Pammy Subramony
Associate Group Director, Head of Submissions and Operations
Clinical and Quantitative Pharmacology (CPQP), R&D, AstraZeneca

Keith Wilson
Senior Trainer/Consultant
IIL

AstraZeneca – Embarking on an Agile Journey

Pammy Subramony and Keith Wilson delivered this session on “AstraZeneca – Embarking on an Agile Journey” at IIL’s 2021 Agile & Scrum Online Conference. Part 2, originally planned to be featured on IPM Day 2021 as well, has been delayed until a future IIL Conference. Stay tuned for that!

The term ‘Agile Transformation’ is commonly used within teams and organizations who are looking to become more adaptable in their work. But how to go about this transformation is a tough question.

In Part 1 of this exclusive series, we will join AstraZeneca as they embark on their Agile Journey. The session will be led by Pammy Subramony, Associate Group Director, Head of Submissions and Operations, Clinical and Quantitative Pharmacology, R&D at AstraZeneca, and Keith Wilson, Sr. Trainer and Consultant at IIL.

What You Will Learn:

BIOS:

Dr. Pammy Subramony has 15 plus years of experience and leadership from early development to commercialization managing programs in biologics, device combination products and small molecules ranging from start-up to large pharmaceutical companies.

Keith Wilson has over 25 years of successful coaching, training, management, and consulting experience globally with over 100 happy clients. He has extensive Agile Training/Coaching experience and makes Agile work for his clients.

Lindsay McGregor
Author and Co-Founder
Vega Factor

Neel Doshi
Author and Co-Founder
Vega Factor

The Science of Performance

The concept of performance takes up a central place in our world. It is one of the key metrics in our lives and has a prominent place, even at an early age. It is considered in school, sports, relationships, work, and of course, projects.

In this session, we’ll leverage history, current events, experiential learning, and science to explain what performance is, what drives it, and most importantly, what that means for you and any person at work.

We’ll consider a number of experiments, designed to drive value against today’s challenges. From creating “intensity without pressure” to encouraging every colleague to play a “game of impact”, attendees will leave with a foundation from which to thoughtfully tweak their own operating models, performance, and experience.

BIO:

Lindsay McGregor and Neel Doshi are the co-founders of Vega Factor and co-authors of the bestselling book, Primed to Perform: How to Build the Highest Performing Cultures Through the Science of Total Motivation.

Previously, Lindsay led projects at McKinsey & Company, working with large fortune 500 companies, nonprofits, universities and school systems. She received her B.A. from Princeton and an MBA from Harvard. In her spare time she loves investigating and sharing great stories.

Neel was previously a Partner at McKinsey & Company, CTO and founding member of an award-winning tech startup, and employee of several mega-institutions. He studied engineering at MIT and received his MBA from Wharton. In his spare time, he’s an avid yet mediocre woodworker and photographer.

Liliana Cerilo
Head of Strategy, Exploratory
Google

Innovation as a Way to Embrace Change

We’ve entered a very disruptive time that has generated the condition for breakthrough innovation as a way to overcome the status quo and the danger of becoming obsolete. Across industries, we are seeing global companies forced to adapt by finding new business models and methods for survival, ensuring business continuity, or serving their customer needs. For this reason, innovation matters now more than ever.

In this talk, Liliana Cerilo will discuss bringing innovative solutions to life. She’s the Head of Strategy at an innovation team at Google called Exploratory, whose mission is to build transformational solutions that solve her largest global brand partners’ most critical business challenges.

In this discussion, Liliana will share 5 tried and tested fundamentals to successfully and consistently launch innovative solutions. She will challenge you throughout her talk to think outside the box, forget about your title and its core responsibilities, and truly focus on what it takes to be an innovator.

Key Takeaways:

BIO:

Liliana has been with Google for 9 years. As Head of Strategy for the Exploratory, Liliana is building technology-driven business innovation partnerships with the world’s largest brands. Working with product teams across Google and Alphabet, these partnerships leverage groundbreaking innovation to solve critical business challenges and help future-proof against evolving industries.

Prior to joining Google, Liliana had a combined 12 years experience working in U.S. advertising agencies in both the Mainstream and Multicultural markets in Miami and New York. She has led insight generation and strategy development for top blue chip clients across various categories. Some of them included Heineken, Heineken Light, Wendy’s, IKEA, CitiFinancial, Verizon Wireless, MINI, Molson Canadian, Miller Light, Burger King, Wheat Thins, Planter’s Peanuts, among others.

