97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know

Contributors

Matteo Becchi, PMP (Arlington, Virginia, U.S.)

Matteo Becchi is a certified project management professional (PMP)® constantly seeking that next challenging career. He is experienced in IT application upgrades, enhancements, and implementation projects, as well as hardware-specific IT projects such as technology refreshes or data center equipment migration and consolidation projects. Matteo has experience managing direct reports as well as a diverse mix of project types and related stakeholder groups. While he has experience with SDLCs (software development life cycles) and firmly supports the Project Management Institute's (PMI) five project life cycle phases across the nine knowledge areas, he is constantly pursuing ways to improve and perfect business processes (within project management and beyond) in order to elevate the work environment to higher levels of efficiency and effectiveness.

Matteo recently completed his master's degree in information systems and technology at the George Washington University and is currently enrolled in a graduate-level Leadership Development certificate program. He is also fluent in Italian and proficient in Spanish.

Matteo can be reached at [e-mail].

Cynthia A. Berg, PhD (ABD), PMP (Glendale, Arizona, U.S.)

Cynthia Berg is owner of C.A. Berg and Associates, and does consulting in leadership development and project management implementation. She was with Medtronic for 20 years, most recently as principal project management specialist at Medtronic Arizona Device Manufacturing in Tempe, Arizona, where she worked with new product development projects and development of project management training and methodology. During her tenure there, she also supported organizations within Medtronic, from manufacturing to finance and new product development.

Cynthia is a senior faculty member at Keller Graduate School of Management where she teaches in the Masters of Project Management program and the MBA programs; she has been with Keller since 2000. She is also an adjunct faculty member at Rio Salado Community College, where she teaches business and project management to corporate clients and was named Outstanding Adjunct Faculty Member for the 2000–2001 academic year.

Cynthia's educational background includes a PhD in organizational behavior from Capella University, where she is currently completing her dissertation in the area of downsizing, survivor syndrome, and employee motivation; an MBA from Arizona State University; and bachelor's degrees in both psychology and sociology from The College of St. Catherine.

Cynthia has been active as a volunteer for the Project Management Institute since 1991 on both local and international levels, and earned her PMP® in 1993. Cynthia led the update of The Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (2000 Edition), and was named PMI Linn Stuckenbrook Person of the Year 2001. She participated in the Standards MAG from 2000 through 2003, and prior to that was a member of PMI's standards committee from 1995 through 1999. She is currently project leader for the creation of a "Project Management Risk Practice Standard."

Her other interests include scuba diving (she is a PADI-certified Dive Master and Master Diver), fitness, counted cross-stitch and embroidery, and creating stained glass—as well as, of course, reading.

David Bock (Reston, Virginia, U.S.)

David Bock is a principal consultant at CodeSherpas, a company he founded in 2007. David is also the president of the Northern Virginia Java Users Group, the editor of O'Reilly's OnJava.com website, and a frequent speaker on technology in venues such as the No Fluff Just Stuff Software Symposiums.

In January 2006, David was honored by being awarded the title of Java Champion by a panel of esteemed leaders in the Java community in a program sponsored by Sun. There are approximately 100 active Java Champions worldwide.

David has also served on several JCP panels, including the specification of the Java 6 Platform and the Java Module System.

David Diaz Castillo, MBA, PMP (Panama City, Panama)

David Díaz Castillo is the project manager office director for Project Management Consultants in Panama City, Panama. He has worked in governments and private projects in different industries including IT, legal, and human resources. He is a systems engineer, and has an MBA in finance and a graduate degree in project management. He earned his PMP® in 2007.

Udi Dahan (Haifa, Israel)

Udi Dahan is an internationally renowned expert on software architecture and design. Recognized four years in a row with the coveted "Most Valuable Professional" award by Microsoft Corporation for solutions architecture and connected systems, Udi is also on the advisory board of Microsoft's next-generation technology platforms: WCF/WF/OSLO, the Software Factories Initiative, and the Composite Application Library and Guidance.

Udi is one of 33 experts in Europe recognized by the International .NET Association (INETA); an author and trainer for the International Association of Software Architects on Reliability, Availability, and Scalability; andan SOA, Web Services, and XML Guru recommended by Dr. Dobb's—the world's largest software magazine. When not consulting, training, and speaking, Udi leads NServiceBus—the most popular open source .NET Enterprise Service Bus.

From web projects in small Internet startups—including government projects that push the limits of technology, to enterprise-scale programs with hundreds of developers and testers costing tens of millions of dollars—companies in all verticals and of all sizes entrust Udi with providing them relevant and reliable architecture and design for their current and future requirements.

Udi can be contacted via his blog: UdiDahan.com.

Matt "Boom" Daniel (Coopersburg, Pennsylvania, U.S.)

