Archive for October, 2012

Introduction to Unit Testing

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Live Webinar October 25th, 2012, 11:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT
Duration:1 hour Webcast + Q & A – Up to 1 Category C PDU – Free PDU
Hosted By: Typemock

Unit testing is all the rage
More and more teams are beginning to unit test.

But it can be difficult to start. In order to prevent bugs and release quality code to market, you also need developer testing, including unit testing.

Discover:

  1. The difference between QA & Developer Testing
  2. The pains of manual testing
  3. The benefits of automated testing
  4. Why unit test
  5. xUnit Frameworks
  6. The difference between unit testing and Test Driven Development (TDD).
    Join this webinar to learn what you need to know in order to start testing.

Typemock will also be raffling away Typemock Isolator/Isolator++ licenses and t-shirts. You must attend to win.

PDU Category C documentation details:

Process Groups: Planning Executing

Knowledge Areas: 4 – Integration 5 – Scope 9 – Human Resources

  • 4.3 Direct and Manage Project Execution
  • 4.4 Monitor & Control Project Work
  • 5.2 Define Scope
  • 9.4 Manage Project Team

As a Category C, ‘Self Directed Learning’, activity remember to document your learning experience and its relationship to project management for your ‘PDU Audit Trail Folder.’

Presenter: Gil Zilberfeld, (LinkedIn profile, @gil_zilberfeld) Product Manager, Typemock- Gil has been writing software since childhood (Logo Turtles) and hasn’t stopped since. As the product manager at Typemock, working as part of an agile team in an agile company, creating tools for agile developers. He promotes unit testing and other design practices, down-to-earth agile methods, and some incredibly cool tools. Gil blogs at http:⁄⁄www.gilzilberfeld.com on different agile topics, including processes, communication and unit testing. He also writes at the Typemock blog and presents locally and abroad on these topics.

Click to register for Introduction to Unit Testing

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Live Webinar October 24th, 2012 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Webinar Duration: 1 Hour ea Credits: 1 Category C – Free PDUs
Presented by: HR.com

It’s no mystery that the typical performance appraisal does not work!

Unfortunately managers and employees both dread the typical performance appraisal and yet it remains that most popular tool for managing employee effectiveness and engagement.

  • Are you frustrated with your performance appraisals?
  • Do they create anxiety in you and your employees?
  • Do you or your managers merely go through the motions or try to avoid them altogether?
  • Do your appraisals make things worse by damaging motivation, trust, and performance?

Organizations need appraisals that work because leaders must be able to fully engage the hearts and minds of all employees to achieve strategic results and high profitability.

The Complete Performance Improvement Process (CPIP) creates the requisite environment of trust, openness, and engagement that organizations need to optimize continuous quality improvement.

Instead of focusing on improving the individual employee performance and his/her strengths or weaknesses, the employee and manager become partners to uncover and remove the barriers. These barriers are preventing the employee from developing (the very best they can be), learning, and performing. In short, the partners are able to tell the truth, to act with less fear, and demonstrate greater commitment. It ultimately accelerates quality improvement, learning, and organizational results.

The typical performance appraisal process is based on the industrial age leadership model and, unfortunately, the new fast paced global economy has caused us to outgrow its usefulness. Like an old suit that no longer fits and is out of style, the typical appraisal must be replaced with an alternative that fits with the need to deliver exceptional employee engagement and the ability to adapt to massive change.

CPIP is very different because it focuses on improving the quality of interactions and not the quality of people. It focuses on improving the quality of processes and not grading people. It is focused on building trust and learning instead of rating and ranking individuals. It increases intrinsic motivation and reduces the dependence on extrinsic motivation.

The typical appraisal relies on evaluating the individual and rewarding them with higher pay. With the current economy this approach can seriously backfire because the pay difference between the average performer and the high performer is often so small it almost seems silly.

