Biography: Dave Chesebrough is the President of the Association for Enterprise Information (AFEI).  AFEI provides industry and government a framework for collaboration on enterprise information issues such as architecture, security, information sharing, identity and net-centric operations.  Dave has a background in engineering and electronic commerce. His prior experience includes business and IT consulting, systems integration, logistics, training and commercial nuclear power systems design.  His military experience was as an astronautical engineer in the U.S. Air Force.  He has lectured on logistics, e-commerce and IT strategy in Europe, Asia and Africa.

Contact: Dave can be reached by e-mail at dchesebrough@ndia.org for additional information about this pre-conference session.




Biography: Bob McCue is Principal and Managing Partner of MDCSystems, and a recognized expert in project management and forensics for the construction industry. He provides expert witness testimony on issues of construction delay, disputes and deficiencies.

Contact: Bob can be reached by e-mail at mccue@mdcsystems.com for additional information about this pre-conference session.




Biography: John is Associate Director, of the Ackoff Collaboratory for Advancement of Systems Approaches at the University of Pennsylvania.
John ’s primary areas of interest include implications of systems thinking in complex problem formulation, including complex project leadership. He consults and lectures internationally.

Contact: John can be reached by e-mail at jp2consult@aol.com for additional information about this pre-conference session.


Title: Complex Program Management

Program Brochure

Date: Friday, April 24th

Length: 6 hours (9:00-12:00pm and 1:15-4:15pm)

Location: Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne - 6633 Canoga Avenue, Canoga Park

Cost: None

Description: A one-day seminar on the concepts and framework for dealing with complexity within your reality, especially in environments where there is significant uncertainty and risk. The seminar will be presented in a six module format that promotes interaction and discussion amongst instructors (as many as four are planned) and seminar attendees. The six modules to be covered are;

1 - Forensic Program Management – What Goes Wrong and Why
The introductory module covers the understanding of the underlying causes of
failure and the differences between linear and nonlinear thinking in diagnosis and prescription. Limitations with simple causal explanations for learning and adaptation in Program Management will be discussed.

2 - Situational Awareness
This module will introduce the "Situation Awareness" model which is a necessary framework for a "basic" or habitual way of processing and thinking about sensory inputs and its implication for dealing with complexity.

3 - Framework for Decision Making
In this module, the framework that helps to classify the issues facing leaders into five contexts defined by the nature of the relationship between cause and effect. Four of these – simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic – require leaders to diagnose situations and to act in contextually ap propriate ways. – applies when it is unclear which of the other four contexts is predominant.

4 - Integrative (Synthetic) Program Management
This module will introduce a new strategy for project management learning. Specifically it will describe the requirements for connecting the art and science of Program Management. It takes a systemic rather than analytic approach to the process.

5 - Complexity and Program Leadership
This module will present a whole number of changes to the traditional Program Management that are required for leading out of the complexity, including leadership, thinking and performance attributes. There will be an extensive discussion of "what to do when forecasting no longer works?" Anticipation and pattern recognition (ability to connect the dots) between seemingly unrelated events, changes, and trends through cognitive skills, intuition, and prior experience) will be presented.

6 - Grounding Conceptual Knowledge in Practice
In this module, the participants are required to consider the implications of what they have learned to their own respective programs and projects. A central characteristic of this module is experiential learning or action learning, which is a facilitated process. Specifically, the participants will be asked to discuss their own actions and experience in order to improve performance of their programs and projects.

Target Audience: This seminar is designed for project, program, and portfolio managers, from new to experienced, from senior-level to junior-level.

Organizational Issues: The importance of knowing how to deal with complexity is emphasized by Michael George in his book Conquering Complexity,

"The winners and losers in the next decade... may well be separated by a single factor: those that conquer complexity and those that do not"

Objectives: the following basic concepts and effective approaches for taming complexity will be covered in detail;

• How to recognize interactive complexity in programs/ projects
  
  
• What kind of mindset and cognitive capabilities are required in order to cope with the art and science of program and project management.
  
  
• Techniques for dealing with impacts of complex interactions on organizational functions, structure, processes and measurement and control.
  
  
• Leadership talents necessary to effectively deal with complexity
  
  
• The relationship of complexity to Organizational Learning and Knowledge
  Management, Program and Portfolio Management, Program Maturity Model, Human Relations.

Handouts: Available for download after the Forum