another great competency - clear communications. Teams that communicate well execute beautifully - and have a lot more fun doing it!

Jeany Park

3/15/2016 - Chapter Meeting Keynote

How to Leverage Video in Business, aka Stop Hiding from the Camera!

This talk is but a nuts 'n bolts breakdown of how business professionals can leverage video in their day to day practices, in addition to an inspirational mindset lesson on how to "how to unhide" from the camera, and start playing big onscreen and in business. Video is the future of all content online, and the future has already begun. According to the research, executives don't want to read content anymore, they want to watch it. Video conferencing is becoming bigger and bigger - and this is only the beginning. When business professionals shy away from the camera, they are usually also shying away from one or more other areas in their life. There is great value in dealing with these triggers head on, and learning to lean into your business persona, playing big for yourself as well as for your team, and showing up authentically and fully in business role, and in your life. This talk is designed with both extroverts and introverts in mind.

Geoff Weinberg

3/15/2016 - Chapter Meeting Education

Video conferencing in project management: no more sleeping remote employees!

Describe what attendees will learn in 150 words or less.
Geoff will lead an open discussion of the role of video conferencing in Project Management and will touch on the following topics.

• Why use video conferencing?
• Video conferencing technology
• Tips for using video effectively

Alan Smith

3/15/2016 - Chapter Meeting Education

Video collaboration products: Logitech video conferencing!

Jeff Oltman

3/16 & 3/17, 2016 - Workshop

Portfolio Management: Linking Organizational Strategy to Execution

Samad Aidane

4/15/2016 - Workshop

Leading with Cultural Intelligence: The Art and Science of Leading Multicultural Teams

The workshop will move participants beyond the simple dos and don’ts of cultural awareness to a more sophisticated understanding and appreciation of cultural differences. Participants will come away with a greater understanding of the challenges of leading multicultural teams and the skills required to effectively lead people and change in cross-cultural contexts. This workshop earns you 8 PDUs.

Paul Pelletier

4/19/2016 - Chapter Meeting Keynote

Bullying in Project Management – The Canary in the Coal Mine

Bullying in project management is a global reality. It is also becoming recognized as a workplace hazard and many countries have passed legislation making it illegal. As of April 21, 2015, 31 US legislatures have introduced the Healthy Workplace Bill. The purpose of this Act is to provide legal redress for employees who have been harmed psychologically, physically or economically by deliberate exposure to abusive work environments and to provide legal incentives for employers to prevent and respond to abusive treatment of employees at work. The Act includes employer liability provisions for enabling a health-harming abusive work environment. Consequently, every organization and project manager should have the information necessary to identify bullying and the capacity to effectively address it.

This presentation introduces the issue of disrespectful workplace behavior (DWB) and workplace bullying and its impact on projects, project management professionals, and organizations. DWB can be as harmful at work and on our projects as it is in schools and other areas of society. Paul knows this from personal experience and will share his story and how it led to the work he does today.

Research shows more than 70% of workers in the US have been impacted by DWB. Employers around the world are becoming more informed of the many negative impacts and costs associated with DWB and reviewing their policies and responses to DWB. Until recently, such behavior and organizational responses were an internal matter. However, in alignment with other western countries, the US is rapidly moving to make such behavior illegal, identifying it as a health-hazard to workers. In preparation for HWB becoming law, there are many proactive, preventative measures that employers can take to mitigate the legal, reputational, financial and operational risks and improve the workplace environment.

Brad Hermanson

4/19/2016 - Chapter Meeting Education 

Building a Better Brain: Improving Your Project Decision-Making

How often do you make decisions when you are managing a project? More than likely, if you consider every type and size decision you make, they are very frequent. In fact, making decisions is the activity project managers and project teams do most.
Not every decision we make matters equally though. Some decisions are relatively inconsequential. On the other hand, many decisions have high consequence to the results we want to achieve on our projects.
Behavioral decision scientists have shown us that our brains are primed to make decision errors. Human decision frailties and decision errors are prevalent on projects. Despite the importance of decision-making to project success, there has been very little information available regarding decision-making specific to project management. In this presentation you'll learn how our brains make decisions and the problems that are created by our normal decision processes and a step-by-step process to correct decision problems.

