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360° Project Management Competency Assessment
(360° PMCA™) > By Colby Africa Colby writes about IIL's flexible, web-based 360° Project Management Competency Assessment tool for measuring and evaluating employee’s project management skills and competencies. Defining and measuring relevant competencies of project managers is one area that has become especially pertinent to many organizations. Accurate assessment of an organization’s project management skills will enable senior management to identify areas of strength and opportunity, create development plans, measure performance against a set of well-defined metrics, and measure the effectiveness of improvement efforts.
Colby Africa started working in the project management industry in 1994 as a software developer at Critical Path Technical Services (CPTS), located in Redmond, WA. On contract to Microsoft, Colby built custom solutions with Microsoft® Office and the Microsoft Platform. After several years at CPTS, Colby moved to Microsoft full-time as the Technical Product Manager responsible for technical evangelism for Team Manager and Microsoft Project while also managing the Microsoft Project Partner Program.
In 1998, Colby left Microsoft to become the Development Manager and Chief Software Architect at Pacific Edge Software, a software company focused on building project, program, and portfolio management solutions. In 2001, as president of PM Boulevard (an online project management community serving the project management industry since 1997), Colby’s focus shifted from developing software products to informing and educating project managers and elevating project management’s stature as a core business function. Bringing together educational content, communities of like-minded people, and software capabilities has continued to drive Colby’s work. Colby joined IIL in 2005 as product development manager.
The Power of Acknowledgment > By Judith W Umlas Judith writes about the concept of acknowledging each other’s humanity, accomplishments, talents and wisdom on a continuous basis and how it can change the way we think, how we work and how we live our lives.
Judith W. Umlas is Senior Vice President, Learning Innovations, at International Institute for Learning, Inc. (IIL), Director of Small Companies United for Global Disaster Relief, Inc. and Co-Publisher of global Web portal allPM.com. She has worked in television production, marketing and corporate business development, and her writing credits include articles in Working Woman magazine, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune and she is the author of the book The Power of Acknowledgment.
The Zen Approach to Project Management > By George Pitagorsky George links the essential principles and techniques of managing projects to a “wisdom” approach for working with complex, people-based activities. Project management becomes a metaphor for how we can live our lives and, if we follow the wisdom traditions, the way we live our lives becomes a metaphor for how to manage projects.
George Pitagorsky (PMP) is Senior Advisor of Enterprise Solutions at IIL. He is a master facilitator and consultant combining project management, productivity and quality improvement and organizational change management. He is the author of The Zen Approach to Project Management: Managing Expectations and Performance from Your Center and IIL’s IT Project Management System. He authored IIL’s self paced PM BASICS™, and headed the team that created IIL’s Unified Project Management® Methodology (UPMM™). He co-authored the Conscious Living/Conscious Working course. George is a serious student, and practitioner of meditation for over 30 years. He is member of the teacher council and board of directors of the NY Insight Meditation Center.
Colby writes about IIL's flexible, web-based 360° Project Management Competency Assessment tool for measuring and evaluating employee’s project management skills and competencies. Defining and measuring relevant competencies of project managers is one area that has become especially pertinent to many organizations. Accurate assessment of an organization’s project management skills will enable senior management to identify areas of strength and opportunity, create development plans, measure performance against a set of well-defined metrics, and measure the effectiveness of improvement efforts.
Judith writes about the concept of acknowledging each other’s humanity, accomplishments, talents and wisdom on a continuous basis and how it can change the way we think, how we work and how we live our lives.
George links the essential principles and techniques of managing projects to a “wisdom” approach for working with complex, people-based activities. Project management becomes a metaphor for how we can live our lives and, if we follow the wisdom traditions, the way we live our lives becomes a metaphor for how to manage projects.
