The 2011 PMI-NNV Holiday Party was held at The Firkin & Wolf Tuesday, Nov 29th 6:00-8:30 pm

Thank you to all of our members who attended our Holiday party and our sponsors who donated generously to the evening: TEKsystems for providing our Beverages, Fiala Project Resources for the $100 gift card to the Grill, Intuit for the donation of QuickBooks Pro, the Board for their fantastic raffle prizes and the many other wonderful gifts our members brought for the White Elephant Gift Exchange…A great time was had by all who attended.

PDU Information: This event did not qualify for any PDUs.

Communication – the Lifeblood of Project Management with Nishu Varma

Nishu Varma, PMP, is a project management professional with nineteen years of experience in project and program management, business process analysis, and application of technology solutions to meet corporate objectives. She is the founder and president of NIIV Inc. which provides strategic and project management consulting and training, and helps organizations set up PMOs as a center of excellence. She is experienced in leading multi-million dollar projects to on-time and on-budget completion for organizations like Covance, Intuit, and Tata Unisys. Nishu was the Technical Director for a local startup that created one of the largest community portals. Her broad industry experience spans global financial clients, a clinical research organization, international consulting firms, and software solution providers. Nishu contributed to the PMP Exam prep program within the PMI-NNV Chapter by creating content and teaching classes.

PDU Info: Activity Date: 10/18/11 1 PDU

An NDOT Perspective on Project Management

Join us with Bill Hoffman

As funding sources continue to shrink while travel demand remains high, it becomes ever more important to manage highway projects effectively and efficiently. Major projects last many years, spanning cycles of economic ups and downs, varying inflation, changing public and political priorities, and evolving transportation technology. To respond to this, existing procedures and approaches are continuously updated and new project management philosophies and delivery methods are adopted. Bill Hoffman, Assistant Director of Engineering, will describe how Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) meets these challenges.

As Assistant Director of Engineering, Mr. Hoffman is in charge of NDOT's pre-construction engineering divisions including Project Management, Design, Bridge, Environmental, Location, and Right-of-Way. His focus is on project delivery, ensuring that NDOT's projects are of the highest quality, and that they are delivered on time and within budget. In this role, Mr. Hoffman supervises six divisions within NDOT headquarters. This encompasses more than 300 professionals responsible for developing all engineering work necessary to deliver design plans and specifications used in the construction of NDOT projects.

Members;  Click on image to view Bill's presentation.      Activity Date: 9/27/11 - 1 PDU.

Project Phasegates

Our speaker this month will be Lorie Roberts from IGT. She will talk to the group about project  phasegates” as tools to obtain customer acceptance at milestones throughout the project life cycle. Lorie Roberts is the Sr. Technical Project Manager for IGT’s Professional Services group. She has been with IGT for 10 years, and held senior positions in IGT’s Labs, Marketing and Systems divisions before joining the Professional Services team in July of 2009. Lorie has more than 20 years experience in various Project and Program Management roles within gaming, manufacturing, distribution, construction, telecommunications and data storage technologies.

Lorie is PMP certified and has been a volunteer with the local chapter for the past year. She holds degrees in English and Business and earned her Advanced Management Certification from the University of Nevada, Reno. IGT is a leading global gaming machine manufacturer and systems provider. The company is based in Nevada, with offices around the world, and currently employs more than 3,500 employees worldwide

Topic details coming soon...

Annual Member Meeting

This is our biggest meeting of the year and all members are strongly urged to attend.

• You will hear the state-of-the-chapter report to the membership on our activities and financial status over the past 12 months.
• We will recognize chapter officers, volunteers and sponsors.

 Case Study:  Planning a Region Conference For PMI Leaders

Our speaker for the evening is our own special projects PM, Tracy Sharp, PMP. Tracy will present a quick case study of a project the chapter sponsored this year that has applications and lessons for all PMs in the areas of risk management, coping with multiple changes, making decisions on the fly and corralling a large number of diverse PMs – and she has lots of pictures of local volunteers!

Activity Date: 6/28/11 - 1 PDU

Topic Details coming soon...

The Dying Art of Critical Path Management”Speaker:  Terry C. Savage

In the last several decades, understanding of the importance of proper schedules has continuously declined. Back in the old days, schedules mattered. The Grand Tour of the planets, conceived in the late 1960s, had a launch window that occurred only every 176 years. If there was a serious schedule slip, you couldn’t just slip the launch a few months! Now, things are different. Even among major corporations, an exhaustive list of micro-tasks is passed off as a ‘schedule’. If you ask what the critical path for the project is, you get a ‘deer in the headlights’ look in response. Terry Savage received his project management certification under a NASA program while he was managing the manufacture of spacecraft parts. In this presentation, he will provide three simple rules for vastly improving schedule quality, and a simple method for quantitatively measuring schedule quality.

Accepting Project Risk:  Wynnlee Crisp

No Project is an Island: Rhané Thomas

NDOT US-95 Project 'A Project Manager's Perspective of Transition Phases and Lessons Learned:  Jenica Finnerty