Enjoy networking, lunch, and a timely keynote presentation in a professional environment with a panoramic view of downtown Atlanta from the 20th floor of the James H. (Sloppy) Floyd Building.

Any local, state, or federal government employees who are able to produce a government issued ID (or supplier to any government entity who can produce proof) while checking in will receive deep discounts for this lunch!

Keynote Presentation
"Process Improvement Workshop" by Jann Thomas, PMP, Leading Agile
 
Earn one PDU for attending this event.

When:
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
11:15 AM - 1:00 PM

Where:
James H. (Sloppy) Floyd Building
2 Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive
Twin Tower West, 20th Floor - Empire Room
Atlanta, Georgia 30334
404-656-6136

Fees:
PMI Atlanta Member: $15.00, Early Bird Rate* $11.00
Non-Member: $19.00, Early Bird Rate* $15.00
PMI Atlanta Student: $13.50, Early Bird Rate* $11.00
Government Employee (with badge at check-in): $11.00, Early Bird Rate* $7.00

*Early Bird Rate through October 22nd

Presentation Details:

Business Process Improvement is a systematic approach to optimize change and identify opportunities. Our approach examines organizational capabilities and creates alignment between people and processes to achieve the strategic goals of the organization.
Our workshop produces a set of actions with metrics to ensure changes are effective. Furthermore workshop participants will be able to facilitate future workshops and continue to implement improvements in the future.

Process Improvement Workshops are used to enable a team to look at issues gathered from a review and produce measureable improvements with the cost of change and expected benefit. After the workshop a team will be able to identify and implement changes and track the return on investment.

More specifically, the workshop helps us:

    1. To align the team to strategic goals.
    2. To identify and measure process improvements
    3. To understand the cost of change
    4. To know what to do and when to do it
    5. To keep from falling into the “fix-it” trap
    6. To know how, when and where to spend critical resources
    7. To receive fact-based recommendations and a realistic plan for achieving and sustaining changes to business processes

The workshop uses a Lean Change Canvas to determine Urgency, Change Recipients, Target State, Communication, Vision, Success Criteria, Wins, Commitments and Action.

The Process Improvement Workshop is primarily focused on identifying organizational impediments that hinder team-level performance, brainstorming ideas that will lead to improvements and considering the cost of these improvements. This workshop could be conducted after a team retrospective and may use the problems identified there as a starting point for improvements.

Near the start of the implementation, we hold a strategic leadership briefing. This will allow the leadership team to:

    • Contribute to the strategic goals of the team
    • Discuss the purpose and value of business process improvement
    • Explain the workshop approach and deliverables.
    • Set the focus on outcomes and circumstances and away from individuals

thomas jann 1

Jann Thomas is a 20 year veteran of the software industry. She has worked as a developer, team lead and development manager leading teams to deliver great software. Jann has been practicing Agile development techniques since 1998 and implemented her first Agile Project in 2000. She has a Project Manager Professional certification from the Project Management Institute, with a master’s degree in Computer Science.

In 2010 Jann delivered a 14 million dollar ecommerce replacement project with a 220 member team. The team including 95 developers working in a single codebase, pushing working code into production every 6 weeks using an XP process. The entire 18 month project was 10% under budget, 10% over functionality and only 3 weeks later than initially planned.

Most recently Jann led a 12 person team through an agile transformation while continuing to deliver mission critical functionality. Pragmatically balancing process changes with functional development her team was able to complete features ahead of schedule and pick up high priority features from other teams.

In June 2004 she spoke at the International Conference on Software Process Improvement and in April 2008 she spoke at Software and System Quality Conference International. She was the Keynote speaker for Agile Bangalore in 2009 and spoke on Distributed Agile Delivery at Café Agil in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Jann is currently working as an Enterprise Agile Coach for Leading Agile in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

Above all, Jann wants to deliver great software. She believes that great software meets customer needs, is aligned with the organization, and is a challenge to the development team. She specializes in User Interface Design and Development, project management in geographically dispersed team environments, and software development on a host of platforms.

Meeting content, presenter, and location are subject to change. Refunds will not be made for changes in meeting content, presenters, or locations.