Paul Pelletier

4/20/2016 - Workshop

Bullying in Project Management – the canary in the coalmine

The legal risk environment will change with the introduction of the issues of workplace bullying and its impact on projects, project management professionals, and organizations.  Bullying can be as harmful on our projects as it is in schools and other areas of society.  Become acquainted with the many proactive, preventative measures that project managers can take to mitigate the risks of project bullying and improve the workplace environment for everyone. This workshop earns you 8 PDUs.

James T. Brown Ph.D.

5/24/2016 - Chapter Meeting Keynote

Risk Management— Texas Hold’em Tactics for the Project Manager

Texas Hold’em has seen an explosion in popularity since the World Poker Championships have been featured on TV. Part of this popularity is the easiness of the game to learn, the rush of winning, and the luck factor that is involved. Playing the game is simple. Winning consistently is not simple. The winning Texas Hold’em player has two tactics that project managers must also have to be successful.

• Ability to make probabilistic assessments
• Ability to read human behavior as it responds to risk

Just like the Texas Hold’em player, project managers must deal with uncertainty and work with humans. This keynote presentation will provide the project manager with tips for probabilistic assessments and an understanding of human behavior as it specifically relates to risk.

Connie Plowman

5/24/2016 - Chapter Meeting Education

Growing your PM Leadership Toolkit

Leaders are learners. Whether you are just getting started in project management, or in the middle of your PM career, or have extensive project management experience, your Leadership Tool Kit needs to constantly grow.
This interactive education session focuses on practical, hands-on tools and techniques that you can immediately use as a leader – or long-term ideas to consider as an emerging leader, practitioner, mentor or coach. And you will walk away with an “action plan” for getting started.
Together, we will explore leadership skills involving:
• Strategy – working at the 30,000 foot level to achieve long-term goals and supporting the vision
• Action – turning that strategy into action through communication, decision making, and leading through change
• Results – delivering on our commitments, inspiring and empowering, making things happen

An added bonus is a list of suggested Leadership Books and Websites to continue growing your tool kit.
Since leadership is a key element in PMI’s Talent Triangle, this is an excellent place to grow your leadership skills. Leaders are learners. Join us for this informative and fun learning experience! 

James T. Brown Ph.D

5/25/2016 - Workshop

Conflict Management for Project Managers

When improperly handled, conflicts can create barriers to organizational efficiency that can linger and/or spill over to other areas outside of the original situation. You will learn how to best handle conflicts with a focus on prevention. When properly handled, conflicts are resolved in a manner that maintains relationships and produces mutually agreeable outcomes. This workshop earns you 8 PDUs.

Todd Williams

6/10/2016 - Workshop

Organization Change Management for Project Teams

Organizations the world over struggle to make changes stick. This class is designed to integrate change management in the project when the product is first realized in a manner that end-users can see and feel the upcoming change and take ownership of it. This workshop helps PMO managers, executive sponsors, project managers, and their project teams understand why and how to make change last. 

Greg Smith

6/16 & 17, 2016 - Workshop

Certified Scaled Agilist Workshop

The SAFe® Agilist certification program is for executives, managers and Agile change agents responsible for leading a Lean-Agile change initiative in a large software enterprise. It validates their knowledge in applying the Scaled Agile Framework, lean thinking, and product development flow principles in an enterprise context so they can lead the adoption of the Scaled Agile Framework.

This Leading SAFe® workshop will show you how to deliver large projects with multiple teams and how Agile works at the portfolio and program levels. 

