IRVINE, Calif., Feb 22, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) –
For experienced project managers and senior level managers looking to
build on expertise, acquire new skills, and go beyond PMP(R)
accreditation, UC
Irvine Extension is offering a new Advanced
Project Management Certificate Program, which allows
participants to remain competitive and manage change in a
multi-dimensional environment. The certificate program is offering two
courses this spring quarter, “Project
Portfolio Management” and “Agile
Project Management.”

“Due to the increasingly demanding nature of projects in today’s
ever-changing marketplace, it is critical that professionals leverage
their project management capabilities to gain competitive advantage,”
said Melanie Mitchell, acting director of management, marketing and
business programs at UC Irvine Extension. “For those with at least three
years of project management practical experience, the new Advanced
Project Management Certificate program will gain industry-specific
methods to improve success with complex projects.”

The certificate program is designed to enable project managers and other
business professionals to successfully execute strategy, apply
theoretical concepts, and gain practical knowledge for managing a
portfolio of critical programs and projects. Instruction from well-known
industry professionals are applied to processes, organizational
structures and tools to ensure project work yields desired business
results.

New Course for Spring Quarter:

–
“Project
Portfolio Management” (April 20 and 21 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.) As
a brand new course in the certificate program, course participants
will gain basic concepts of portfolio management and focus on the
differences arising between project management, program management and
the necessary steps to develop a project portfolio, including
selecting portfolio components and applying financial and resource
constraints. Course instructor, Chris Fujinami, MBA, PMP,
is a manager with the Project Management Office of Henkel Corporation,
an electronic adhesives company. For over 15 years, Fujinami has
provided consulting services for technology and aerospace companies in
project management and leadership development, and his project
experience has included strategy development, project portfolio
management, and installing project management discipline throughout
the organization.

Spring Webinar and Course:

–
“Agile
Project Management,” (March 26 to June 10) This ten-week
online course begins with developing foundational knowledge in Agile
and Lean methodologies for java programming and advanced project
management. Students will learn several different techniques, with a
detailed focus on Scrum and Kanban. The course will also cover the
management of programs and portfolios in an Agile environment, how
Agile maturity can be measured and how to perform Agile process
management. Course instructor, Rashed Iqbal, Ph.D. PMP,
PMI-ACP, CSM, is a Program Manager at Teledyne Controls in Thousand
Oaks, CA. He has over 15 years of experience in project management,
engineering management, and systems engineering and is currently one
of the community leaders at PMI’s Organizational Project Management
Community of Practice. In addition, UC Irvine Extension
will host a free informational webinar titled, “Agile
Project Management” on Thursday, March 15, from 11:30 a.m. to
12:30 p.m. PST. The webinar will include information on the emphasis
on Agile, the traditional developmental lifecycles versus the Agile
lifecycle as well as the trends and growth of Agile Project Management.

Students working towards the certificate will also be required to take
the following courses:

–
Project
Portfolio Management (available spring quarter)

–
Creating
the Program Management Office (available spring quarter)

–
Project
Scheduling Concepts and techniques (available spring quarter)

–
Six
Sigma Lean Toolkit (available spring quarter)

–
Global Aspects of Team Leadership (available summer quarter)

–
Program Management (available summer quarter)

For more information about the new course offerings and accompanying
webinar, please visit:

http://extension.uci.edu/apm

or call (949) 824-7774.

About UC Irvine Extension: University
of California, Irvine Extension is the continuing education arm of UC
Irvine. Through thousands of courses and programs offered on campus,
online and on site, UC Irvine Extension helps adult learners reach their
career advancement and personal enrichment goals –and is celebrating 50
years of providing universally accessible, university-level learning to
local, regional, and global communities. Learn more at extension.uci.edu,
or join us on Facebook at facebook.com/uciextension.

About the University of California, Irvine:
Founded in 1965, UCI is a top-ranked university dedicated to research,
scholarship and community service. Led by Chancellor Michael Drake since
2005, UCI is among the most dynamic campuses in the University of
California system, with nearly 28,000 undergraduate and graduate
students, 1,100 faculty and 9,000 staff. Orange County’s largest
employer, UCI contributes an annual economic impact of $4.2 billion. For
more UCI news, visit
www.today.uci.edu .

