Written by Theresa McCoy

On June 11, 2019, Clint Padgett, President and CEO of Project Success Inc., was the featured speaker at the Architecture Engineering & Construction (AEC) Forum.

Clint opened up the presentation by describing his company’s Project Success Method (PSM) as a set of generic principles, concepts and structured processes by which projects can be: clearly defined, thoroughly planned, and persistently controlled during execution to achieve project success. Clint discussed typical project challenges and the concept of the “worry curve” was introduced.

While all projects have challenges, exactly what they are is the great unknown when a new project is introduced. As a project begins, there is uninformed optimism, the “honeymoon” period, where project worry is postponed.  This eventually turns into “vague concern” as the project deadline begins to appear.  The final stage of worry, if left unchecked or unbalanced, as the deadline approaches is panic.  The panic phase is the most expensive financially and emotionally for the project team.

So, what is a project leader to do? Cliff discussed these key phases of the “worry curve” when planning and executing a project.  By first understanding some critical keys to success, such as team and customer agreement on the charter document. Early and ongoing project planning to gain individual team member commitment and buy-in throughout the project life-cycle.  A project manager can successfully shift the project worry earlier in the project to avoid the deadline “panic” phase. 

Thus, Clint emphasized the importance of planning to help mitigate the impact of unforeseen problems, by managing the project worry curve to yield higher quality projects. 

 About PMI

Atlanta Chapter serves Project Management Community in Metro Atlanta, and we're an active resource to corporations, community and government agencies throughout north Georgia. With over 5,000 members, PMI Atlanta is among the top 5 chapters in the world. Our professional expertise span across industries; we’re the professionals building healthcare information technology systems, the engineers developing smarter public transportation, and the planners growing our communities more efficiently.

Written by Claudia Greene, PMP

PMI Atlanta Healthcare Forum enjoyed an informative and interactive presentation delivered to us by Erica Cockfield and Carrie Delong.

Carrie and Erica delivered an exciting and engaging presentation through a tag team effort with role play. We learned through several interactions with the tandem that making your way to ‘rockstar status’ is as much about making other people shine, as it is about achieving your own goals. It is not necessarily about being in the spotlight at all times, but sharing the spotlight, identifying and acknowledging other stakeholders along the journey.

Erica closed by stressing that Customer Success is enterprise success which leads to happy employees who have been energized, united and aligned through the customer success experience.

About PMI

Atlanta Chapter serves Project Management Community in Metro Atlanta, and we're an active resource to corporations, community and government agencies throughout north Georgia. With over 5,000 members, PMI Atlanta is among the top 5 chapters in the world. Our professional expertise span across industries; we’re the professionals building healthcare information technology systems, the engineers developing smarter public transportation, and the planners growing our communities more efficiently.

Written by Claudia Greene, PMP

PMI Atlanta Healthcare Forum enjoyed an informative and interactive presentation on Globalization delivered by Dr. Senait Kebede.

Dr. Kebede is the Founder and President of International Health Consultancy (ICH). She brings over 15 years of experience in clinical and public health practice. She works with interaction and bilateral organizations including World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF, UNAIDS, World Bank, CDC, and USAID with a focus on Maternal and child health, HIV/TB, Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (DSR) and quality of care. She received her MD from Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, with a speciality in paediatrics and an MPH from Johns Hopkins University. She is also a Gates Strategic Leadership fellow for Reproductive Health, JHU and certified (PMI) in Project Management.

Dr. Kebede began her presentation overviewing the outcomes of Globalization, highlighting global health issues, perspectives, challenges, and opportunities with a focus on Africa. She went on to state many countries benefited from globalization – Africa was not one of them. She expounded upon the contrast of Africa, Latin America, and East Asia with the discontents of growing poverty, unemployment, crime, and growth going to upper income groups. She referenced back to Nobel laureate, Joseph E. Stiglitz’s, “Globalization and its Discontents” as well as that of “The World is Flat” by Thomas Friedman to support her opening comments.

Dr. Kebede shared with the attendees that much was done to protect investors but not so much the environment in developing countries. Most of the projected benefits accrued to rich countries. For example, 70% of gains went to developed countries and 48 of the least developed countries were actually left worse off. Globalization had also led to unbalanced intellectual property rights making access to life saving medicines more difficult.

In 2005, UNAIDs sought to come up with a resolution to combat these disparities to ensure there was some social justice in bringing access to care. Dr. Kebede discussed how she was the coordinator for an initiative called 3 by 5, which was introduced to treat 3 million people by 2005 in Africa. Her responsibilities included partnering with other countries, deploying resources, hiring consultants, and conducting needs assessments. This required a focus on project management to help drive great results. Dr. Kebede said that results between 2002 -2006, in every continent, there was a remarkable increase in the number of people that were treated by anti-viral medicine. Displaying noticeable physical results, she backed her comment with a patient’s “before and after” picture whom was able to get access to the treatment. Dr. Kebede also shared other positive results in child mortality for Rwanda. It had its steepest fall in child mortality ever recorded from 1995 to 2011.

Dr. Kebede went on to petition why we should be involved in Global Health. Her reasoning included the following:

• Health matters to everyone, not just to those living in developing countries
• The return on invest in health is 9:1.
• One extra year of population life expectancy raises GDP per capita by 4%.