As an advocate for diversity and inclusion, Liliana was one of the pioneers for the Latinas at Google Summit, which brought together more than 500 Latinas from across the company to network, bond and expand their workplace community. This has now expanded to be a network of over 1K members. Outside of the workplace, Liliana serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors for Beauty Bus Foundation, she enjoys international travel, playing tennis, riding her bike, swimming and trying new and exciting food with family and friends.

Frank Ryle
Trainer
International Institute for Learning (IIL)

Giants’ Shoulders – Making Project Connections

All projects are a journey to towards a goal. All projects share the characteristics of being a temporary endeavor with a uniqueness of scope or environment that makes them very different from operations type work.

The temporariness of the project requires that we manage time – that valuable resource that will consume and surprise us if we don’t manage it well.

A project schedule is our representation of future time – or future memories – that we build together to provide us with confidence, guidance and measuring points along the journey.

A well-built schedule requires three key ingredients:

This session and exercise will focus on that third element – the connections. It is no more or less important than the other two. However it does often provide an opportunity for conversations that can be referred to as ‘storming’ – in the Tuckman/Jensen model of Team Development (Forming/Storming/Norming/Performing/Adjourning).

The game is designed to provide an opportunity to practice and improve our ability to identify connections/ associations/links between famous individuals from the Arts, Science and

Craft worlds. We can use the same skill and ability to identify connections/ dependencies/ sequences between our project tasks.

BIO:

Frank has almost 20 years of experience in the construction and manufacturing industries, as well as ten years of practical project / program managementexperience throughout Europe, Asia and the United States, on projectsvarying from five people to 400 people and from $5 million to $1.2 billion. Since 2002, Frank has trained hundreds of project leaders on project management best practices

Gregory L. Robinson
Program Director, James Webb Space Telescope
NASA, Science Mission Directorate

James Webb Space Telescope – Leading Large Complex Global Projects

The James Webb Space Telescope will explore every phase of cosmic history – from within our solar system to the most distant observable galaxies in the early universe, and everything in between. Webb will reveal new and unexpected discoveries, and help humankind understand the origins of the universe and our place in it. This mission, scheduled for a December 18, 2021 launch, is a collaboration of NASA, the European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency. We discuss the motivating science questions that required the development of the observatory, highlight the technologies, and project management challenges and lessons learned encountered during the development of this large complex global project.

Although Webb is arguably an unparalleled engineering and technological feat, we explore the critical role of project management in making the world’s largest space telescope a success. As NASA and the space industry are moving swiftly to new approaches, new systems, and far more commercial exploration (often referred to as “new space”) than previously imagined. We also explore how acquisition and project management are evolving towards that future.

BIO:

Mr. Robinson is currently the Program Director of the James Webb Space Telescope (Webb). His focus is development efficiency, management processes, contractor performance, and mission success. Formerly the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Deputy Associate Administrator for Programs; ensuring high performance during development and operations of 114 Science flight projects.

Mr. Robinson held the position of Deputy Director of NASA’s John Glenn Research Center, consisting of 3,200 employees, where the scope spans research and technology, aeronautics, science spaceflight, and human spaceflight. He served as NASA’s Deputy Chief Engineer for several years where he led engineering and program and project management strategy, policy, implementation rigor, and performance management. He was intricately engaged with the last 21 shuttle launches post Columbia Shuttle accident, as well as numerous satellite developments and launches.

Mr. Robinson also served as Deputy Assistant Administrator for Systems at NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, leading the acquisition and management of all satellite systems. He spent 11 years in various leadership positions at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Mr. Robinson has over 30 years of engineering, program and project management, and senior executive leadership at NASA

Mr. Robinson served as faculty at the George Washington University, Department of Engineering Management & Systems Engineering.

He received the Presidential Distinguished Executive Rank Award in 2013, and the Presidential Meritorious Executive Rank Award in 2007.

