UCSC Extension in Silicon Valley

In the previous blog, I provided you with a link to a blog about a problem-solving tool that I am describing in detail on the SD Forum Engineering Leadership SIG (ELSIG) blog site: http://sdforumelsig.blogspot.com/search?q=matt+schlegel
And, while you will find the steps of that problem-solving approach in the ELSIG blog, I include them here for your reference:
 
 
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Can the perfect process weather the perfect storm ?
In the first two parts of this series we saw what the mechanics are of introducing processes and how processes can be tailored to your project(s). So now you’ve got the perfect process, but you’re still not meeting timelines or quality and performance objectives ! Why ? More often [...]

The task of managing project processes usually falls upon the project management organization. This, in my opinion, is a good thing. The project leaders have the the ear of the management team, the trust of the project teams, and a unique cross-functional perspective.
I was once asked by the CTO of an engineering organization to help him design the “RIGHT” project process for his [...]

In my first post about Project Management and Knowledge Management I spoke about Collaboration, in this second post I will talk about after-action reviews.
After-action review also known as a project snap-shot, lessons learned, or any number of other names is an important Knowledge Management activity to complete at the end of a project. They don’t [...]

It had all the earmarks of a disaster, a real career-sinker of a project. And here was my old friend and former colleague calling me up enthusiastically, on the phone: “Hey Lisa, we need a Technical Project Manager for this start-up I’m working for, in Redwood Shores… you’ll love the project and the team. It’s [...]

As Project Managers, I’m sure we’ve all seen the kind of scenario where there is a project team member who is generally uncooperative or can’t seem to get the tasks done on time – and the different approaches you can take in order to solve this problem. You can take the dictatorial “Do as I [...]

Taking advantage of the social networks that we PMs have started to form on LinkedIn, I did some polling in early 2009 to gauge the interest level (see post below) in the brand-spanking-new PMBOK(R) Guide.
Using a completely non-scientific scale that I made up in 17.4 seconds, and asking the question on the larger LinkedIn Groups [...]

Agile development methodologies put forth a set of guidelines for helping to navigate the complex world of software development.   For agile to be truly effective, it needs to be supported throughout the organization, and encourages reaching out to the customers.  In working with the agile projects at different companies, I found challenges in getting [...]

Good Requirement Management is perhaps the most important factor in many projects’ successes or failures.  Some research had mentioned that it can be as high as 65%.   Requirement specification greatly affects the scope of the project, which in turn affects the resource and time required.  In this blog, I will share my thoughts and [...]

Every program manager has run into the same situation at some point in their career. You put together your program plan with lots of spreadsheets, Gantt charts, requirements documents, resource requirements, risk management plan, etc. You present the plan to management and everything goes reasonably well until you start to talk about risks and how [...]