53. Knowledge into Practice: Agile

In the second of our 3-part series from University of Maryland's 2018 Project Management symposium, we feature excerpts from presentations in the Agile track: Jeff Dalton on Agility for Leaders; Jason Dunn on Deciding When to Save or Shut Down a Project; Sean Eddings on The Traffic Fallacy; Bruce Gay on Design Thinking; Christopher Harris & John Johnson on ECM and FIRE - A Framework for Rapid Acquisition; and Susan Parente on Agile Quantitative Risk Analysis.

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About the Speakers

Jeff Dalton is Chief Evangelist at AgileCxO.org, an R&D organization that studies Agile leadership and develops Agile performance models. Mr. Dalton is also President of Broadsword Solutions Corporation, a process innovation firm, where he also serves as an Agile instructor, leadership coach, CMMI SCAMPI Lead Appraiser, and CMMI Instructor. He is Chairman of the CMMI Institute Partner Advisory Board and is principal author of the CMMI Institute publication A Guide to Scrum and CMMI: Improving Agile Performance with CMMI. Mr. Dalton holds degrees in music and computer science and builds experimental aircraft in his spare time. He can be reached at Agileleader@Agilecxo.org.

Jason Dunn has spent nearly 30 years in projects across a wide variety of industries, and in a variety of roles: Project Manager, Change Manager, Business Analyst, and Tester. In addition, he has worked with many Fortune 100 companies to assess and improve their project management maturity and processes. As part of this work, he has stood up PMOs as well as assessed and improved existing PMO using a data-driven assessment framework. Recently, Jason has developed a training program based on an industry standard maturity framework aimed at assessing, and then improving, companies' portfolio development and management capabilities.

At present, he is the PM Community Program Director in Freddie Mac's EPMO, which is committed to improving PM maturity and capabilities through education, networking, facilitation, and knowledge management. He is a PMP, CSM, CSPO, and Certified Change Manager.

Sean Eddings, Senior Producer and Agile Coach at Last Call Media, is a passionate agile-lean practitioner with close to a decade of experience coaching multidisciplinary technology teams. He enjoys helping teams design, visualize, and continuously evolve their own process to ultimately deliver business value with increasing predictability. Sean is a Certified ScrumMaster.

Bruce W. Gay, PMP, has over 20 years of experience managing programs and customer relationships across healthcare IT, telecommunications and defense industries. Currently a Senior Program Manager at UPMC Enterprises (the commercialization arm of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center), Bruce manages a multi-million dollar program to develop the next generation of Radiology Informatics systems. Over the past decade, Bruce has managed creative teams that incorporated UX Design & Design Thinking methodologies into their product development processes.

Bruce shares his experiences and ideas around Design Thinking on twitter as @brucegay

Christopher Harris studied International Business and Finance at the University of Tampa and obtained a Masters of Accountancy w/ an IT Focus from the University of South Florida. He applied his learning in the heavily-regulated banking and insurance industries, which, equipped him to understand the interaction of business processes and law and blend them in a way that yields productivity in daily operations. Later he moved to Northern Virginia and entered Government contracting, where he applied the same passion for results where he blended customer requirements, law and regulation, and business savvy to achieve uncommon results.

As a Bytecubed consultant, he works with Government acquisition officials to develop innovative acquisition strategies against the backdrop of current law, policy, and agency processes.

John Johnson, serves as the Chief Technology Officer for Softek Enterprises LLC, a minority-owned small business providing technology solutions to government clients since 2007. Softek specializes in evolving business systems using Agile, DevOps, and Cloud technologies to deliver working solutions faster for the government's most critical IT challenges. He has 10 years of project management, systems engineering, and advanced analytics experience. Mr. Johnson has led multiple award-winning Agile projects in civilian and defense agencies using Scrum and Disciplined Agile Delivery methods.

Susan Parente is a project engineer, consultant, speaker, author, and mentor who leads large complex IT software implementation projects, and the establishment of Enterprise PMOs. She has 19+ years experience leading software and business development projects in the private and public sectors, including a decade of experience implementing IT projects for the DoD and other federal government agencies. Ms. Parente is also an Associate Professor at Post University in CT. She has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Rochester in NY and an MS in Engineering Management from George Washington University in DC. She also has a number of certifications, most of which she teaches and she is a CMMI and ISO 9001 Practitioner.

Ms. Parente is a Principal Consultant at S3 Technologies, LLC, which focuses on revitalizing projects through the use of risk management and implementing Agile practices.