Karl Smedley
Programme Manager / Deliverer
Fujitsu

A Practical Guide to Introducing Agile

“Don’t throw your baby out with the bath Water(fall)”. This is not a deep conversation about Agile v Waterfall or where to use them (that is for other talks and much deeper thinkers /agile purists). Instead, this talk acknowledges that the world we are living in is complex, where every delivery is different and not binary, i.e., Agile or Waterfall.

This talk is aimed at “Non Agilists” and focuses on how they shouldn’t be scared of agile and that it isn’t about throwing away everything you have learnt from delivering in a more traditional/Waterfall way. It is about building on them and embracing the true mindset and heart and soul of Agile.

The key takeaways of the session include:

BIO:

Karl has been successfully delivering projects and programmes for 20 years. These have predominantly been non software development led and therefore have mainly utilized traditional waterfall methodologies (PRINCE2 / MSP certified).

When Agile starting to gain more popularity outside of pure software development in the mid 2010s, Karl was initially sceptical of how it effective it would be outside of software development and how this would impact Project/Programme Managers. However, once he realised that Agile from a purist sense doesn’t have to be applied that is when he truly embraced Agile and began to understand how the key concepts and mindset of Agile when overlaid alongside traditional methodologies can develop a powerful delivery approach.

Karl now sees himself more of a “Deliverer of anything” rather than just a pigeonholed Project/Programme Manager. Karl is a Certified SAFe® 5 Program Consultant and uses his experience and knowledge to help train and coach others on how to embrace Agile.

Kaihan Krippendorff
CEO
Outthinker Strategy Network

Driving Innovation from Within: A Guide for Employees and Organizational Leaders

Kaihan Krippendorff delivered this excellent session on “Driving Innovation from Within: A Guide for Employees and Organizational Leaders” at IIL’s 2021 Leadership & Innovation Online Conference.

“Innovation” brings to mind the maverick entrepreneur who quits their job, at unimaginable odds, to build a business on their own. But this entrepreneurial story is a myth. As a successful entrepreneur, author, consultant and CEO, Kaihan Krippendorff argues that intrapreneurs – employees who incubate new businesses within corporations – have had a far greater impact on the world. Nearly all of the most transformative innovations over the past three decades, from e-mail and the Internet to DNA sequencing and MRI scans, were introduced by employees who did not quit their jobs but instead took the challenge of innovating from within.

Drawing on five years of in-depth research of hundreds of successful innovators and Intrapreneurial Intensity, as well as insights from thought leaders, C-suite leaders, business unit leaders, and front-line employees, Kaihan will share exclusive insights from his book, Driving Innovation From Within: A Guide for Internal Entrepreneurs (Columbia University Press, 2019).

Kaihan will unveil the most critical internal focus areas for driving innovation and moving your organization forward into the future. He will share specific tools, frameworks and techniques used by successful innovators to manage and unlock the value of employees’ ideas to increase corporate innovation levels and deliver bottom-line results. Participants will have actionable next steps to transform their organization by testing and scaling fresh ideas that generate value and growth. They will leave feeling inspired and empowered, ready to take on the future.

In this inspiring keynote, you will learn about:

BIO:

Kaihan Krippendorff has made a commitment to helping organizations and individuals thrive in today’s era of fast-paced disruptive technological change.

He began his career with McKinsey & Company before founding the growth strategy and innovation consulting firm Outthinker, whose growth strategies and innovations have generated over $2.5B in revenue for many of the world’s most recognizable companies including BNY Mellon, Citibank, L’Oréal, Microsoft, and Viacom. He is a best-selling author of five books, most recently the Edison Award nominated Driving Innovation From Within: A Guide for Internal Entrepreneurs.

Kaihan is a member of the prestigious Thinkers50 radar group – A global selection of the top 30 management thinkers in the world to look out for. Thinkers50 also recognized Kaihan as one of the 8 most influential innovation thought leaders in the world considering him for a Distinguished Achievement Award in Innovation – given to the person in the world that has contributed the most to the world’s understanding of innovation in the past two years.

Amidst his dizzying schedule of keynote speeches, consulting projects, ongoing research and writing, Kaihan still finds time to teach at business schools throughout the US and internationally (including NYU, FIU, and UA). Regularly featured in major business media outlets, Kaihan is an advisory board member of multiple national and international companies.