Matt "Boom" Daniel is a 12-year United States Marines fighter pilot, TopGun graduate, and weapons officer. Boom has mentored and trained officers in the art of small-unit leadership, fighter aircraft tactics, and the competencies of operations planning, execution, and logistics. Matt facilitates business discussions among CEOs and senior executives toward the goal of real-world problem solving and strategic development. A 1985 graduate of Virginia Military Institute with a BS in civil engineering, Boom started his leadership and management consulting business, Business Battlefield, Inc., in January of 2004. Married with four boys, Boom and his family live in Coopersburg, Pennsylvania.

Barbee Davis, MA, PHR, PMP (Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.)

Barbee Davis, MA, PHR, PMP, writes a semi-monthly column for the Project Management Institute's (PMI) Community Post, which reaches over 400,000 project managers around the world. She is an international reviewer for training organizations wishing to be accepted or renewed into the Registered Education Program (R.E.P.) for PMI.

With a background that includes owning a computer software training company for desktop and technical application instruction and certification, it makes sense that Barbee is a Black Belt in Microsoft Project. In fact, she previously coauthored How To Learn Microsoft Project in 24 Hours.

Barbee has managed projects for companies all over the United States, trained hundreds of project managers for certification, taught extensively at the university level, and is sought after as a guest speaker. You may have met her at the desk on the No Fluff Just Stuff tour in the United States or Canada.

Monte Davis, MCSE (Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.)

Monte Davis has been involved with Windows server administration, information technology project management, server backup and recovery, email administration, new server rollouts, LAN/WAN administration, and second-level support since he joined MSI in March 2006. Monte's technical capabilities include all versions of Windows server administration, Cisco IOS, Linux, Lotus Domino, Microsoft Exchange 2003, and TCP/IP.

Monte was previously employed with Retalix, formerly Integrated Distributed Systems, for five years as a network administration manager and site administrator. He worked for ExecuTrain as an enterprise network administrator for five years in server administration, LAN/WAN administration, and email administration. He also taught Microsoft Official Curriculum courses.

Monte has a bachelor's degree from Northwest Missouri State University and is a member of a VMware user group.

His certifications include Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer—Microsoft Windows Server 2003; Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator—Microsoft Windows Server 2003; Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer Microsoft—Windows 2000; Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer Microsoft—Windows NT 4.0; and Microsoft Certified Professional MCP 2.0—Certified Professional.

Scott Davis (Broomfield, Colorado, U.S.)

Scott Davis published one of the first public websites implemented in Grails in 2006 and has been actively working with the technology ever since.

Author of many books, such as Groovy Recipes: Greasing the Wheels of Java and GIS for Web Developers(Pragmatic) and two ongoing IBM developerWorks article series (Mastering Grails and, in 2009, Practically Groovy), Scott writes extensively about how Groovy and Grails are the future of Java development.

Scott teaches public and private classes on Groovy and Grails for startups and Fortune 100 companies. He is the cofounder of the Groovy/Grails Experience conference and is a regular presenter on the international technical conference circuit (including No Fluff Just Stuff, JavaOne, OSCON, TheServerSide, and QCON).

In 2008, Scott was voted the top Rock Star at JavaOne for his talk "Groovy, the Red Pill: How to blow the mind of a buttoned-down Java developer."

You can contact Scott through his company, ThirstyHead, at thirstyhead.com.

Neal Ford (Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.)

Neal Ford is software architect and meme wrangler at ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy with an exclusive focus on end-to-end software development and delivery. He is also the designer and developer of applications, instructional materials, magazine articles, courseware, and video/DVD presentations, and he is author and/or editor of five books spanning a variety of technologies. He focuses on designing and building large-scale enterprise applications.

Neal is also an internationally acclaimed speaker, speaking at over 100 developer conferences worldwide and delivering more than 600 talks. Check out his website at http://www.nealford.com. He welcomes feedback and can be reached at [e-mail].

Jorge Gelabert, PMP (Berlin, Connecticut, U.S.)

Jorge Gelabert is a certified PMP® who works for Northeast Utilities as a project manager. He holds a BS in computer engineering from the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, holds an MS in computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (R.P.I.), speaks Spanish (native) and English, is a Delphi Document Management Professional, and holds Masters and Advanced Masters Certificates in project management from George Washington University.

Jorge is an active member of the Project Management Institute (PMI), having served as director of marketing, president, and past president of the Southern New England Chapter of PMI. Currently, he serves as the Component Mentor for Region 3, supporting 19 PMI chapters. He is also a member of the PMI-ISIG and IEEE associations.

Dr. Paul Giammalvo, CDT, CCE, MScPM (Jakarta, Indonesia)

Dr. Paul D. Giammalvo, CDT, PMP, CCE, MScPM, is senior technical advisor (Project Management) to PT Mitratata Citragraha (PTMC) in Jakarta, Indonesia (www.getpmcertified.com). He is also an adjunct professor of project and program management at the Lille Graduate School of Management in Paris, France (www.esc-lille.com). For 14+ years, he has been providing project management training and consulting throughout south and eastern Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. He is also active in the global project management community, serving as an advocate for and on behalf of the global practitioner. He does so by playing an active professional role in the Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering International (AACE), the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI), and the Construction Management Association of America (CMAA). He also sits on the board of directors of the Global Alliance for Project Performance Standards (GAPPS; www.globalpmstandards.org)in Sydney, Australia, and develops graduate level curricula in asset and project management for Western Australia University, Perth (www.blendedlearning.ecm.uwa.edu.au).