SOURCE: UC Irvine Extension

        UC Irvine Extension
        Vivian Chan-Slater, 714-573-0899 ext. 235
        vivian@echomediapr.com

Copyright Business Wire 2012

Article source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/uc-irvine-extension-offers-new-certificate-program-in-advanced-project-management-2012-02-22

CHICAGO, Feb. 22, 2012 —

CHICAGO, Feb. 22, 2012 /PRNewswire/ – UBM Studios today announced that it is bolstering its project management team as its Marketing-as-a-Service (MaaS) business expands.  Over the past year UBM Studios has capitalized on the tremendous growth capabilities in Marketing-as-a-Service (MaaS) through technology innovation; user experience; user platform; and digital, mobile and social media.

UBM Studios has promoted Jessica Newell to Project Manager and Karen Liu has been hired as Creative Project Manager. 

• As Project Manager, Newell will serve as a client advocate focused on understanding the client’s needs and the goals of each environment.  Newell has been employed with UBM Studios for two years and was most recently an Event Director, where she was responsible for planning, creating and optimizing virtual environments and related digital media components as well as pre-show production.  Newell began at UBM Studios as an Associate Producer.  Newell reports to Larry Stein, Production Director, UBM Studios.
• As Creative Project Manager, Liu is responsible for providing creative strategic services to clients.  With ten years of experience in advertising and creative, Liu was most recently employed with Schawk Retail Marketing as a Production Account Executive, where she led the internal production process and was the liaison between the agency and the client. Liu reports to Michael O’Sullivan, Creative Director, UBM Studios.

“As the largest producer of digital events, environments and communities in the world, producing outstanding environments with customer service excellence is critical to our business.  The expansion of our team showcases our commitment to our customers and serving their needs,” said Kate Spellman, President, UBM Studios. 

For additional information on UBM Studios, contact Max Gerstein at 773 687 4317 or max.gerstein@ubm.com. 

Follow UBM Studios on Twitter (http://twitter.com/UBMStudios), Facebook, or LinkedIn for all the latest news.

About UBM Studios (www.ubmstudios.com)

UBM Studios, a UBM company, is the global leader in digital events, environments and communities.  UBM Studios creates powerful and intuitive digital communities that help organizations connect, educate and engage with audiences to capitalize on growth opportunities.  UBM Studios provides marketing as a service for digital interactions and delivers the right content to the right audience with the right user interface.  For additional information on UBM Studios, visit www.ubmstudios.com.

About UBM plc

UBM plc is a leading global business media company. We inform markets and bring the world’s buyers and sellers together at events, online, in print and provide them with the information they need to do business successfully. We focus on serving professional commercial communities, from doctors to game developers, from journalists to jewellery traders, from farmers to pharmacists around the world. Our 6,000 staff in more than 30 countries are organised into specialist teams that serve these communities, helping them to do business and their markets to work effectively and efficiently.  For more information, go to www.ubm.com

ContactMichele McPhail UBM Studios michele.mcphail@ubm.com 773 687 4321

SOURCE UBM Studios

Article source: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/02/22/4282521/ubm-studios-bolsters-its-project.html

Leading South African diversified mining and minerals company, African Rainbow Minerals (ARM), has opted to implement Post Vision Technology’s Project Portfolio Office (PPO), a software as a service (SaaS) project management solution, in order to standardise project methodology and project reporting within the Group.

According to ARM Corporate CIO, Johan Pistorius, the company’s large portfolio of projects means it needs an effective project management tool to be used by all ARM resources involved in projects. This includes its Johannesburg office, operations staff and third-party project companies.

“Using a pre-configured instance, PPO can be implemented quickly and easily and then simply configured to meet more specific user requirements over time. The cost to use the system is also an attractive option, allowing us to contain expenses through an affordable monthly subscription fee that can be scaled up or down as needed. In addition, due to the fact that we selected a pre-configured instance, there are no initial large implementation fees,” states Pistorius.

Guy Jelley, Post Vision Technology CEO, explains that, as a SaaS offering, the greatest value provided by pre-configured PPO software is that its inherent functionality addresses the needs of most users without the need to configure the system from the outset.

“ARM’s approach to rolling out this type of technology makes the most sense, as the organisation will have a far better understanding of what the software can do before starting to configure and customise it. Through this pre-configured solution, users will be able to maximise ROI, reduce costs, particularly in terms of configuration and customisation, drive down risk, and will have minimal disruption to existing processes. The focus is thus moved to user adoption and ensuring users gain value out of the project management system such that the implementation is a success.”

“ARM plans to make use of PPO in order to manage and report effectively on all projects within the company and we will soon have a system delivering results that will demonstrate value to all users and operations,” Pistorius adds.