Louria Lindauer
Founder & Agile & Leadership Coach
SuccessAgility LLC

Our Unconscious Bias and Microaggressions: Creating culture self-awareness in you and your world

Louria Lindauer delivered this excellent session on “Our Unconscious Bias and Microaggressions: Creating culture self-awareness in you and your world” at IIL’s 2021 International Project Management Day Online Conference.

Everyone is unique, and we all see and interact differently with the world around us. Our upbringings, our relationships, our communities, and the culture that we are a part of are just some of the elements that influence our worldview and our own cultural bubble.

Most people have some understanding of unconscious bias, but the term “microaggression” may be less known to some. When heading into this presentation, it is relevant to keep in mind that due to our cultural bubbles, we all hold unconscious biases within us and that many of us have displayed microaggressions towards others. What is also true is that, most likely, everyone has been on the receiving end of such behavior whether you realize it or not.

This session will set you up to become more aware of your own (and others’) unconscious biases and microaggressions through words, thoughts, and impact – and how You can take action. Examining the communities where we live and the organizations where we work, we will discover how to recognize and handle the intentional and unintentional biases that prevail all around us to help contribute and create a safer personal and work environment.

We will learn:

BIO:

For the past 25 years, Louria has empowered and created “People First Environments”, where talents are celebrated and voices matter. As an international Executive Agile & Leadership Coach she utilizes her mastery of coaching, facilitation, teaching and mentoring to breathe life into ‘just surviving’ organizations to thriving.

Louria Lindauer creates pathways for people to see beyond their failures to discover and live their purpose with courage and immense passion! Additionally, she has lived every role in agile organization from software engineer, marketing to organizational change and strategy coach. Therefore, allowing her the understanding and empathy to reach, hear, guide and inspire others to their victory and live beyond their failures.

Success Agility, her company, creates the know-how to change chaos into sustainable customized solutions for non-profits, small to fortune 500 companies. Louria’s unique diverse experience allows her insights into the mindset and skillset of the vertical slice (team, program and executive level) of an organization to co-create sustainable culture change, shared vision, streamlined processes, and increased employee engagement in an ever-changing environment.

Louria fell in love with coaching when she took her first agile coaching course which lead her to co-active coaching and becoming a Co-Active Leadership Faculty. Coupled with her passion and ability to lead with courage, love, big laughter, play, faith, connection, creativity, and making the impossible possible. Overall, Louria is fiercely committed to unleashing greatness, success and happiness in business and people’s lives.

Superpowers:

Dominic Price
Work Futurist
Atlassian

Less process, more guidance. Tips for effectively scaling great teams.

Dom Price delivered this excellent session on “Less process, more guidance. Tips for effectively scaling great teams” at IIL’s 2018 Agile & Scrum Online Conference.

The lone genius is dead. EY reports that 90% of organisations are solving problems so complex, that they need teams. Dom Price, Head of R&D and Work Futurist from Atlassian joins us to share his personal experiences in helping Atlassian scale over the last 5 years, and be more nimble, adaptive and relevant, than ever before. He’ll share why they decided to take on team work, how they did it, and even let us in on some of the pitfalls along the way. This isn’t a session on theory. Dom will share practical insights, from Atlassian, and from over 100 other organisations where they’ve shared their way of working.

BIO:

Born to Joy in the harsh Manchester Winter of 77, Dominic has a career that has reached far and wide through Europe, US and Asia PAC.

Dom is proud to work at Atlassian, the home of the most intelligent t-shirt wearers in business. As resident Work Futurist, Dom is the in-house “Team Doctor” helping Atlassian scale by being ruthlessly efficient and effective. Dom helped pioneer Atlassian’s Team Playbook and has a deep passion for understanding the future of work and the changes we need to make today.

He has previously been the GM Program Management for a global gaming company and a Director of Deloitte.

A keen traveller, Dom has traversed over 50 countries so far, but after 17 years on these shores, he calls Australia home. 

Dr. Harold Kerzner
Senior Executive Director
International Institute for Learning (IIL)

The Building Blocks of Tomorrow’s Impactful Organization

The new ways of working have been diversifying—and fast. Leaders worldwide are looking for signs and indicators of what the impactful organization of the future would look like and what its success attributes would need to be. This group of world-renowned panelists cover the range of background areas needed to tackle this complex topic. They represent champions of strategy implementation, project management know-how, coaching, boards advisory, and agility in delivering work results. They will help us envision and map the course for the future-ready organization.