Paul has spent 18 of the last 35 years working on large, highly technical international projects, including such prestigious projects as the Negev Airbase Project (part of the Camp David Peace Accords) in Ovda, Israel, and the Alyeska Pipeline and the Distant Early Warning Site (DEW Line) upgrades in Alaska. Most recently, he worked as a senior project cost and scheduling consultant for Caltex Minas Field in Sumatra, and project manager for the Taman Rasuna Apartment Complex for Bakrie Brothers in Jakarta. His current client list includes AT&T, Ericsson, Nokia, Lucent, General Motors, Siemens, Conoco-Philips, Unocal, BP, Dames and Moore, SNC Lavalin, Freeport McMoran, Caltex, the UN Projects Office, the World Bank Institute, and many other multinational companies and NGO organizations.

Paul holds an undergraduate degree in construction management and an MS in project management from George Washington University. He was recently awarded his PhD in project and program management through the Institute Superieur De Gestion Industrielle (ISGI) and Ecole Superieure De Commerce De Lille (ESC-Lille), under the supervision of Dr. Christophe Bredillet, CCE, IPMA A Level.

Karen Gillison (Leesburg, Virginia, U.S.)

Karen Gillison has a background in computer science and 15 years of experience developing and delivering software and systems across a broad range of industries and technologies. Karen provides software development and project management services to commercial and government clients.

Karen is a member of the RubyNation organizing committee, Northern Virginia Ruby User's Group, and Java User's Group; a Golden Spike alumna of the Pragmatic Studio Ruby on Rails; and winner of the FGM Technical Achievement Award for 2000 and 2006.

Karen lives in Virginia with her husband, Charles; their two children; and two Labrador retrievers.

James Graham, PMP (Ta' l-Ibrag, Malta)

James Graham is an independent management consultant who operates globally.

He specializes in human resource development, designing and delivering management development programs, as well as consulting in business process improvement and corporate structure.

As well as possessing a PMP® certification, James is a fellow of the Institution of Analysts and Programmers, and holds a master's degree in consulting and a diploma in psychology.

He lives on the island of Malta, in the Southern Mediterranean region of Europe.

Alan Greenblatt (Sudbury, Massachusetts, U.S.)

Alan Greenblatt brings 25 years of software development, technical management expertise, and entrepreneurship to his role as founder and CEO of Sciova, a services firm specializing in the development of enterprise semantic applications. As VP of Semantic Technologies at Metatomix, Alan spent several years playing an integral role in the development of the company's advanced semantic technology platform and holds patents associated with that work. He has worked regularly with customers such as Airbus Industries, State Street Bank, and UCB Pharma, helping them develop unique and highly valuable semantic applications in their respective organizations. Over the years Alan has contributed significantly to the development of advanced media technologies offered by both Sun Microsystems and Microsoft. He cofounded Anyware Fast, a software consultancy, and was instrumental in its sale to Dimension X, one of the very first Java startups, specializing in virtual reality and interactive multimedia-authoring software. At Dimension X, Alan was the director of technology until the firm was acquired by Microsoft. As part of the Microsoft Office team, he led the development of Microsoft Vizact 2000, an interactive multimedia authoring product.

Alan has a Bachelor of Applied Science in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo.

Kim Heldman, PMP (Lakewood, Colorado, U.S.)

Kim Heldman, PMP, has over 18 years experience in information technology project management. She is the chief information officer for the Colorado Department of Transportation and is responsible for all IT resource planning, budgeting, and project management for a $1 billion organization with 3,300+ geographically dispersed employees.

Kim has served in an executive leadership role for several years and is regarded as a strategic visionary with an innate ability to collaborate with diverse groups and organizations, instill hope and improve morale, and lead her teams in achieving goals they never thought possible.

Kim has extensive experience in the government sector managing projects of various size and scope. She serves on the Executive Governance Committee (EGC) in the Governor's Office of Information Technology, which is responsible for oversight and governance of IT state-certified projects. In her role as cochair of the Colorado CIO Forum, Kim assisted with the recommendation and review of statewide IT policies, standards, and initiatives. Kim is also the cofounder of the Colorado Project Management Users Group, open to all state agency CIOs and IT project managers. She contributed to the development and implementation of project management policies, standards, and methodologies for projects statewide. The group's work was instrumental in helping to establish legislation requiring all major IT projects in the state of Colorado to have certified project managers conducting them.

