Date: May 05/01/14 8:37 PM Subject: [BBLISA-announce] May BBLISA talk: IT Project Management From: John P. Rouillard Hello All: The May BBLISA talk will be done by one of the original BBLISA members. On Wednesday, May 14, 2014 the talk will be "IT Project Management" by Peg Schafer. 20 years ago SAGE was defining IT job skills sets for HR departments. Today (no surprise) IT departments are the heart beat of the enterprise. With burgeoning budgets and even more complex technologies management is trying to get more of a handle on their IT processes and align them with standard management methodologies. Sometimes with good results. I will touch on TQM, ITIL, PMP & Agile practices and why some practices work and some do not. Much of it depends on the culture of the enterprise. Managing projects at large enterprises (e.g. Microsoft), higher education (e.g. Harvard) and startups is vastly different and requires a large bag of tricks. A major issue of project management is who is "The Boss"? Is it the technical lead, a non-technical manager or the project manager? In IT, it is often the technical leader that is the real boss, regardless of titles. Most Project Managers come from a business background. But IT Project Managers better be able to understand the technical aspects of IT. If an IT Project Manager asks naive questions like "Do you really need fail over for DNS?" They will be abused and ignored by the technical staff. Hence, many IT professionals see Project Managers as someone to avoid. Management hears "The IT department is not cooperating" from the Project Management staff. I will share my horror stories, but actually explain how Good IT Project Management can help your IT department be more successful. Peg is the Senior Technical Project Manager for Starfish Storage. The meeting will be held at MIT in building E-51, Room 149 starting at 7PM. More details: http://www.bblisa.org/ -- -- rouilj John Rouillard =========================================================================== My employers don't acknowledge my existence much less my opinions. _______________________________________________ bblisa-announce mailing list bblisa-announce@bblisa.org http://www.bblisa.org/mailman/listinfo/bblisa-announce