Looking for a way to brush up on your management and leadership skills with a limited training budget? Want to hear some fresh ideas about dealing with conflict, creating project success, and working on agile teams? This new teleseminar might be a great opportunity for you.
Even though the summit is aimed at project management professionals, the agenda looks enticing for business analysts too. About half of the agenda items show a nice overlap with the business analyst knowledge areas and the project management topics could be relevant if you fill a blended BA/PM role or are thinking of moving up into a BA lead or management role.
**Be sure to read the last section on how to win a free pass!
Coming in March 8-10: The Project Management Telesummit
Samad Aidane has interviewed some of the leading and emerging voices in Project Managements on his Guerrilla Project Management blog and podcast. Some of the names are Dr. Harold Kerzner, Neal Whitten, and Rick Morris to name a few.
Now, he’s called on fifteen of today’s dynamic and engaging thought leaders in Project Management to share with you their insights on how to deliver successful projects and to stay ahead despite today’s challenging and turbulent business climate.
The event will be held on March 8-10, 2011, and registration is now open.
You can attend this live, online “virtual” event from the comfort of your home, office, or anywhere in between. Even better, all Telesummit presentations will be recorded. If you are unable to attend the live sessions as they happen, you can watch the recording when it is most convenient to you.
Speakers and Agenda
Here are the speakers confirmed for the telesummit:
- Rick Morris: Stop Playing Games! A Project Manager’s Guide to Successfully Navigating Organizational Politics
- Peter Taylor: The Art of Productive Laziness
- Dr. Margery Mayer: Global Communications; what does it means in today’s business?
- Dr. Steven Flannes: Recognizing and Resolving Project Conflict
- Traci Duez: Change is Impossible Unless You Change Your Mind
- Dana Brownlee: The Secrets to Running Project Status Meetings that WORK!!
- Richard B. Sheridan: Agile and the Business Value of Joy
- Bernardo Tirado: How Does Understanding Human Behavior Increase Your Project Success Rate?
- Jason Fair: Agile in large Enterprise System Integration projects
- Todd Williams: Improving Project Inception
- Steve Martin: Consulting Secrets for Project Managers
- Geoff Crane: The Soft Skill Salsa: An Examination of Destructive Behaviors in Project Managers
- Tres Roeder: A Sixth Sense for Project Management
- Patricia Garofano: Look before you Leap: Managing the Successful Vendor Transition Project
- Brian Munroe: Rescue My Project – An Overview of Troubled Projects and How We Deal with Them”
- Dr. Ginger Levin: Building and Maintaining Relationships and Making Effective Decisions
This is an ideal opportunity to get a conference experience without all the cost and hassle of travel (no hotel, rental car, or wasted time).
Space is limited so I encourage you to register as soon as possible. The PM Telesummit is offering a special discount for Business Analysts to attend at a discount rate of only $47. To take advantage of this discount, use promotional code BASPECIAL when you register online at: http://pmtelesummit1.eventbrite.com
Still not sure? Get information on Registration, Speakers, and Agenda.
How to win a free pass
Samad Aidane, the telesummit organizer, has graciously donated 2 free passes to Bridging the Gap. So, we’re going to host a quick and dirty contest.
Here’s how to enter the contest.
- Read the Speaker and Agenda list.
- Leave a comment letting us know what you think the most relevant topic is for you as a business analyst and why.
- On Monday, February 21st, at 5 pm MST, I’ll be randomly selecting two comments and those individuals will receive the free passes. At that time comments will be closed and winners will be notified via email.
P.S. You know I’m always upfront about how Bridging the Gap earns revenue from the professional development opportunities we recommend. In this case, no money is changing hands, but Bridging the Gap will be listed as a sponsor for the event. Judging by the agenda for this conference, I think a lot of PMs might enjoy what we’re doing here and I’m looking forward to helping Bridging the Gap reach a new potential audience.
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By Laura Brandenburg. Laura Brandenburg is passionate about business analysis. She's found her niche helping aspiring business analysts find transferable skills and position themselves in the BA job market. To stay up-to-date on the latest from Bridging the Gap be sure to sign-up for our free email course and weekly eNewsletter. View more blog posts by Laura Brandenburg |
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{ 10 comments }
Dear Laura,
This message is with regards to my participation in the contest to achieve a free pass for the Project Management Telesummit.
I feel the most relevant topic for me as a Business Analyst(BA) is “How Does Understanding Human Behavior Increase Your Project Success Rate?”. I would like to support the reason I chose this topic with below points –
1) BA is much frequently required to interact with people from different backgrounds and designation levels in an organization which makes it essential for a BA to understand their behaviors and act accordingly.
2) It is always a challenge for a BA to manage the different behaviors amongst the Development and QA teams. Being able to understand the behaviors and taking steps accordingly would definitely determine the success rate for a Project.
3) Understanding the behaviors of Stakeholders also plays an important role. This would be required to understand the appetite of Stakeholders to determine the scope of a project. for eg. Lets say the Stakeholder is quite demanding and always likes to maintain close timelines, then this would help a BA to decide on the scope of a project and provide a bargaining power on the amount of work to be taken.