Kim is the bestselling author of the PMP® Project Management Professional Study Guide, published by Sybex, Inc. and now in its fourth edition. Thousands of people worldwide have used the Study Guide for their successful preparation to sit for the PMP® exam. Kim is also the author of Project Management JumpStart, Second Edition, and Project Manager's Spotlight on Risk Management(both from Jossey-Bass). She is the coauthor of Excel 2007 for Project Managers and PMP® Project Management Professional Study Guide Deluxe Edition, Second Edition (both from Sybex).

Kim also writes on leadership topics and speaks at conferences and events. She lives in Arvada, Colorado, with her husband, Bill, and three grown children.

Naresh Jain (Malad, Mumbai, India)

Naresh Jain is a software craftsman working for Directi as a quality and community evangelist. He helps software organizations deliver quality software solutions using agile and lean thinking. He has worked on a variety of software projects utilizing XP, Scrum, and Crystal techniques since 2003.

Naresh is passionate about building a community of talented and capable software craftsmen, the next-generation software leaders in India. In recognition of his accomplishments, in 2007 the Agile Alliance awarded Naresh with the Gordon Pask Award for contributing to the Agile Community by establishing Agile User Groups in India and creating the Simple Design and Testing conference.

Naresh is the founder and vice-chairman of the Agile Software Community of India (ASCI). He has organized various conferences, including the Simple Design and Testing Conference (SDTConf) and Agile Coach Camp. Naresh has helped start various agile user groups, including the Agile Philly User Group and various groups in India.

Naresh is an active open source committer and enjoys teaching software development courses in universities. By being a part of the team, Naresh helps software companies embrace agile.

Naresh enjoys beer, music, adventure sports, and hot food of any color. You can reach him at [e-mail].

Krishna Kadali, M. Tech (Kondapur, Hyderabad, India)

Krishna Kadali has more than 19 years of hands-on experience in technology and building businesses around technology solutions. Krishna has been part of high-technology startups, as well as publicly traded companies, where he played a key role in building successful businesses around software products. He is currently leading a systems and data integration service provider based out of Hyderabad, India, called Prabhavat Solutions, which provides several systems and data integration solutions.

Prior to founding Prabhavat, Krishna was founder and CTO at Nimaya, based in McLean, Virginia, where he spearheaded the development of its flagship products, ActionBridge and InSync, and also delivered several other customer data integration and systems integration solutions. As a part of Nimaya, he has built an offshore team in India from the ground up and successfully delivered several technology solutions through the offshore team.

Prior to founding Nimaya, Krishna served in various capacities at MKS in Fairfax, Virginia, and BULL S.A. in Paris, France, providing major contributions to architecture, design, development, and delivery of their flagship products—NuTCRACKER and OSIAPI, respectively—with extensive systems programming background.

Krishna has a master's degree in telecommunications from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, India, and a bachelor's degree in electronics and communications from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University in Anantapur, India.

Patrick Kua (London, UK)

Patrick Kua is an agile coach, facilitator, and developer for ThoughtWorks. He has been working with individuals on teams in agile environments for the last four years, and understands how powerful and responsive people can be when working together in a common manner. He is always interested in aspects of continuous improvement, and how lightweight processes can boost team effectiveness. He brings a blend of deep technical skills and deep understanding of management processes to teams that help them move toward their goals.

Anupam Kundu (New York, New York, U.S.)

Anupam Kundu is a project manager/lead consultant at ThoughtWorks, primarily based out of the New York area. Anupam comes from a broad consultancy background and offers specific experience for managing large-scale projects in multiple business domains, including HR/intranet systems in investment banking/private equity firms, telecom BACC in North America, global publishing and media, senior healthcare systems, and title insurance. Anupam has more than nine years of experience in various stages of requirements gathering, estimation, analysis and design, implementation, quality control, training, and post-implementation activities for software projects with premier enterprises.

Lukeman Lawal, M.ENG, MNSE, R.ENGR. (Lekki, Lagos, Nigeria)

Lukeman Lawal is a project engineer with Chevron Nigeria Limited. He manages oil and gas projects—engineering designs, construction, and installation. Lukeman was a project engineer on Escravos Gas Project Phase 3A (EGP3A) Offshore, New Oil Fields development. He presently works as an early concept development project engineer.

Lukeman was an academic staff member at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria.

Martha Legare, MBA, PMP (Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.)

Martha Legare has been a coach, trainer, and consultant in North America and Europe for almost 20 years. She is CEO of the Gantt Group, a consulting and training firm linking strategic planning, project management, and behavioral science. While the Gantt Group has a variety of clients, it focuses on the marketing and advertising industry.

Martha has designed and delivered numerous seminars, including Loyola University's Project Management Certificate for its MBA program, where she is adjunct faculty. She is published in the AMA Trainers' Activity Book. Martha has written project methodologies and helped develop project offices in the U.S., Mexico, and Europe.