What You Will Learn:

  • Why the current performance appraisal design imposes a barrier to trust, quality improvement and motivation and will never work well.
  • A management model that can help managers and employees to think differently about performance and performance appraisals in order to make significant productivity improvements.
  • How to replace performance appraisals with a New Ground Breaking process called the Complete Performance Improvement Process (CPIP) to improve motivation, morale, problem solving, productivity, quality, accountability, and management competencies.
  • Why attorneys have endorsed the CPIP process because it helps protect the organization from legal challenges while helping management to address “poor performers’ immediately and increasing the probability the employee will “de-select” quickly without the need for a firing.
  • How CPIP can save valuable management time and improve management competency while improving employee performance.

Recommended Resources:

  1. Kirkus reviews described “The Art of Leading: 3 Principles for Predictable Performance Improvement” as an “engaging, accessible book, Hauck challenges the standard paradigm of employee evaluation by performance review by suggesting the system in which the employee works, rather than the employee, must change
  2. An article about CPIP in the Denver Business Journal
  3. A white paper about a client, Independent Living (CDPP) Implementation Performance Appraisal
  4. Stop the Leadership Malpractice PowerPoint presentation.

PDU Category C documentation details (for this conference):

Process Groups: Executing

Knowledge Areas: 4- Integration 9 – Human Resources

  • 4.3 Direct and Monitor Project Execution
  • 9.3 Develop Project Team
  • 9.4 Manage Project Team

As a Category C ‘Self Directed Learning Activity’ remember to document your learning experience and its relationship to project management for your ‘PDU Audit Trail Folder’

Click to register for the Stop the Leadership Malpractice: How to Replace the Typical Performance Appraisal

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Live Webinar – October 23 2012, 12:00-1:00 PM EDT
Offered by ASPE (REP 2161) 1 Category A PDU – Free PDU
This is a 1 hour seminar and attendees will be awarded 1 PDU for participating

Believe it or not,
Most project failures are not the fault of the project manager,
But instead are a result of poor program management.

Even the most exceptional project manager can fail when the work environment lacks leadership, supporting project participants, or engaged stakeholders.

Whether you work in an agile, traditional, or operational environment, this overview will help you see where these worlds collide.

In this web seminar you will discover the principles and tools to strengthen your processes by learning how to create a successful program management culture.

This includes an environment of integrity, trust, with support from engaged personnel and stakeholders. And, to accomplish this feat, you will find it does not have to be overly complicated or costly.

Presenter: Kelley Bruns PMP (LinkedIn profile) has over 25 years of experience in the learning and development industry and is a PMP and a certified Development Dimensions International Facilitator. Kelley’s expertise lies in her extensive experience in a wide range of industries including banking, construction, energy, engineering, government, healthcare, manufacturing, and retail.

Click to register for Secrets to Successful & Strategic Program Management

Meeting Effectiveness

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Live Webinar October 24th, 2012 11:00 am – 12:00 pm EDT
Duration: 1 hour live webinar Credits: 1 PDU Category B – Free PDU
Presented by PROJECTinsight (Metafuse Inc)

Make the most of your meetings!

Are you one of those people that feel like the meetings you attend or conduct is wasted time?

It has been said that “Meetings are where minutes are taken and hours are wasted“. Recent data suggests that 25-50% of meeting time is ‘wasted’, per the attendees view.

Learn to conduct and/or be an effective contributor to meetings.

The focus is on learning the correct elements of meeting anatomy, how to go about planning a good meeting, how to facilitate and win during meetings, and lastly, how to determine your approach to executing meeting to value time, get results, and have effective meeting follow-up and assigned action items get the attention they deserve!

Course Objectives:

  • Identify the necessary roles at a meeting
  • Set an agenda that determines topics for the meeting
  • Identify the necessary participants
  • Determine the set-up of the meeting environment
  • Handle questions, negative reactions, and distractions

Who should attend:

  • Project managers, Portfolio managers,
  • Project team members, Project Leads,
  • Project sponsors & function/business unit managers,
  • Subject Matter Experts, Business Analysts, Scheduling Specialists and ….
  • Other business stakeholders.