A multitude of critical building blocks will be explored during this interactive panel:

BIO:

Harold Kerzner, Ph.D. is Senior Executive Director at the International Institute for Learning (IIL). He is a globally recognized expert on project management and strategic planning, and the author of many best-selling textbooks including Innovation Project Management: Methods, Case Studies, and Tools for Managing Innovation Projects (Wiley, 2019).

He has a MS and Ph.D. in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from the University of Illinois and an MBA from Utah State University. He is a prior Air Force Officer and spent several years at Morton-Thiokol in project management. He taught engineering at the University of Illinois and business administration at Utah State University and for 37 years taught project management at Baldwin-Wallace University.

Lyssa Adkins
Coach, Facilitator, Teacher and Inspirer
LyssaAdkins.com

The Building Blocks of Tomorrow’s Impactful Organization

The new ways of working have been diversifying—and fast. Leaders worldwide are looking for signs and indicators of what the impactful organization of the future would look like and what its success attributes would need to be. This group of world-renowned panelists cover the range of background areas needed to tackle this complex topic. They represent champions of strategy implementation, project management know-how, coaching, boards advisory, and agility in delivering work results. They will help us envision and map the course for the future-ready organization.

A multitude of critical building blocks will be explored during this interactive panel:

BIO:

Lyssa Adkins’ career is split into two eras: 14 years as a project manager and 15 years as an agilist. Even though she had all that experience prior to encountering agile, nothing prepared her for the power and simplicity of agile done well. As a PMO leader (twice!) Lyssa knows that the transition to agile can be rocky – she’s been through it herself.

Lyssa is an internationally recognized agile thought leader and speaker. Her book, Coaching Agile Teams, is still a top ranked book years after publication. She co-founded Agile Coaching Institute (ACI) which has equipped over 10,000 people in the must-have skills and mindset shifts of excellent agile coaching.

Since transitioning ACI to its new home at Accenture, Lyssa has focused on coaching transformation leaders and facilitating group work sessions that unknot the gnarly, multi-department impediments that agile reveals. As a certified organization systems coach and integral facilitator, and as a deeply experienced agilist, Lyssa possesses the skills to help organizations move through the difficult problems to benefit from the full promise of agile.

Deepa Prahalad
Author, Design Strategist

The Building Blocks of Tomorrow’s Impactful Organization

The new ways of working have been diversifying—and fast. Leaders worldwide are looking for signs and indicators of what the impactful organization of the future would look like and what its success attributes would need to be. This group of world-renowned panelists cover the range of background areas needed to tackle this complex topic. They represent champions of strategy implementation, project management know-how, coaching, boards advisory, and agility in delivering work results. They will help us envision and map the course for the future-ready organization.

A multitude of critical building blocks will be explored during this interactive panel:

BIO:

Deepa Prahalad is an author and innovation consultant. She has worked with start-ups and large multinationals, and co-authored the book, Predictable Magic: Unleash the Power of Design Strategy to Transform Your Business, which was selected by Fast Company as one of the “Best Design Books of the Year”. She writes frequently for Harvard Business Review, strategy+business, Businessweek and other magazines.

Deepa is an elected member of the International Academy of Management and was ranked #34 on the inaugural Thinkers 50 India list. She was recently selected by leadership guru Marshall Goldsmith into his “100 Coaches Program” from over 16,000 global applicants.

Deepa speaks on innovation and design strategy at leading companies and business schools such as Harvard and USC and mentors leading social entrepreneurs. She is active on several Advisory Boards including the Global Peter Drucker Forum, Mifos (financial inclusion), ArogyaWorld and ModRoof, an innovative, sustainable roofing company in India.

Deepa is also a Board Member for South Asian Art collection at the San Diego Museum of Art and designed the newly created House of India Museum in Balboa Park. She has a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from the University of Michigan and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez
Author, Professor & Thought Leader
Strategy Implementation Institute

The Building Blocks of Tomorrow’s Impactful Organization

The new ways of working have been diversifying—and fast. Leaders worldwide are looking for signs and indicators of what the impactful organization of the future would look like and what its success attributes would need to be. This group of world-renowned panelists cover the range of background areas needed to tackle this complex topic. They represent champions of strategy implementation, project management know-how, coaching, boards advisory, and agility in delivering work results. They will help us envision and map the course for the future-ready organization.