PPO partner, CoLAB Project Implementation, was also engaged by ARM in order to assist in improving the company’s project delivery maturity starting from the corporate centre, and then rolling it out to all six of its national operations across five portfolios.

CoLAB will also, among other tasks, develop and operate a project management office (PMO) for ARM, create visibility for all projects through PPO, establish mechanisms to govern and manage the group’s entire portfolio of projects, review these projects against a created standard, remediate their health to the defined standard, and improve the quality of ARM’s project planning and delivery results.

Says Jelley: “PPO actively promotes the skills and knowledge of its partner base, and CoLAB’s extensive mining experience made the company the ideal partner for ARM in this case.”

Project Portfolio Office

PPO (Project Portfolio Office) is the fastest growing, locally developed project portfolio management (PPM) solution currently being used by businesses of all sizes and industries to manage projects and project portfolios. Offered on the software as a service (SaaS) platform, it provides organisations with access to the application on a hosted and rental basis over the Internet. In addition, project management consultancies joining the PPO Partner Programme can become certified to provide implementation and training for PPO. For more information, visit www.ppo.co.za.

CoLAB Project Implementation

CoLAB Project Implementation focuses on delivering business objectives by taking a “best practical” approach to projects. It implements simple, sustainable solutions and takes accountability for the delivery of results. CoLAB has vast experience in project management and employs resources with a wide range of skills with the majority qualified as Project Management Professionals (PMP) and PRINCE2 practitioners. For more information, visit www.colabpi.co.za.

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Article source: http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=51817:african-rainbow-minerals-proves-its-mettle-with-ppo-project-management-system-and-colab

More and more companies are turning what used to be routine tasks into projects. With increased global competition, customers are demanding to have their products and services delivered faster, cheaper and better. Since project management techniques are designed to manage scope, quality, cost and schedule, they are ideally suited to this purpose.

Effective project managers

The project manager is responsible for all aspects of the project, including the work, human resources, communications, quality, time and costs of the project.

Effective project managers must:

* get the job done on time,

* get the job done within budget,

* get the job done according to the desired standards,

* take the time necessary to plan their projects

* take the time necessary to manage their plans.

Effective project managers must also:

* manage through influence,

* inspire a shared vision,

* develop visibility

* empower people.

I recently asked a colleague for some insight about her experience in managing large projects for the government and military.

“Projects break down because of a lack of communication. Even well-planned projects break down and have problems when information about the various aspects of the project are not communicated well,” she replied.

This caught my attention because we usually think of project management as a set of technical skills and tasks around initiating, planning, controlling and closing out projects. 

Interpersonal skills are needed to successfully manage effective communication with project partners, customers, vendors and others. These skills are crucial for achieving buy-in, project support, resource commitment and other valuable assets. Sharpening our interpersonal skills will help us communicate critical aspects of the project with stakeholders avoiding the all-too-common cause of project failure: poor communication.

Management tools

In addition to interpersonal skills, a successful project manager uses several tools to ensure projects are completed on time, on budget and achieve the desired results.

A PERT diagram is a program evaluation review technique. It is a diagram that represents an added degree of sophistication in the planning process.

To draw one, list the steps required to finish a project and estimate the time required to finish each step. Steps that must be completed first are shown in order to clarify proper sequencing. Steps that can be under way at the same time are shown on different paths.

A PERT diagram not only shows the relationship among various steps in a project, it also serves as an easy way to calculate the critical path.

The PERT diagram and the CPM (critical path method) are very similar, and they are the most common forms of showing networks or interrelationships among tasks. They just display information differently. They are sometimes called the PERT/CPM activities.

The critical path shows the minimum amount of time needed to complete a project.

Gantt charts are bar charts that show activities as blocks of time and are extremely useful. Just calculate the estimated duration for each project task to create a Gantt chart, Microsoft Excel has templates and is an easy way to do it.

There are many more tools available to project managers to plan, direct and control resources and activities. As we continue to increase the number and types of projects we work on, many of us need updated and continuing education in project management principles and methodologies. That is why the College of the Canyons is offering two new courses:

* Project Management Essentials, beginning March 20th and

* Project Management Professional test preparation course, beginning in June 2012

For more information about these and other professional development courses, contact the College of the Canyons at (661) 362-3245.

John Milburn is the Director of the Employee Training Institute at College of the Canyons. Milburn’s column reflects his own views and not necessarily those of The Signal. For more information about ETI please call (661) 362-3245 or visit www.canyonsecondev.org/eti_over

view.shtml.

Article source: http://www.the-signal.com/section/25/article/60414/