Click to register for Meeting Effectiveness

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Live Webinar – October 23, 2012 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm EDT
Duration: 1 Hour Credits: 1 PDU Category C- Free PDU
Sponsored by: PEX – The Process Excellence Network

A Goal-Based Approach to Modelling – Supporting Strategy Execution

Is it possible to create a successful process excellence program without clearly defining and working to attain the strategic and tactical goals of the business? Definitely not!

Goals are essential as the guiding beacon toward which your decisions and activities must be focused. Yet traditional approaches to automation are unable to use identified business goals to directly influence execution of the actual business processes that drive end-to-end business operations.

In this webinar, you will learn a practical approach to help you address this gap:

  • Understand the “why” and the “how” of connecting goals at the business execution level to goals at the process execution – or automation – level
  • Learn the fundamentals of a practical, goal-based modelling approach that helps you link top level strategy with processes at any level of the business
  • Identify ways that this technique can help you build agility directly into process models
  • Watch a first hand a demonstration of the Living Systems Process Suite, from Whitestein Technologies, to see the modelling technique in action

Presenters:

Dr Paul Buhler (LinkedIn profile) with 25 years of diverse experience is the Chief Scientist at Modus21 where he is responsible for aligning corporate strategy with emerging trends in business architecture and process execution frameworks. Paul is a respected researcher, practitioner, and educator of service-oriented computing concepts, technologies and implementation methodologies.

Dominic Greenwood (LinkedIn profile) 15 years of experience in bringing the latest technology innovationis Group Chief Operating Office with Whitestein Technologies AG, a Swiss company with process management, logistics, and telecommunications products. With a background in software research, his interests and expertise focus on the creation of commercial software products employing innovative technologies.

PDU Category C documentation details:

Process Groups: Executing
Knowledge Areas: 4- Integration 5 – Scope

  • 4.1 Develop Project Charter
  • 4.2 Develop Project Management Plan
  • 4.3 Direct and Monitor Project Execution
  • 5.2 Define Scope

As a Category C ‘Self Directed Learning Activity’ remember to document your learning experience and its relationship to project management for your ‘PDU Audit Trail Folder’

Click to register for Minding The Gap Between Business And Process Execution

On-Demand Test Environments

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Live Webinar October 25th, 2012 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm EDT
Duration:1.5 hour Webcast + Q & A – Up to 1.5 Category C PDU – Free PDU
Event Code: 161003 A Microsoft Event Presented by: Imaginet

Test environment vary based on release cycles

Sometimes you are releasing numerous products in a short time frame; sometimes your releases are sparse. While you are in crunch time, so is your hardware.

  • Do you have enough test systems to support your testing needs?
  • What do you do if your test environment needs exceed your hardware capacity?
  • And what do you do with the excess hardware while you’re in a lul?

This Live Web Workshop will help answer these questions using Windows Azure and TFS 2012.

We’ll discuss and demonstrate how you can easily create test environments in the cloud, wire them up for use with TFS, and then tear them down when they’re no longer needed. Come join Imaginet for this free Live Web Workshop! ”

PDU Category C documentation details:

Process Groups: Executing

Knowledge Areas: 4- Integration 5 – Scope 8 – Quality

  • 4.3 Direct and Monitor Project Execution
  • 4.4 Monitor & Control Project Work
  • 5.2 Define Scope
  • 8.1 Plan Quality

As a Category C ‘Self Directed Learning Activity’ remember to document your learning experience and its relationship to project management for your ‘PDU Audit Trail Folder’

Please Note: In order to attend the webinar series attendees will need to have a Windows Live ID. A link to set up this ID is located on the registration site. Please do this prior to the session

Click to register for On-Demand Test Environments