A multitude of critical building blocks will be explored during this interactive panel:

BIO:

Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez is a leading expert in project management and strategy implementation, the creator of concepts like the “Project Economy” and the “Hierarchy of Purpose.”

His work has been recognized by Thinkers50 with the prestigious award “Ideas into Practice.” He is the author of the recently published Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook, as well as Lead Successful Projects, The Project Revolution, and The Focused Organization.

Antonio has been teaching the value of project management to senior leaders for more than two decades at Duke CE, Instituto de Empresa, Solvay Business School, and Vlerick. Antonio has held executive positions at PricewaterhouseCoopers, BNP Paribas, and GlaxoSmithKline. Former Chairman of the Project Management Institute, he is the founder of Projects & Co and co-founder of the Strategy Implementation Institute. He is a member of Marshall Goldsmith 100 coaches. You can follow Antonio through his LinkedIn Newsletter – Lead Projects Successfully or his website.

Dr. Al Zeitoun
Panel Moderator

The Building Blocks of Tomorrow’s Impactful Organization

The new ways of working have been diversifying—and fast. Leaders worldwide are looking for signs and indicators of what the impactful organization of the future would look like and what its success attributes would need to be. This group of world-renowned panelists cover the range of background areas needed to tackle this complex topic. They represent champions of strategy implementation, project management know-how, coaching, boards advisory, and agility in delivering work results. They will help us envision and map the course for the future-ready organization.

A multitude of critical building blocks will be explored during this interactive panel:

BIO:

Dr. Zeitoun is a Future of Work, business optimization, and operational performance excellence thought leader with global experiences in strategy execution. His experiences encompass leading organizations; delivering their Enterprise Digital and Business Transformation; guiding fitting frameworks implementations; and using his empathy, engineering insights, and collaboration strengths to successfully envision new business models and execute complex missions across diverse cultures globally.

In his position as the Executive Director for Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation, Abu Dhabi, UAE, he was responsible for creating the strategy execution framework, achieving transformation benefits, governance excellence, and creating the data analytics discipline necessary for delivering on the $40B complex country energy mission roadmap.

At the McLean, USA HQ of Booz Allen Hamilton, Dr. Zeitoun strategically envisioned and customized digitally enabled EPMO advisory, mapped playbooks, and capability development for clients’ Billions of Dollars strategic initiatives. Furthermore, he led the firm’s Middle East North Africa Portfolio Management and Agile Governance Solutions.

With the International Institute for Learning, Dr. Zeitoun was a senior leader and global trainer and coach. He was instrumental in driving its global expansions, thought leadership, and operational excellence methodology to sense and shape dynamic ways of working across organizations worldwide. He speaks English, Arabic, and German and enjoys good food, travel, and volunteering.

Kursten Faller
Kursten Faller
Midgard

Surprises and Adventures in Virtual Project Management

Prior to 2020, project teams were slowly starting to virtually deliver projects and with the onset of COVID-19, this progress to virtual delivery has become more the norm rather than the exception. As teams are no longer able to work in traditional ways, there has been pressure to be agile and adapt quickly to ensure changing business outcomes are achieved.

Our project teams have had to adapt and apply the right approaches in this new environment. Discipline and agility in best practices application has become increasingly important to ensure project delivery is adapted and focused on delivering the benefits our organizations need to thrive. We will explore learnings that have come from this adventure as part of an overall journey to continue to successfully deliver projects virtually.

Key Takeaways:

BIO:

Kursten started his career working with some of the largest consulting firms in Canada. Despite their decades of experience and experienced personnel, these massive firms still struggled to deliver projects successfully. As he witnessed this time and time again, Kursten wondered: why is this such a difficult problem? With no obvious answer in front of him, he set out on a journey to find out why.

He began studying the top performers in the firms he worked with and took advantage of every opportunity to develop his knowledge. He got better at his craft, but still struggled to achieve the team performance he knew was possible. Finally, he realized he never would achieve that top performance where he was. Going to the next level required a level of agility and risk-taking the typical consulting firm simply didn’t possess.