Martha is a certified PMP® and certified mediator for the American Arbitration Association. She received her MBA from Almeda University and her BA from Guilford College. She is an innately strategic thinker with strong cross-cultural skills and a steadfast commitment to improving clients' businesses.

James Leigh (Toronto, Ontario, Canada)

James Leigh is an independent software consultant based in Toronto, and has been building web solutions for 10 years. He is experienced with modelling business problems and concepts in software, and specializes in performance and technology integration. His background is in semantic web technologies and decentralized networks.

James has also led semantic-related open source software projects, including Sesame's federated RDF store, relation RDF store, server client library for Sesame, integration of Mulgara and Sesame, and the object RDF mapper of OpenRDF. He has also led optimization efforts for various Java applications for over five years, including benchmarking and optimizing Sesame's RDF stores, AMC theatres' employee scheduling system, and a manufacturing tracking system for swimwear designers Christina and Gottex.

Craig Letavec, PMP, PgMP, MSP (Waynesville, Ohio, U.S.)

Craig Letavec has served as a project, program, and enterprise PMO manager in a diverse range of companies including Procter & Gamble, Hewlett-Packard, and Siemens AG. His experience includes leading global software development and implementation projects, developing and implementing project and program management offices, and developing and presenting project management training courses. Craig holds the Project Management Professional (PMP)®, Program Management Professional (PgMP)®, and Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) certifications as well as an MS in project management from George Washington University. He is the author of The Program Management Office: Establishing, Managing, and Growing the Value of a PMO, a bestselling reference book on the topics of PMO development and management, and Program Management Professional (PgMP)®: A Certification Study Guide with Best Practices for Maximizing Business Results (both from J. Ross Publishing).

Randy Loomis, PMP (Andover, Connecticut, U.S.)

Randy Loomis is a certified PMP® with over 14 years of project management experience, and has worked in the information technology field for 26 years. He is currently employed by Northeast Utilities as a project manager in the IT Program Management Office. Randy graduated cum laude from Eastern Connecticut State University with a degree in psychology.

Kim MacCormack (Leesburg, Virginia, U.S.)

Kim MacCormack is a cofounder of CodeSherpas, Inc., a software consultancy that brings her software engineering experience to commercial and government clients. In this role, she's committed to developing high-quality web applications, helping her clients get their products to market faster.

Kim has more than 13 years of software and systems engineering experience. She has designed and developed a variety of web-based and client server applications. She received her master's degree in software engineering in 2005. Kim was also an early adopter of Ruby on Rails and is a Golden Spike alumna of the Pragmatic Studio Ruby on Rails Training Course. In addition, she is a member of the Northern Virginia Java Users Group and Ruby Users Group.

Kim has experience with every aspect of the software engineering life cycle, including requirements analysis, design, human/computer interface (HCI) design, code development, and verification/validation. She has served as a project manager, technical lead, and/or software engineer for over 30 web applications for various commercial, nonprofit, and government clients. These projects included basic websites, intranets, e-commerce applications, content management systems, and complex web-based survey tools to create customized surveys with full multilingual support.

Kathy MacDougall (Erie, Colorado, U.S.)

Kathy MacDougall is chief business architect at Zepheira, which provides solutions to effectively integrate, navigate, and manage data across personal, group, and enterprise boundaries. As chief business architect, Kathy is responsible for analyzing clients' current business architecture and making recommendations for improvements to ensure successful adoption of new technology implementations.

Kathy has extensive experience leading enterprise-wide initiatives to help companies evaluate, manage, and leverage their corporate data to increase revenues and uncover new business intelligence. Successes during her 20-year tenure in this field include creating data-based and knowledge management solutions for companies ranging from $500 million to $11 billion in size, including such names as General Electric and Sun Microsystems.

Since 2000, Kathy has been implementing solutions using semantic web technologies. At Sun Microsystems, Kathy and her team led the first known large-scale corporate implementation of semantic web technologies, which provides the foundation for dynamic delivery of content from across the organization. With the proper combination of technology and business infrastructure in place, Sun was able to achieve an estimated cost avoidance of $10M annually. Kathy and team were invited to provide their expert perspective on the role of semantic web technologies in business solutions at W3C's Technical Plenary in 2003.

Kathy is a graduate of Colgate University and has extensive training in processes improvement and effecting organizational change, including background in Six Sigma methodologies.

Ernani Marques da Silva, MBA, PMP, PgMP (Mairipora, Sao Paulo, Brazil)

Ernani Marques has over 19 years of broad-based and successful experience in project management, program management, and portfolio management within the IT, banking, and services industries. He has led and managed project/program management offices (PMOs), as well as multiple projects and teams.

His experience within the IT industry includes managing projects and programs in the areas of application development, product management, and system integration utilizing full System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) processes and project management methodologies.

Alex Miller (Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.)

