Simulation Powered Learning

Dancing To Better Leadership
2018-07-18 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York)
Past webinar – Dancing To Better Leadership

July 18, 2018
1:00-2:00 PM CT
1 PDU

Did you know that dancers use the same soft skills that are required to be an effective leader?
These skills include:

Connecting through good communications, being both an effective leader and follower
Maintaining keen situational awareness and adaptability
Building a high performance team.

Join us to explore how enjoying a social activity can be a fun way to experience and build leadership skills.

Sandy Haydon, PMP, is a teaching associate of SPL (Simulation Powered Learning) and an active member of PMI MN.
She has 40 years of experience with IBM (in Rochester, MN) in operating system development projects and working with companies providing software for IBM systems. Since IBM, she has been a team coach with Whitewater Coaching and Consulting, the presenter for a video learning series “Preparing for Project Management Certification”, and an instructor for PMI MN’s PMP Certification class.
After retirement, Sandy decided to take a few ballroom dance lessons. One thing led to another and now she owns a dance studio. She has learned there are many personal benefits to dancing, plus skills used in dancing are like those skills used in business.

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NEGOTIATIONS IN A PROJECT ENVIRONMENT
2018-07-11 13:00 - 14:00 (America/Chicago)
BILL JOHNSON
JULY 11, 2017
1:00-2:00 PM CT
1 PDU

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Is sitting down at the negotiating table scary? Not sure how to strike the best deal? Let’s take the mystery out of negotiations and develop the confidence to achieve the best possible agreement. This webinar will look at the various tools and techniques that will help ensure success at the negotiating table. It will begin with a look at the theory behind negotiating and its various strategies. Followed by a look at the three styles of negotiators along with tactics that they employee. It concludes with a look at how culture impacts negotiations, and how this all is incorporated into project management. Join us for a highly informative and engaging look at removing the mystery around negotiating.
Learning Objectives:

Exploring the theory behind negotiations and its various strategies.
Finding out the various styles of negotiators and their tactics.
Looking at how the culture of various countries impact negotiations.
Discovering how and when various strategies, styles and tactics should be used in project management.

Bill Johnson, PMP, MSPM, is a project management consultant and educator. He is an Adjunct Professor and Teaching Fellow at St. Mary’s University of Minnesota in the Project Management Masters Degree program.
He has 15 years as an independent project manager and consultant where he has worked for clients including American Rhodes Trust and The State of Minnesota. As a contractor, Bill has extensive experience negotiating with fellow contractors and clients alike.

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AGILE BEYOND SCRUM
2018-06-05 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York)
June 5, 2018
1:00-2:00 PM CT
1 PDU

As we all know, agile adoption is on the rise and scrum is a very popular flavor of agile. As agile teams and organizations adopt scrum, they commonly run into:

Gotchas/challenges that many teams/organizations encounter
Unique gotchas due to a team’s specific situation
Situations where teams create a new rigid process, that in an often subtle sense, breaks a fundamental concept of agile

However they get there, in long run, teams learn and find their way to function as an effective scrum team. At that point, they may wonder, what’s next? How can we get better?
In this session, we will cover some of those common gotchas and brainstorm how to identify them and how to deal with them. This will lead us to — What is next? In the second half of the webinar we will explore ideas and mindset that can make a scrum team awesome.

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PSYCHOLOGY OF CHANGE FOR PROJECT MANAGERS
2018-05-11 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York)
KAY QUINN
MAY 11, 2018
1:00-2:00 PM CT
1 PDU

According to the Project Management Institute, “When your organization is good at change, twice as many of your strategic initiatives are successful.” Every project introduces some degree of change. For you as the project manager, the secret is acknowledging that change and preparing to address it both proactively and reactively. In this webinar, we will introduce successful strategies for tackling change using basic psychology, proven tools and real life stories.
We will focus primarily on stakeholder and communication management, with considerations around risk and team makeup. Topics include:

All projects are not created equal
What causes resistance?
Working with those affected by the change
Who are your change agents?
Your communication plan “on steroids”

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Kay Quinn, PMP, MBA has over thirty years of leadership experience in all facets of project management, as well as strategic planning and organizational change. Kay has been a career Project Manager; highlights include managing multi-million dollar projects, leading Senior Project Managers, establishing corporate project management offices (PMOs), and performing quality assessments of strategic, high risk initiatives.
Kay has extensive experience in teaching, facilitation, and public speaking in global corporate settings, conferences, and in the university classroom. She has served as adjunct professor for the University of St Thomas Executive Education Program teaching the Mini Masters of Project Management.
Kay is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP®) through the internationally-recognized Project Management Institute (PMI®) and served on the Board of Directors for the Minnesota Chapter. She received both her Undergraduate and Executive MBA degrees from the University of Minnesota-Carlson School of Business.