Sandeep Patil

6/14/2016 - Chapter Meeting Keynote

Are you a Project Manager or a Quality Manager? Wait, aren't they the same? :)

Mark Liebe

6/14/2016 - Chapter Meeting Education 

Agile @ the City

Agile project-delivery methods are ideal for projects requiring a high degree of team coordination, rapid deliverables, and management of scope changes. Agile has been applied to software projects for nearly two decades, and now the methods are slowly making their way into other types of work. This presentation will show recent uses of Agile within the City of Portland's Bureau of Environmental Services. After initial successes in planning-level applications, the City implemented varoius Agile methods – predominantly Scrum and Kanban - across various design phases of a CIP project involving sewer pipe and stormwater facilities.

John Canfield

9/20/2016 - Chapter Meeting Keynote

Leading Change - One Thing That Will Remain the Same Change Will Continue to Occur

As it’s been said, “The future’s not what it used to be.”  We experience change every day. In business, in our communities, in our homes, in our churches. Often change has a bad rap. We are creatures of comfort and don’t mind things staying the same for a while so we can enjoy the good times, enjoy a rest, not have to think about it.

Nick Anderson

9/20/2016 - Chapter Meeting Education 

Why Bother Measuring Change?

Most of our 1000+ survey contributors do measure change, but:
•37% either don’t measure change or
•Don’t know if they do or
•Feel that measuring change is too difficult
So, here’s some evidence why this is worth struggling with. For example, learning is the most mentioned benefit of measuring change (27.1%). Yet, if this is so important then why the lack of focus on vehicles like coaching, mentoring and training to capitalize on this learning.Another striking disconnect is the low numbers of those who see benefits of measuring change’s impact on marketing and customers. This is curious, as our contributors' most common reason for losing customers is not price but poor quality (92.2%), poor follow-up by sales people (76.5%) and making the wrong assumptions about customers (64.5%). After detailed analysis, it would seem that the relationship between change and competitive advantage is not as clearly visualized as one might think. In addition, the use of employee metrics including personal performance, resistance to change, improvement to company culture and understanding our purpose, are low compared to satisfaction surveys. Most concerning is the lack of focus on individual behavioral change and tracking pay-related rewards. This is further evidence of little focus on accountability and establishing a requiring environment. Overall, there needs to be more focus on developing effective change metrics.
The challenge is: How well do your change metrics accelerate learning, problem solving and decision making?
So, What Questions do Change Metrics Need to Answer, for:
•Navigating during a Change?
•Reviewing a Change?
•Planning the Next Change?
Agreeing on those questions which the team needs to answer then informs decisions on what current metrics could be put to good use and which new ones are needed.Actionable Value for this presentation covers using a new questionnaire to start validating which questions are most important for your organization.

PMI Portland Chapter Instructors

9/20/2016-11/1/2016 - Certification Prep Course

PMP/CAPM Exam Prep

Prepare for PMP or CAPM certification through the Portland Chapter of the Project Management Institute. Experienced project leaders ready to become certified Project Management Professionals (PMP), and those looking to establish credibility in the application of project management processes as a Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM), will both benefit from this course as they prepare for the Project Management Institute (PMI) examination.

John Canfield

9/21/2016 - Workshop

Strategic Planning – The Future’s Not What it Used to Be

Strategic Planning: Create an operational planning document that guides company leaders and employees, and improves the executive team's ability to identify, prioritize, and assigns opportunities, and contributes to improved company performance. This is a very interactive workshop letting team tables develop a complete strategic plan. The associated Study Guide provides steps and resources for further facilitation training and support.

Ken Whitaker

10/14/2016 - Half Day Workshop

Rapid Product Definition and Validation: An Immersive Collaboration Workshop

Too often, a project falls apart due to improper planning, turf wars, lack of focus, and the inevitable ill-defined requirements. Using an agile approach does not guarantee success either. This fast-paced workshop guides project planning, definition, and validation in early stage development. Experience how a well-focused, collaborative team can produce amazing results.

Mohan Nair

10/18/2016 - Chapter Meeting Keynote

How to Innovate When Markets Transform

Mohan is accountable for bringing innovation as a value into all 25 portfolio companies under the $9 billion health solutions company.
He leads Innovation Force, an accelerator/incubator, which has launched purpose built startups, accelerated challenges to solutions and is known throughout the Blue Cross Blue Shield network as leaders in innovation.