So, it was time to break free from those rigid models and start anew. And thus, Midgard was born. Starting his own company allowed Kursten to experiment with new methodologies and new organizational structures. His team implemented and combined practices from PMI, Axelos, Agile Leadership, Prosci, Vital Smarts, and others to create a holistic set of best practices. Midgard’s team is encouraged to take risks and experiment with new perspectives and approaches because they’ve been given permission to fail. They all know that failure leads to growth.

Kursten has invested tens of thousands of dollars into the individuals on his team, teaching them the industry’s best practices. And the results are paying off. Midgard has established itself as a significant player in Saskatchewan’s consulting world and they’re now looking outward. With this foundation of skills, talent, and organizational structure, Midgard is primed for expansion.

Today, Midgard works with public and private organizations to help achieve their goals, from single projects to large-scale transformational change. They can help some of the most rigid and traditional organizations become more agile and progressive. Midgard’s clients achieve their strategic goals more predictably while allowing them to drive more value through their investments.

Paul Dandurand
Founder & CEO
Pie

Hybrid Agile/Waterfall Easy as Pie

Attend this session to get a quick introduction to the differences between Agile, Waterfall, and Hybrid project methods. Then learn how Pie, a visual project and process tool, takes a unique and simple approach to helping you go from waterfall to agile and using the two in the same project as a hybrid model.

Key takeaways include:

BIO:

Paul Dandurand is the founder and CEO of PieMatrix Inc (Pie). Paul started Pie to help businesses improve project results with repeatable processes combined with agile that improve over time while making it easy for team member adoption. Prior to Pie, he was co-founder of FocusFrame, a systems testing services firm, which was sold to Hexaware. Previously, he was with Siebel Systems (now Oracle) in Amsterdam. And he started his project management experience with Ernst & Young (EY) in San Francisco. Paul enjoys photography, learning the cello, skiing, and hiking. He earned a B.A. degree in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley.

Ludwig Melik
CEO
Planbox

Gillis Jonk
Strategy and M&A
Kearney

The Next Paradigm Shift: From Agile to Future-Fit

The nature of work, new technologies, emerging trends, best practices and regulations are evolving exponentially and in unexpected ways. If the past two decades weren’t proof enough, then the last year alone reminded us that change doesn’t come knocking at our door: it bashes it down, leaving us little or no time at all to pivot accordingly.

Disruption comes in many ways, shapes and forms, but the result is always the same: a shock to the system. Now more than ever, organizations need to adopt a proactive mindset that empowers their employees, partners, and community to fearlessly navigate through turbulent times and into uncharted space at warp speed.

The Agile Manifesto revolutionized work and created an incredible following 20 years ago. Now, the “Future Fit Manifesto” proposes a new strategic approach to collaborative work that builds on the Agile movement. This manifesto provides expert guidance to organizations that want to take control of their own destiny to explore new possibilities, to seek new frontiers, and to boldly create new futures.

Join us on this one-of-a-kind journey to discover:

BIOS:

As a visionary thought leader and passionate technology advocate, Ludwig has the opportunity to work with some of the most innovative companies in the world every day. Ludwig is the founding author of the “Future-Fit Manifesto” and the CEO of Planbox, the world’s top-ranked agile innovation management platform, and IdeaConnection, a world-class open innovation expert solver network. Sharing enterprise innovation success stories, design thinking methodologies and agile work processes are some of his ardent talking points. With 20+ years of experience in the project portfolio management and innovation management market, Ludwig looks to help organizations positively transform their work culture to create sustainable growth and ongoing success by galvanizing employee engagement and by igniting creative ideation.

As a seasoned strategy consultant and business innovator, Gillis supports organizations and executives turning fundamental and disruptive change into competitive advantage. He works across industries and is an expert in business and value chain strategies, foresight, and helping build collective confidence to pursue audacious and game-changing plays at industry value chain scale.

Gillis is the author of numerous articles and co-author of The Future of Strategy: A Transformative Approach to Strategy for a World that Won’t Stand Still (McGraw-Hill, 2015), and Iconic – How to Create a Virtuous Circle of Success (LID, 2016).

Langdon Morris
CEO
InnovationLabs

Creating the Most Value with Project Management Metrics

This talk will provide guidance for participants who want to implement or improve the metrics they use for project management. The discussion will focus on important distinctions to keep in mind, including the key difference between a project which is tackling something brand new, vs. a project which is only execution oriented, as these will be best served by different types of metrics.