Dr. Kebede concluded with emphasizing that we should focus on building and strengthening institutions and systems – political, diplomatic and people skills for better leadership and governance.

 About PMI

Atlanta Chapter serves Project Management Community in Metro Atlanta, and we're an active resource to corporations, community and government agencies throughout north Georgia. With over 5,000 members, PMI Atlanta is among the top 5 chapters in the world. Our professional expertise span across industries; we’re the professionals building healthcare information technology systems, the engineers developing smarter public transportation, and the planners growing our communities more efficiently.

Written by Theresa McCoy

On March 12, 2019, Dr. Hai T. Ho, PhD, professor and Head of Computer Engineering Department at Kennesaw State University, was the featured speaker at the Architecture Engineering & Construction (AEC) Forum.

Dr. Ho described how Artificial Intelligence enables machines to “think” and act (rationally) like humans with capabilities such as speech processing, image perception and “thinking” (i.e. learn, process and make decisions). He shared some current examples of these capabilities, which included a robot learning to do a backflip on its own, chatbots that sound and react like a human being and even a Sony AIBO robot dog that responds to touch and “builds a relationship” with people like a pet owner.   Other more prominent examples include image processing that is used in autonomous or “driver-less” cars. Dr. Ho also pointed out that when you click “like” or “comment” on websites, often you are contributing information gathering that is used for AI!

In a deeper dive, Dr. Ho briefly discussed how machines learn as this is the underpinning of AI. He also shared how neural networks are the backbone for AI input.  For example, programmers and engineers provide the input and mathematical algorithms are created to mimic the brain based on a mathematical function.  Thus, it’s critical to figure out the right “architecture” for the neural network or machine learning in order to produce the desired output.

Applications for AI span many forms including smart devices, farming (i.e. to sort produce), the creation of art such as paintings, medical diagnosis, lip reading and many more. In the age of technology, AI is interesting,compelling and,yes, evenintimidating.  Whether you take an optimistic or pessimistic view, there are certainly many interesting AI developments and applications that will impact everyone in some way, shape or form both now and in the future.

About PMI

Atlanta Chapter serves Project Management Community in Metro Atlanta, and we're an active resource to corporations, community and government agencies throughout north Georgia. With over 5,000 members, PMI Atlanta is among the top 5 chapters in the world. Our professional expertise span across industries; we’re the professionals building healthcare information technology systems, the engineers developing smarter public transportation, and the planners growing our communities more efficiently.

Written by Claudia Greene, PMP

PMI Atlanta Healthcare Forum enjoyed an informative and interactive presentation on Change and Change Leadership delivered by Charles Johnson.

Charles’ career spans many years in customer service assignments including Sales, Management, and Operations, integrating technologies such as Sales Force, Mobility, Business Intelligence, Big Data and advanced analytics to bring a better experience and solve customer and employee challenges.

Charles began his presentation with a bit of humour – a picture of a dinosaur with the caption “change is inevitable.” He went on to discuss change – its impact on everyone, business and personal. Charles presented attendees with visuals – F.W. Woolworth Co., Blockbuster Video Stores, Sears Christmas Catalogs – asking attendees if they could remember these. He then engaged the group in discussing what happened to each of these businesses. Simply put – change. Technological advances began to allow others to offer new and existing products and services via different avenues, creating competition for the front-runners. He explained that when companies are slow to embrace change and make adjustments to be competitive, they become obsolete.

Charles shared with the attendees that technology is changing at breakneck speed. He did a comparison of music players – from the Walkman to DVD/CD to I-pod. He explained that the individual with the original idea for a handheld music device did not garner interest by large companies, thus, he was not taken seriously, until he approached Apple. Apple could see the big picture and he was hired and we all know the success the I-pod has been, as well as the other products that have evolved because of it. Charles parlayed the reality of this missed opportunity into why we fail at change. He stated a number of reasons companies fail at change – fear, skill gap, not understanding the impact, failure to think it through, managerial courage, budget, commitment. Charles pointed out that successful change requires people, the right people, thus stakeholder analysis is critical.

Here are some questions to consider during stakeholder analysis:
• Ultimately, what is important to the customer and what is this person’s role?
• How will they impact success?
• Leadership ability to stay the course, buy in?

Charles moved on to address the big picture of change. He emphasized that change is not a maybe, but guaranteed – so embrace and plan for it. Leading change requires ensuring engagement at all levels. Lastly, Charles stressed measuring the progress of the change in real-time and making adjustments/corrections if needed. He invited the attendees to look at John Kotter’s 8 steps to change model, as it presents an outline for leading change.

Charles concluded his presentation with humor – another picture of the dinosaur – this time with a caption that stressed, “Without the power to adapt, things can get a little risky.”

Detailed information on all the upcoming Forums can be found at: http://www.pmiatlanta.org. Please join us!

 About PMI

Atlanta Chapter serves Project Management Community in Metro Atlanta, and we're an active resource to corporations, community and government agencies throughout north Georgia. With over 5,000 members, PMI Atlanta is among the top 5 chapters in the world. Our professional expertise span across industries; we’re the professionals building healthcare information technology systems, the engineers developing smarter public transportation, and the planners growing our communities more efficiently.