Alex Miller is a tech lead and engineer at Terracotta, Inc., the makers of the open source Java clustering product Terracotta. Prior to Terracotta, Alex worked at BEA Systems on the AquaLogic product line and was chief architect at MetaMatrix. His interests include Java, concurrency, distributed systems, query languages, and software design.

Alex enjoys writing his blog at http://tech.puredanger.com. He is a contributing author to the 2008 release The Definitive Guide to Terracotta (Apress), along with the rest of the Terracotta team. Alex is a frequent speaker at Java user group meetings, the No Fluff Just Stuff tour, and conferences like JavaOne.

William J. Mills (Castro Valley, California, U.S.)

William J. Mills is currently a Technical Yahoo! working primarily on software and product security at Yahoo!. Prior to that, he worked at Invisible Worlds (now defunct); at Wells Fargo, running firewalls and working on its first Internet banking release; at various contracting gigs; and for a while at the County of San Diego Superior Court.

Gennady Mironov, CPM (Toronto, Ontario, Canada).

Gennady Mironov was born in 1967. He served two years in the Soviet Army and graduated from Power Engineering Technical University in Moscow in 1992 with a master's degree in electrical engineering. He received his post-grad education in psychology and business in 2001.

Gennady has been working for last 16 years in the IT/telecommunications industry in roles from field technician to solutions manager to program manager. In the last four years before he immigrated to Canada, he managed huge wireless projects across Russia, based on Siemens and Huawei solutions. He was directly responsible for projects up to $16 million USD.

In 2008, Gennady finished a one-year post-grad program at Humber Institute of Applied Technology in project management in Toronto. He recently applied at PMI for his PMP® exam.

He lives in Toronto with his wife and three children.

Jared Richardson (Morrisville, North Carolina, U.S.)

Jared Richardson is the coauthor of the book Ship It! A Guide to Successful Software Projects (Pragmatic), which is now available in five languages. He works with NFJS One to help teams and managers who want an external point of view. Jared can be found on the Web at http://AgileArtisans.com and http://NFJSOne.com.

Brian Sam-Bodden (Scottsdale, Arizona, U.S.)

Brian Sam-Bodden is an author and recognized international speaker. Brian has worked as an architect, developer, mentor, and trainer for several Fortune 500 companies. He is the author of Beginning POJOs: Spring, Hibernate, JBoss and Tapestry (Apress), and has also coauthored the Apress Java title Enterprise Java Development on a Budget: Leveraging Java Open Source Technologies.

Angyne J. Schock-Smith, PMP (Phillipsburg, New Jersey, U.S.)

Angyne J. Schock-Smith, PMP, is the former president and CEO of Arysta Projex, Inc., an independent firm that served the project management community for 10 years. Prior to that time, Angyne served as a practicing project manager across multiple functions, including global network solutions, sales support, customer care, product management and strategic planning, over an 18-year career with AT&T. As of October 1, 2008, she became senior instructional designer for International Institute for Learning's (IIL) Global Learning Solutions, specializing in project/program management and leadership training and consulting services.

Matt Secoske (Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.)

Matt Secoske is principal of Nimblelogic, LLC, a boutique software development company dedicated to making kick-*** web applications. He blogs at http://mattsecoske.com and is on Twitter as @secos.

Richard Sheridan (Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.)

After only two years in business, Rich Sheridan, CEO of Menlo Innovations, became the Forbes "Hire Yourself" cover story for all those choosing entrepreneurship over unemployment. The next year, it was a Wall Street Journal article on the unique office Menlo uses for software design and development. Within six years, Menlo had become one of Inc. 500's fastest-growing privately held firms in the U.S. What makes this story truly remarkable is that it occurred against the backdrop of an IT industry that everyone assumed was leaving the U.S. for offshore.

Sheridan's team at Menlo breaks all the rules and, in doing so, produces phenomenal results for its customers. No walls, offices, doors, or cubes—one big open room, à la Edison's original invention factory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. In this noisy, fun atmosphere, Menlo has produced software for all walks of industry, from health care to scientific equipment to high-fashion e-commerce to diesel motor vehicle diagnostics, and many more.

Software developed by Menlo for its clients is designed for everyday people by Menlo's High-tech Anthropologists®, built to last by Menlo's world-class agile software development team, and managed by a set of professional project managers listed among the nation's 50 Most Prolific by the Project Management Institute. Sheridan and Menlo have won numerous awards and honors, and he and his team regularly are invited to present nationally and internationally, sharing the secrets of the Menlo Software Factory™ with all who wish to learn how to build a learning organization that can keep pace with today's advances in software and design.

Derry Simmel, PMP, MBA, FLMI (Chapin, South Carolina, U.S.)

Derry Simmel has been in IT and project management for over 25 years. Recently he has been creating PMOs, having built three in the last six years. The latest of theses is for an $89 million program for the state of South Carolina. Derry has an MBA from the University of Phoenix and a BS in computer science from the University of South Carolina. He currently serves as the vice-chairman of membership for PMI's Project Management Office Specific Interest Group and as the VP of programs for the PMI Midlands Chapter.