It will also look at qualitative versus quantitative metrics and describe when to use which, present a formula for Project Management Effectiveness with the associated metrics, and explain the new ISO 56000 innovation management standard.

Key Takeaways:

BIO:

Langdon is an award-winning innovator and world-renowned innovation consultant, best-selling author, and acclaimed keynote speaker. He is Senior Partner at InnovationLabs LLC, where he leads the firm’s global innovation consulting practice with a wonderful variety of clients in business, government, and non-profits.

Recent clients include Accor, Airbus, Bayer, France Telecom/Orange, ING, Ingersoll-Rand, Kaiser Pemanente, Leidos, L’Oreal, National Board of Medical Examiners, Stanford Health Care, Total Oil, UNICEF, US Navy, US Coast Guard, and many others.

Langdon is recognized as one the world’s leading thinkers and consultants on innovation, and his original and ground-breaking work has been adopted by corporations and universities on every continent.

He has completed his Master’s Degree in Urban Development at the London School of Economics in May 2021.

Mário Trentim
Sr. Trainer
IIL

P3O®: Are we doing the right things?

To stay relevant, Project Management Offices need to reinvent themselves, finding new ways to help organizations achieve strategic objectives through agile project execution. The rise of Agile poses new challenges to organizations in terms of governance, resource allocation, capacity planning, portfolio selection, and prioritization.

This presentation will teach you how to define and implement PMO functions and structures using AXELOS’ P3O® model (Portfolio, Programme, and Project Offices). You will also learn how to combine PRINCE2® and Agile to balance adaptability and governance.

Key Takeaways:

BIO:

Mario Trentim is passionate about volunteerism and has been helping nonprofit and professional communities since his youth. He has served and continues to serve at national and international Boards of Directors since 2014, including PMWB.org, PMIEF.org, ITAEX, and more.

Mr. Trentim is currently the Head of Governance and Performance at TRENTIM Solutions, a Microsoft Gold Partner company he founded in 2014. He expanded the company in Brazil and abroad, focused on project management services, citizen development, and digital transformation to customers in Latin America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Mr. Trentim is also CEO at the PMO Global Alliance, responsible for strategic planning, innovation, and global partnerships.

A former military officer (1999-2014), Mr. Trentim holds BSc and MSc degrees in Engineering, and he is concluding his Ph.D. in Project Management. He is also an MBA professor at top Business Schools, and he published nine books about project management in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

In 2014, he was the recipient of the prestigious PMIEF Harold Kerzner Award for his contributions to advancing the project management profession. Mr. Trentim also received the Meritorious Service Medal from the Air Force. Among other awards and recognition, Mr. Trentim is a Microsoft Regional Director and a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for five consecutive years.

Dr. Willis H. Thomas
Trainer and Speaker,
IIL

Reducing and Preventing Human Error in Projects

“To Err is Human.” This partial quote by Alexandre Pope reminds us that not all errors can be avoided. However, in some cases, the ripple effect caused by a human error can have huge consequences, resulting in billions or even trillions of dollars in lost revenue.

This is also true for projects. One small mistake, especially when it remains undetected, can lead to substandard project results. Therefore, reducing and preventing human error is critically important to project success. But how can this be done?

Key Takeaways

BIO:

Dr. Willis H. Thomas is a Project Management Professional (PMP) and Certified Performance Technologist (CPT) who has been involved in Human Resources and Training in the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry since 2003. His experience includes working in the area of Drug Products (DP) and Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) manufacturing in Kalamazoo, MI; Quality Assurance in Vaccines R&D in Pearl River, NY; Pharmacy Benefits Management in Irving, TX; Clinical Research in Arlington, VA; and generics and branded pharmaceuticals in Lake Forest, IL.

Willis actively publishes articles in journals, blogs and newspapers and speaks at pharmaceutical and life sciences conferences on an international basis on topics such as training and development, human error reduction and prevention, business of quality, data integrity, good documentation practices, evaluation (i.e., return on investment and return on quality), project management, risk management, change management, inspection readiness, and cybersecurity.

Since 2003, he has focused on enhancing the domain of Project Evaluation and has recognized global award-winning publications from PMI (Cleland Award) and APEX for Publication Excellence. He has been a trainer for IIL since 2009 and is a college professor in the Greater Chicago area.