AGILE ORGANIZATIONAL RUBS & ANTI PATTERNS
2018-04-19 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York)
GEOF LORY
APRIL 19, 2018
1:00-2:00 PM CT
1 PDU

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Change means giving up old behaviors and adopting new ones. When organization or teams start on a journey to adopt agile, both practices and mindset, these new behaviors can create some friction with established and comfortable behaviors. Recognizing where these “rubs” will occur and the all too common anti-patterns typically adopted to address them can prepare managers and teams for this change. If you’ve ever been in a discussion and found yourself saying, “But we can’t do that here.” or Yeah, we tried that too; didn’t work for us, either!”, then you have experienced either a rub or an anti-patterns.
Teams and organizations that are new to Agile often face some common challenges. Through trial and error they attempt to adjust and resolve these issues. Agile will challenge existing policies and processes that are comfortable but may not be getting the desired results. Often, what seem to be logical and prudent responses actually produce a result that is the opposite of the desired outcome creating more problems than it solves. These solutions that seem to make sense but in practice don’t work are called anti-patterns. In this session we will examine numerous Agile Organizational Rubs and Anti-patterns that are commonly encountered, why they would seem to work and why they don’t, along with suggestions for solutions that truly do work.

Geof Lory is a SPL instructor and Board member. He is a project manager, consultant, trainer and writer. With more than 30 years of practical experience in the Information Technology field, Geof integrates the unique aspects of software development and infrastructure deployment projects into both Agile and traditional project management disciplines.
Geof is an engaging speaker and trainer with more than 30 years of practical project management consulting experience. He is the Product Owner for the SPL PM and Agile/Scrum Simulations and is certified to deliver various other team, leadership and project management curricula. He is a Project Management Professional (PMP) and an Agile Certified Professional (ACP) from PMI as well as a Certified Scrum Master (CSM) from the Scrum Alliance.

AN INTRODUCTION TO KANBAN
2018-03-07 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York)
JIM BROWN
MARCH 7, 2018
1:00-2:00 PM CT
1 PDU

The concepts Kanban, originally developed in Japan as a scheduling and inventory control system in the Toyota Production System, can transform management of modern knowledge work. But what does Kanban really mean for knowledge work? In this webinar we will introduce some of the key concepts of Kanban as an lean/agile work management and process improvement tool for your organization.
We will discuss the basics of:

Getting started
Setting up a Kanban board
Visualizing your work
Establishing work in process limits
Managing flow in a pull system
Using Kanban as a tool for process improvement

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Jim Brown, CSPO, CSM, PMI-ACP, PMP is a SPL instructor and brings over 20 years of experience in software development and information technology leadership to his agile training and coaching. Jim has provided technical leadership, strategy, process design, and detailed technical services to clients in a wide variety of industries including Finance, Banking, Insurance, Government, Transportation, Health Care, and Educational Software.
Jim is certified to deliver all the SPL Agile training in addition to various other project management curricula. Jim holds the Certified Scrum Master (CSM), Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Certified Scrum Practitioner/professional (CSP), Scaled Agile Process Consultant (SPC4), Project Management Professional (PMP), and Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) certifications.

STOP MANAGING START COACHING!
2017-12-20 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York)
JOHN KAMAN
DECEMBER 20, 2017
1:00-2:00 PM CT
1 PDU

CREATE A TEAM TO WHICH PEOPLE WANT TO BELONG! Stop managing and start coaching! Coaching is the ability to bring out the best in people. It is the ability to work with a diverse set of team members to help them be creative, empowered and motivated. Coaching is the art of asking powerful questions and using powerful language so that the person being coached will come up with answers for him or herself. The focus is on helping your team members to be resourceful and accountable while getting the job done. Join us for an engaging and interactive presentation
Key Learning Objectives:

Discover the difference between traditional management and coaching
Find out how and why coaching works
Learn how to develop powerful questions and how to hold people accountable
Building rapport, a key to developing strong relationships
Tips on how to develop a group into a team

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John Kaman PMP, is a management coach, mentor and educator. He the president of Whitewater Coaching & Consulting, also teaches at the University of Minnesota and is an associate at SPL. John has 22 years of experience in Research and Development Management with both 3M Company and Imation. He holds a Masters degree in Psychology/Human Development, a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and a certificate in Professional Personal Coaching.

PROJECT COMMUNICATION
2017-11-15 13:00 - 14:00 (America/New_York)
SANDY HAYDON
NOVEMBER 15, 2017
1:00-2:00 PM CT
1 PDU

Everyone agrees that good communication is important for project success. Yet, how many of us actually plan for communication in our projects? Or, do we just “let it happen”?
Successful projects require a documented plan for communicating with all people on the project, including but not limited to: project managers, team members, stakeholders, vendors and support people. Once the individuals are identified, it’s important to identify what type of information needs to be shared, how it will be shared, and when we communicate.
Join us to explore the components and complexities of building a project communication plan.
We will cover:

Who to communicate to?
What to communicate?
When and how often to communicate?
How to select the best media (in person, phone, email, etc.)
As well as other considerations, such as location (the next office, across the country, or around the world), cultures, and generational differences.

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Sandy Haydon is is a SPL instructor and a team coach with Whitewater Coaching and Consulting. She is an active member of PMI MN and was the project manager for the PMI MN project to update their PMP Certification course for the PMBOK Guide 5th Edition..
She has 40 years of experience with IBM (in Rochester, MN) in operating system development projects and working with companies providing software for IBM systems. Since IBM, she has been a team coach with Whitewater Coaching and Consulting.
Sandy holds a BA in Mathematics and a MA in Management became a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) in 1998, an IBM Senior Certified Project Manager in 2004, and an Authorized Facilitator of Team Coaching International’s Team Diagnostic TM assessment tool in 2010.