Pavel Simsa, PMP (Bellevue, Washington, U.S.)

Pavel Simsa has been in the software development and localization business for 10 years, 5 of which were project and program management of enterprise security software. He works for an international corporation with stakeholders generally spread across the globe for each project. Each product is typically released in 10–17 different languages, all at the same time. Although he earned his PMP® certification only in 2008, he has been following the PMBOK® Guide best practices for several years, trying to apply them to the unique, agile, and challenging world of software.

Ken Sipe (St. Charles, Missouri, U.S.)

Ken Sipe is a technology director with Perficient, Inc. (PRFT). Ken was the founder of CodeMentor, where he was the chief architect and mentor, leading clients in the execution of RUP and agile methodologies in the delivery of software solutions. He is a former trainer for Rational in OOAD and RUP, and a CORBA Visibroker trainer for Borland. He continues to enjoy providing training and mentoring in all aspects of software development.

Ken is also a regular speaker with NFJS—No Fluff Just Stuff.

Marty Skomal, MPA (Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.)

Marty Skomal is director of programs at the Nebraska Arts Council, where he supervises all organizational grant programs, including arts education, multicultural arts, and arts touring. He has served as a conference presenter and panelist for numerous state arts agencies, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is also a former NEA Fellowship recipient in the Arts Administration Fellows Program and serves as a national arts program evaluator and consultant.

Marty holds a master's degree in public administration from the University of Nebraska.

Brian Sletten (Beverly Hills, California, U.S.)

Brian Sletten is a liberal arts-educated software engineer with a focus on forward-leaning technologies. He has a background as a system architect, a developer, a mentor, and a trainer. His experience has spanned the online games, defense, finance, and commercial domains with security consulting, network matrix switch controls, 3D simulation/visualization, Grid Computing, P2P, and semantic web-based systems. He has a BS in computer science from the College of William and Mary and currently lives in Beverly Hills, California. He is a senior platform engineer for Riot Games in Culver City, California, working on League of Legends. He focuses on web architecture, resource-oriented computing, the semantic web, scalable systems, and security consulting.

Venkat Subramaniam (Broomfield, Colorado, U.S.)

Venkat Subramaniam, founder of Agile Developer, Inc., has trained and mentored thousands of software developers in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia. He helps his clients succeed with agile development and various software technologies.

Venkat is a frequently invited speaker at various international software conferences. He authored .NET Gotchas (O'Reilly), and coauthored the 2007 Jolt Productivity Award-winning book Practices of an Agile Developer (Pragmatic Bookshelf). His most recent book is Programming Groovy (also Pragmatic).

You can reach him at [e-mail].

Miyoko Takeya, PMP (Tokyo, Japan)

Miyoko Takeya is a member of the Project Management Institute (PMI), the Project Management Association Japan (PMAJ), and the Japan Software Engineering and Management Society (SEMS).

For more than 30 years, she has worked in the information technology industry in Japan, starting with Hitachi Co. Ltd. as an operating system programmer, moving to Digital Equipment Co., and then to NCR Japan.

While she was at Digital and NCR, Miyoko spent most of her time on project business and drove several programs for business quality and performance. She also established a PMO (project management office), through which she was able to implement a project management system, a project accounting system, a project pricing system, an activity reporting and tracking system, and many other systems used successfully for business quality and performance improvement.

Miyoko has enjoyed her work in the IT industry project business area a great deal. Currently, she runs her own consulting business for project management.

Fabio Teixeira de Melo, PMP (Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, Mexico)

Fabio Pereira Teixeira de Melo, PMP, is a planning manager working for Construtora Norberto Odebrecht, the construction arm of the Brazilian multinational Odebrecht Group, with headquarters in Salvador-BA, Brazil, and offices in 15 countries. His experience spans 15 years in construction, including EPC projects in energy, oil, gas, and petrochemical areas. A Leadership Institute Graduate from the 2004 class and founder and former president of PMI Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil Chapter, Fabio participated in the elaboration of the Construction Extension to the PMBOK® Guide and the Practice Standard for Scheduling®, and served a five-year term as Latin America chair for the DPC SIG.

Luis E. Torres, PMP (San Rafael, Alajuela, Costa Rica)

Luis E. Torres is a PMP® certified by the Project Management Institute (PMI). He holds a master's degree in project management (Universitat Ramon Llull, Barcelona, Spain), MBAs in banking and finance (University of Costa Rica) and international business (University of Costa Rica – National University, San Diego, California), and a Licentiate in Mechanical Engineering (University of Costa Rica). Luis has over 15 years of combined experience in the fields of strategic planning and budgeting, project management and financial analysis for multinational companies, administration of international procurement contracts, and project engineering.

Harry Tucker (Matawan, New Jersey, U.S.)