Thanks,
Niranjan Chaudhari.
This is great. Thanks for sharing this telesummit with us, and the deal for registering if I’m not lucky enough to win a free pass. My company doesn’t set aside much money for employees to go to conferences so I really appreciate knowing about something so affordable.
One of the sessions that looks very relevant for me as a BA is Todd Williams’ “Improving Project Inception.” He mentions how important it is to be involved with the customer as early as possible to try and help guide them through the start of the progress and start off on the right foot. You bet that’s right up the BA alley as we spend much of our time working with our customers to define their needs and eventually translate that for the IT world. Understanding more tools and approaches for working well with customers and stakeholders would be a huge help for me. I have my fingers crossed that I get a free pass!
Thanks,
Lauren
Laura thanks for this wonderful opportunity. As one inching towards the BA career (I didn’t realize how much my work and mindset over the past 20 years has prepared me for this leap) I think Rick Morris’s “Stop Playing Games! A Project Manager’s Guide to Successfully Navigating Organizational Politics” would be most beneficial to me. I often find myself unaware of the politics and only focused on what’s best for the company. Sometimes this leaves me feeling stranded on an island alone. Most stakeholders have their own agendas and although I work very hard at understanding their needs, I tend to focus on the business benefits rather than their personal gains. I feel better insight in this area would allow me to gain stakeholder by ins without sacrificing the project goal.
Thank you for sharing this opportunity. It’s good to know of such learning events, and the BA special price is great.
It was hard to choose from the list of topics, but I eventually decided that if I had to pick just one, then based on my current environment, Margery Mayer’s “Global Communications; what does it means in today’s business?” would be the most relevant topic for me.
I work with a team that is geographically dispersed across the US and internationally. Apart from the difference in time zones, the differences in language and culture are factors that we need to be aware of, and constantly monitor, evaluate and improve to ensure effective communication and team performance.
Christine
Thanks Laura for posting information about this event. These are great learning opportunities in an environment where training budgets are tight.
The Look Before You Leap session sounds like it could be very helpful for my situation working with a retail organization that relies heavily on vendors to support many parts of our IT infrastructure. There hasn’t been a major verndor transition in the year that I have been here, but it is bound to happen sometime and being prepared for it will certainly help distinguish myself.
Thanks.
Dear Lauren,
Thank you so much for the opportunity to win a free pass to participate in the Project Management Telesummit.
The most relevant topic for me is “Dr. Steven Flannes: Recognizing and Resolving Project Conflict.” I have been involved in many projects in my career that have run smoothly. However, I have also been involved in project failures due to conflicts between stakeholders. There are many reasons why the projects fail, but the three that I have personally observed are lack of communication, resistance to change and company politics. Recognizing and resolving a conflict as soon as possible will eliminate the energy spent on the conflict and put the focus back to the project.
I love the contest idea!
I think one of the most relevant topics for me as a BA is Rick Morris: Stop Playing Games! A Project Manager’s Guide to Successfully Navigating Organizational Politics. As a BA, its important that we are active and engaged with our stakeholders. This also means being able to successfully manage politics in the workplace. The success of a project could depend on how well this is navigated within the organization.
Another relevant topic would be Traci Duez: Change is Impossible Unless You Change Your Mind. Change is difficult for all organizations. The BA role has not been around my company for long and it has been a challenge to change the minds of the company to see how we can benefit them and how it is a good thing.
Thank you,
Sara Fox
Steve Martin: Consulting Secrets for Project Managers
I am into my first year as an independent process improvement consultant and the skillset I seem to use most is project management, regardless of what I am “hired” for. This presents a challenge when you are not a member of the group you are working with – an outsider, so to speak — especially true when I am hired by one division of the organization, but must implement change across the board. So, Consulting Secrets for PM caught my attention. I am hoping I can learn techniques and get ideas to improve myself. (And,actually all of the sessions look great!)
One of the topics that I am interested to learn is:
* Improving project inception
I understand the objective of a successful project is to meet Stakeholder’s expectations. I’d like to gain more knowledge as well as learn new techniques on how to involve and control customer’s expectations, how to get the Team to focus and identify areas which caused the problems.
Another good one, as for a BA, is “Building and Maintaining Relationships and Making Effective Decisions”
There’s always room to learn, improve and enhance the BA skills of how to build the decision-making model with your team and still maintaining great relationships with the stakeholders.
Regards,
Kieu Cary
Thanks everyone! These were some great comments — I think BAs have the potential to get a lot out of this conference and I’d encourage you to attend. I wish I could attend too, but I’ll be in the middle of launching my new learning program Launching Your Business Analysis Career and know I won’t have the time to focus solid energy outside my business during the conference time.
The two winners have been chosen and notified via email. Thank you all for participating. I’m going to start trying to run contests like these more often so keep your eyes open for future opportunities.
Best,
Laura
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