Peter Heinrich

There is a long and rich history of resource planning but current methods are fragmented, incomplete and divorced from core operational procedures. But help and hope are available. There is a new process and approach I call Dynamic Capacity Management(DCM). Once an organization has catalogued its resources with their skills and availability information, then the “Magic” of DCM takes over and spreads its financial and operational benefits across project portfolios, across lines of business and across the entire organization. Magically, you are able to forcibly detect over and underutilization of staff, reduce project/product delays, reduce unsatisfied demand, and establish strong bonds with your firm’s financial and business operations groups. It’s not Magic, it’s DCM!

Hank Weisinger

Dr. Hendrie (Hank) Weisinger’s arrival at the Resource Planning Summit will be the first introduction to the importance of EI for most attendees. Emotional Intelligence factors are now considered to have a greater impact on individual and group performance than traditional measures, such as IQ. According to Dr. Weisinger, Emotions impact positively or negatively your success in life, while Intelligence helps you to adapt to the environment your emotions operate in. Today, one’s technical expertise is seen as no competitive advantage, since it’s available to all and from many sources. It’s EI that is your differentiator in business and in life. Hank will describe 10 Action Tips and then urge you to start today to implement them. They include such intriguing titles as How to Observe yourself in Action, the Power of Positive Criticism, and How to Talk to yourself. Dr. Weisinger will be available for some small group meetings during his time at the Summit.

Tom Hughes

How about a Resource Planning set of system deliverables that (1) produces a vehicle that management can use to instill a disciplined planning process, (2) can act as a galvanizing communication device for stakeholders and execs, (3) replaces spreadsheets with data integrity and accuracy, (4) provides strategic resource planning ratios that show you what projects you can do and can’t do, and (5) supports the sustaining maintenance cost information required for compliance with SOP 97-2. Tom Hughes, SVP of Engineering at Emulex, a network components manufacturer, has done just that. Arriving in 2003 via an acquisition, Hughes recognized that Emulex’s numerous acquisitions and growth had yielded weak processes that left the executives unclear about what and where they were spending their dollars. Tom developed a simple spreadsheet that helped, but only provided information on who and what programs resources were working on. Soon, he found himself “owning” the Resource Planning problem at Emulex, involving a constantly changing pool of 300-500 resources, with a mission to provide a “consistent oar” in steering toward a solution. With the assistance of PRTM and armed with process and the PDWare product, Hughes developed a capacity planning system that is a crowning achievement in his career, and a major contribution to Emulex.

Coleman Grimmett

Two years ago at Medtronic’s Spinal & Biologics Division, the product development environment was plagued by missed product launch dates, a lack of consistency in product execution, and no one single and prioritized project list that stakeholders would salute. That’s when a PMO was built, and Coleman Grimmett, Senior Program Analyst PMO, was there at the beginning, heading up the Resource Planning mission. Progress was swift. With consideration given to capacity limits, a single product development list was agreed to; 300 project team members and 20 project leaders were chosen from 3000 resources; and Resource Planning tools and processes were benchmarked and selected. Soon after, product development results came tumbling out of the PMO: (1) Projects were trimmed, (2) more focus was placed on understanding what Medtronic’s true capacity was, and (3) predictability improved, which increased confidence levels among customers, sales, and the market. Another benefit was an increased ROI on the resources invested, since people were no longer pulled every which way. But, one of Coleman’s proudest achievements, was that the speedy implementation was managed so that everyone’s Comfort Zone was respected.

John Clemens

The Leadership Kaleidoscope is a highly- interactive, no-lecturing-allowed leadership development experience that will focus attendees on what really effective leaders do. In this session, participants discover fresh insights and behaviors that can immediately be translated into executable actions. Using two to six minute film clips from films, such as Dead Poets Society, Henry V and The Matrix, John Clemens, Founder of the Hartwick Leadership Institute, leads discussions that put an emphasis on team building, moving team members out of their comfort zones in order to challenge conventional wisdom, and revealing how a leader transforms fear into hope, hope into commitment and commitment into victory. "Great, wonderful! Never attended a conference where more people took part in the discussion" echoes the comments of participants who have attended The Leadership Kaleidoscope.