Martha Brooke

10/18/2016 - Chapter Meeting Education 

Get Your Survey Out of a Rut, Get a Better Survey

Could your survey be tuning customers out? It’s practically a given that every company will issue a customer satisfaction survey. But it’s not a given that every survey will improve customer satisfaction—or even uncover your gaps and opportunities. There is a better way. In this session, participants will see a few mistakes companies commonly make with their customer feedback programs. Then, participants will learn about a 6-step process that leads to truly accurate data and paves the way for positive change.

Line Mortak

11/15/2016 - Chapter Meeting Keynote

How can complex systems theory expand our management tool box?

Our world is increasingly becoming more complex but this doesn’t automatically mean things are more complicated! Many systems thinkers, including the European Management guru Jurgen Appelo, believe we should view organizations as complex adaptive systems similar to that of our immune system or similar to the self-organization which takes place in an anthill. But how do we control and manage such a complex system? Well, it simply doesn’t work to centrally try to control a complex system; we need new management ideas and tools (version 3.0). In this talk we will explore how we can harness the innovative potential in our organizations through empowering our teams to selforganize. We will also discuss ways to support the growth of organizational and team cultures with a natural curiosity and readiness for micro-experimentations.

Line Mørkbak

11/15/2016- Chapter Meeting Education 

How to target a communication style that’s effective with a culturally diverse team

It’s professionally exciting to be part of today’s global work environment. That being said there are also many real challenges linked to such a culturally diverse business reality. In this talk we will highlight the many benefits we can gain - both individually and as organizations - when we are courageous enough to emerge ourselves in today’s cultural complexity. But the challenges are real and the talk will also explore how we can overcome some of the challenges by developing new business practices and enhancing our communication style. Many global teams are challenged by having several cultures represented, and often the question arise: How do we communicate so it’s effective to the many different communication styles represented? Do the native English speakers dominate? Is location of HQ the overwriting factor? Can we truly target over communication style so we are engaging and including all the different voices on a global team?

Line Mørkbak

11/18/2016 - Workshop

Expand your Global Mindset – Go beyond Cultural Hardwiring

Whenever we interact with our colleagues, team members, or clients we need a successful outcome of that interaction. If our counterpart is based in a different geography than us or has a cultural background that differs from our own, we need to learn skills to be effective in our collaboration. We need to expand our mindset to go beyond our preferred communication style and our cultural hardwiring. 

Mike Goss

12/5 - 12/8/2016 - PMP/CAPM Exam Prep Bootcamp 

Prepare for PMP or CAPM certification through the Portland Chapter of the Project Management Institute. Experienced project leaders ready to become certified Project Management Professionals (PMP), and those looking to establish credibility in the application of project management processes as a Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM), will both benefit from this course as they prepare for the Project Management Institute (PMI) examination.

Diana Larsen

12/20/2016 - Chapter Meeting Keynote

Courageously, Compassionately, Confidently Learning: A 21st Century Role for Project Managers

In recent years, learning has emerged as a key competency for every organization, and for everyone from the boardroom to the executive suite to the front line. In this talk, Diana Larsen, celebrates the learning project manager. You’ll discover how to recognize the courage of a leader who can see, embrace, and learn from mistakes You’ll appreciate the confidence of a project manager who leads boldly with assurance that we can navigate an emerging future. During these final days of 2016. we’ll celebrate the heroic learner potential in all of us.

Diana Larsen

12/20/2016 - Chapter Meeting Education 

Creating Environments for Team Learning

Are you working with a team of knowledge workers? Are you a member of such a team? Project leaders who can design and equip environments for team learning gain a critical skill for enabling successful knowledge work. These environments celebrate the heroic learner potential in all of us. In this session, you’ll practice setting the conditions for maximum learning for your teams. You’ll leave with five crucial guidelines for heroic learners.