Harry Tucker (http://www.harrytucker.com) is consumed by excellence in leadership incubation, collaboration, and personal empowerment. He believes that current social, political, and ecological conditions warrant a sense of urgency to incubate these leadership attributes in others. To that point, he and his associates work with recognized leaders in personal empowerment and leadership development to incubate skills and knowledge in others while igniting their passion to make effective contributions to the world.

Harry currently serves as a leadership incubator and strategy advisor to Fortune 100 companies and has served Wall Street clients for almost 20 years. Previously, Harry worked as an award-winning senior enterprise strategy advisor and architect with Microsoft. He is the founder of the Microsoft Personal Empowerment Group, a private group within Microsoft dedicated to incubating the growth of personal and professional success. In 2005, Harry also incubated a goal-setting and life-architecture program for inner-city youth.

In addition to enjoying life with his partner Rowan and three wonderful kids, Harry enjoys fly-fishing and reading, writing, studying, speaking, and breathing personal empowerment principles.

Lorin Unger (Hoboken, New Jersey, U.S.)

Lorin Unger has over 12 years of experience in technology strategy and management in environments ranging from dot-com to finance.

His specialties include technical strategy, team building and management, process creation and implementation, offshore development procedure implementation and management, efficiency analysis, and patience.

Angelo Valle (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

Angelo Valle is a specialist in technological innovation and industry organization civil engineer, master in construction management, at Federal University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He is the immediate past president of the Rio de Janeiro Project Management Institute (PMI) chapter.

Angelo is a noted author of numerous papers. His latest areas of interest revolve around project management organizations (PMOs) and earned value. As academic coordinator of the MBA for Foundation Getulio Vargas, he is currently responsible for the education of more than 20,000 post-graduate students.

Lelio Varella, PMP (Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

Lelio Varella is a business management consultant with over 30 years of experience and a focus on strategic planning and organizational development; portfolio, program, and project management; and project management offices. He has provided service for some of the most important Brazilian companies in sectors spreading from IT to oil and gas. A skilled spokesperson and instructor, he has coauthored or participated in three project management books. Lelio has been an active volunteer for PMI for more than 10 years, and his achievements include founding the PMI Rio de Janeiro chapter, which currently has over 1,000 members.

Paul Waggoner, MBA, PMP, MCSE, CHP, CHSS (Waukee, Iowa, U.S.)

Paul Waggoner, MBA, PMP, MCSE, CHP, CHSS, is an independent consultant and contract project manager. Paul has over 20 years of experience working in healthcare, information technology, and security. As a healthcare specialist, he works in the provider as well as payer environments.

For the past 10 years, Paul has worked as a project manager helping establish a PMO and completing a wide range of systems and clinical projects. He has also held several technical and management positions and worked as a director of a large information systems department in the midwest. He also co-owned a computer training business and performed a wide range of technical and administrative responsibilities.

Adrian Wible (New York, New York, U.S.)

Adrian Wible's self-chosen title is "Software Development Catalyst"; he works for ThoughtWorks, Inc., mostly in project management roles, but strives to fend off suggestions of being "post-technical" by getting his hands dirty in software development from time to time. He was indoctrinated in the Waterfall/SDLC mode of development as a developer at IBM, and moved into project, people, and process management roles throughout his 20+ year career there and at Dell Computer Corporation. Adrian joined ThoughtWorks and discovered the Agile Manifesto (and XP, and Scrum, and...) in 2005, and realized that project work and management could be fun, exciting, and rewarding. He hasn't looked back since.

Adrian can be reached at [e-mail].

David Wood (Fredericksburg, Virginia, U.S.)

David Wood is a partner of Zepheira, where he manages software projects and recommends the application of disruptive technologies to maximize business opportunities.

David has been involved with the development of semantic web standards, tools, products, and services since 1999. He cochaired the Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group at the W3C, and was a member of the Semantic Web Coordination Group. He is a founding member of several open source software projects, including the Kowari Metastore, the Mulgara Semantic Store, and the recently rearchitected Persistent URL service.

Most recently, David was entrepreneur-in-residence at the MIND Laboratory within the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies. He lead the implementation team for the Policy-Aware Web project, which developed a next-generation access-control system for the World Wide Web. David founded Tucana Technologies, Inc., a purveyor of a semantic web database purchased by Northrop Grumman Corporation in 2005. Prior to Tucana, David founded Plugged In Software, a successful software services firm in Australia from 1995–2002.

David is an adjunct instructor of computer science at the University of Mary Washington and researches the application of recombinant data techniques to software maintenance at the University of Queensland.

Joe Zenevitch (New York, New York, U.S.)

Joe Zenevitch is a senior project manager with ThoughtWorks, Inc., where he provides program and project management services for state-of-the-art software development projects, in addition to business analysis and agile coaching. Joe has over 20 years of experience in software development, with the past 15 focused on project management. While he has background in traditional project management methods, he has specialized in agile project management since ThoughtWorks began adopting it on projects in 1998.

Joe can be reached at [e-mail].