View IIL’s Digital 2012 Learning Catalogue

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Opening Keynote Address:
The Key to Team Success: Using the Power of Acknowledgment
Judith W. Umlas, Sr. VP of Learning Innovations, IIL and Author of The Power of Acknowledgment
Participants will learn to use a readily available tool—acknowledgment—to motivate and inspire teams and fellow employees, as well as to create trust and improve intimate relationships and interactions with the people they connect with on a day-to-day basis. Participants will discover how the four C’s of The Power of Acknowledgment—Consciousness, Courage, Communication and Commitment—serve as the key to team success. Based on virtual sessions led by the speaker with tens of thousands of professionals, the results are “predictably unpredictable,” work and life-altering and outstanding!

This keynote address will help participants identify and utilize the “Knock Your Socks Off™ Power of Acknowledgment” in their professional lives, which will ultimately affect all of their relationships—both in and out of the workplace.

Judith W. Umlas is the publisher of IIL Publishing, New York and is the Sr. Vice President of Learning Innovations at International Institute for Learning, Inc. (IIL). She is also Director/Secretary of Small Companies United for Global Disaster Relief, Inc., a not-for-profit organization. She has worked in television production, marketing, and corporate business development for 30 years, at CBS, PBS cable television and IIL. Her writing credits include articles published in Working Woman magazine, The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and many other newspapers and magazines. She speaks on The Power of Acknowledgment all over the world.

The Growing Need for Business Analysis within the Project Management Framework
George Bridges, Senior Consultant and Trainer, IIL
Today companies are seeing the value of having the Business Analysis methodology included within the project management process. The expectation of the key stakeholders is that the Project Manager manages the entire scope of the project. Our current body of knowledge within Project Management and Business Analysis is that the Project Manager will manage the project scope and the Business Analyst will manage the product scope. Requirement analysis is best served by having a full-time person handling the overall planning, managing, and controlling of the product requirements.  

The debate and discussion about the roles of the Project Manager and Business Analyst is still ongoing and several hot debates will continue until the experts and practitioners agree on the delineation of the responsibilities within these two roles.

George Bridges (PMP) is a Senior Consultant and trainer for IIL. George specializes in project management, risk management, information technology, and business process analysis. With more than 30 years of experience, George has successfully applied project management, systems research, and operations research for major corporations and non-profit organizations. George is Past President of the PMI Great Lakes Chapter.

Why Six Sigma Works: The Roadmap
for Improving Results
Harry Rever, Director of Six Sigma, IIL
What is the ultimate purpose of a project? Quite frankly, it is to improve results.  Leadership utilizes projects as a means to improve what is important to the customer and the business. The problem is that not everyone knows how to improve key metrics of the business. That is the ultimate purpose of Six Sigma and why it works so well. Six Sigma gives employees and businesses a competitive edge in improving results.

This presentation includes the following topics:

• Key Metrics
• Typical Tactics to Improve Results
• The Challenge of Improving Key Measures
• The Focus of Six Sigma
• DMAIC - A Roadmap for Improving Results
• Manage the Process, Not the Results
• The Benefits of Six Sigma

Harry Rever (CSSBB, CQM, CQC, MBA, PMP) is a Director of Six Sigma for International Institute for Learning, Inc. He has over 16 years experience in the field of process improvement and Six Sigma. Prior to joining IIL, Harry served as an internal process improvement consultant for Southwestern Bell Telephone, SBC, and AT&T. He is especially adept at applying multivariable testing to service processes to determine what improvement ideas actually do help results. Harry is a senior member of ASQ.

Tomorrow’s Project Managers:
How the Web 2.0 Generation will Learn to be Effective Project Managers
John Winter, Vice President of Global Learning
Solutions, IIL
Our world is constantly changing and nowhere is this more evident than how technology has affected our attitudes towards communication and accessing information. Who had heard of Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, or LinkedIn five years ago? Various sources tell us that today there are 12 million “Twitter” accounts, and that “Facebook” has 70 million users actively accessing the network on a daily basis.

For the next generation of project managers, learning the knowledge and skills needed to be successful will not look or feel like anything the previous generations have experienced. Or will it? Behind the high flying rhetoric there are still some fundamental and human limitations around how we learn and this session is designed to pose the question, “So how do we make sense of all of this and meet the learning needs of tomorrow’s project managers?”

John Winter (B.Ed., Dip.Ed., R.S.A.) is the Vice President of Global Learning Solutions for International Institute for Learning, Inc. Since 1987, he has worked in the learning and development functions of financial, multinational organizations, both in the United States and United Kingdom. John’s work has ranged across diverse topics, from developing and coaching individuals’ interpersonal and leadership skills to implementing enterprise-wide change initiatives. He has also led and successfully grown a corporate university for a major Fortune 100 Company. John received his Bachelor’s degree in educational theory and practice from the University of London. He is also the recipient of the prestigious British Royal Society of Arts’ Diploma for the Use of Computers in Education.

Increasing Project Productivity: The Real Power of Microsoft® Office Project
John White, Senior Consultant and Trainer, IIL
The Enterprise Project Management (EPM) business process encompasses project, program, and portfolio management. This EPM process enhances strategic decision making, aligns projects and programs with the organization’s business strategy, maximizes enterprise resource utilization and capacity, and monitors the organization’s operational efficiency. 

Effective performance and governance of these objectives relies heavily on the integration of people, processes, and tools. Using an integrated tool set, such as the Microsoft® Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution, can automate the EPM process. Project, program, and portfolio managers can manage and control all types of work within a portfolio of projects across the enterprise, improve the visibility of portfolio projects, and promote effective collaboration and communication with all stakeholders and among project team members.

John White(MA, PMP, MCP, MCTS, MCITP) is a Senior Consultant and Trainer with IIL with over 15 years of experience in Enterprise Project Management and has trained hundreds of project managers and team members in Microsoft Project Server, Project Web Access and Portfolio Analyzer. He is an active member of the Phoenix, Minnesota, Chicago, and New York PMI® Chapters and is Past Vice President of PMI® Chicagoland Chapter. John is also co-author of the book, Dynamic Scheduling with Microsoft Office Project 2007.

Closing Keynote Address:
Project Management: The Key to Business
Leadership in the 21st Century
Dr. Harold Kerzner, Senior Executive Director, IIL
Project management has matured into a business profession, rather than a mere skill set that some use intermittently. Achieving excellence in project management and capturing best practices is now a necessity to stay in business. As such, the roles and responsibilities of executives and functional managers have changed as have the roles of the project managers.

The new vision for most executives is to focus on the value expected from the projects, rather than on just the budget and the schedule. This has necessitated a change in the way corporate leadership views project management. In this presentation, you will see what companies are doing to prepare for the future directions of project management.

Dr. Harold Kerzner (Ph.D., MS, Engineering and MBA) is Senior Executive Director with International Institute for Learning, Inc. He is an expert in the areas of project management and strategic planning and is the author of best-selling project management textbooks: Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling (now in its tenth edition), In Search of Excellence in Project Management, Applied Project Management and Strategic Planning for Project Management Using a Project Management Maturity Model.