Paul Samarel, Chief Technology Officer, Portfolio Decisionware Inc. (PDWare)

Many attendees wish to have detailed and exacting technical information about how an organization implements the processes and products associated with a successful rollout. This session demonstrates basic resource supply-demand management with dynamic portfolio analysis, and reporting using MS Excel as a front end and relational database management system for backend consolidation and capture of history.

Garrison Wynn

All of you are good and valuable at what you do, or you wouldn’t be here. Many of you are characterized and rated as “the best.” But the marker of Real Success, as our Keynote Speaker, Garrison Wynn, describes it is one who is consistently chosen. Wynn will touch on several subjects that require competence and compassion on your part, such as dealing with difficult people, with people who are always right, and even how to work with young bosses. He will teach you how to build trust, and will give you a short but memorable definition of leadership to take back to your business. Garrison Wynn is funny, he’s clever, but, most importantly, he will provide “take aways” that will transform your behaviors in the corporate world.

Coleman Grimmett, Medtronic; Thomas Hughes, Emulex-fmr; Ted Lacina, Motorola-fmr

Processes, Products and Leadership Skills are all key elements in effective resource planning and personal growth. But, let’s cut to the chase! Business leaders want to hear about significant operational improvements and strong financial results. Those will be clear “take aways” from this Summit. Our panel, representing graduates from the “school of hard knocks” in Resource Planning at Medtronic, Motorola, and Emulex, will reveal significant findings that they have achieved or witnessed. Miss this session at your own peril!

John Page

John Page, Director—Office of Project Management, at BD’s Diagnostic Division, attended the 2010 Summit presentation to seek a better method of handling the portfolio resource management challenges he was facing at BD. There he attended several presentations including one by Medtronic’s Coleman Grimmett, who described the resource planning successes and lessons learned at Medtronic. Mr. Page returned home and worked with a cross functional team to design a new resource management process and implementation plan that supported a resource pool of over 800 resources, 90 different skills , and 120 users that span four geographically dispersed locations. Mr. Page learned firsthand the importance of a well thought out and communicated process design along with a robust implementation plan. He describes how they extended their implementation to include next year fiscal budget modeling, baselining, and consolidating program reporting. Consolidated reporting has simplified monthly reporting and has created an efficient historical repository that provides a vehicle for aggregated key milestone metrics monitoring. Mr Page goes on to describe current resource management process work at BD that will support the implementation of a Shared Services model across BD segments. Once complete, this single server implementation will lead to greater efficiencies in resource utilization than previously thought possible.

Michael Collins

Michael Collins, Assistant VP and PMO leader at Natixis Global Asset Management, will describe how an IT organization with 45-50 resources and a worldwide project portfolio achieved solid results with the adoption of improved resource planning processes. Faced with the common project management challenge of over commitments and delayed deliverables, Natixis established a PMO to help bring structure, best practices, and transparency to a project portfolio. Michael and his PMO teammates' hierarchy of needs included processes and tools that were flexible, had familiar interfaces for users, and reduced training time. The key to success in adding value to his firm's executives was the ability to customize reports and the added flexibility to capture information key to Natixis' project portfolio. Collins states: "The addition of these improved resource planning procedures allows our small body of resources to be more nimble in delivering projects, with increased transparency and up to date status reporting."

Lyn Sittig, Senior Manager of R&D Operations Stryker Orthopaedics

"Good foundational work was a prerequisite to our effort to establish a successful Resource Planning system. At Stryker, we have achieved major improvements in quality of execution and launch predictability" stated Meg Smith, VP of R&D Operations. Lyn Sittig, Senior Manager of R&D Operations, will expand on this statement by describing the Division’s journey into formal resource management. The organization spent a number of years implementing a sequence of initiatives to improve its foundational new product development capabilities. The journey traversed the following path: 1. Active Project Consolidation 2. Process Structure and Adherence 3. Project Management Excellence After establishing a firm foundation, the Project Management Team worked to establish formal resource management practices that would help the organization know how resources were allocated and when they would become available to start new projects. Under pressure to continue to start new projects, the team used these new resource planning processes to highlight a resource imbalance across the organization, enabling the organization to adjust and expand their pipeline. With a pipeline adjusted to resource capacity, employees can fully engage and focus on their project responsibilities which will improve the output of new product development from a quality and an efficiency standpoint.