Above and Beyond just Project Management
Deepa Nadig - IT Specialist, IBM Rational India
Suchetha Bhat - Practice Lead – Product / Project portfolio Management, IBM Rational India

The key to success in today’s world has gone beyond being able to deliver on schedule or within budget. Today we need to be able achieve greater investment returns, lower execution risks, and guide teams to do more with less. In today's economy, more companies than ever are looking to an IT project portfolio management (PPM) strategy to optimize the relevance and ROI from their investments. This can be achieved, and successfully demonstrated, only by bringing together the critical components of portfolio management, project execution, as well as performance measurement and practices-driven process management. This session is for you - - whether you are looking for executable ideas to align portfolio investment decisions with strategic objectives, to identify and prioritize internal and external needs, to unify distributed teams so they can operate efficiently, to deliver high quality software and systems on time and on budget and to measure and manage performance improvements while ensuring repeated success.

The session is divided into 4 modules;

Strategize your IT Portfolio to meet your business objectives.

Strong portfolio management assures a good balance of IT investments, programs and projects, and optimal resource allocation to align operational decisions within an overall business strategy. An integrated IT portfolio management system should help organizations realize and balance the benefits of their IT investments, identify and mitigate risks, and keep scopes realistic and managed. In this module you can learn how organizations can align investments with business objectives and maximize business value, while maintaining a constant focus on customer and stakeholder needs.

Ensure on-time and on-budget delivery.

Companies today are facing challenges managing distributed development teams, ensuring consistent processes, and allowing for local flexibility, while still enforcing process frameworks that are right for each area of the organization, whether traditional, agile, or iterative. In this module, you as program or project managers can learn how to drive consistent, predictable performance across teams and deliverables with planning, methodology, and work item management that can be applied to all divisions of an enterprise -- no matter where they are located.

Measure your Results

In today's challenging economy, organizations must be able to make the right decisions, at the right time, based on verifiable, accurate real-time information. The reality is that most continue to struggle with incomplete or inaccurate information, coming from disparate sources. So how do you set up a measurement system that allows you to understand what works and what does not? How do you determine what actions to take when you have unfavorable measures?

Ensure repeatable success.

Process management is to have repeatable, enforceable, and predictable processes to develop better software and systems. In this module, learn how to reuse objects, methods, and processes to speed application development, to streamline project startup, and to build confidence in estimating consistency, which in turn helps you deliver high-quality software and systems more rapidly.

About the Speakers

Deepa Nadig has over 10 years of progressive technical and managerial experience in business and Information systems. She is a BE graduate majored in Electronics Engineering from BMS College of Engineering, Bangalore. She has worked extensively across various technologies including databases, ERPs as a technical leader and project manager for over 7 years. She has a mixed experience both in the IT services and product organizations. She has consultated with various domains like Finance, Retails, Manufacturing as part of her career both in India and abroad. She has worked as technical architect and consultant on various BPM solutions in Wipro and Borland prior to joining IBM. Deepa currently manages the technical solutions for Rational portfolio specifically with extensive experience in Architecture management and project and portfolio management tools.

Suchetha Bhat has been associated with the Software Industry for over 8 years now and has worked on various phases of project lifecycles from design architecture to implementation, testing & integration, as well as, deployment of solutions using various tools and methodologies. Her competence lies in tools and processes that automate Enterprise and Application Lifecycle Management. As a Practice Lead for Product / Project Portfolio Management in IBM Rational, India, she currently specializes in the Process, Project and Portfolio solutions of the IBM Rational Software Brand. Prior to joining IBM India, Suchetha has also completed various software engineering assignments where she has led the efforts for companies seeking CMMi Level 5 certifications, participated in industry standards activities, and helped setup key processes for compliance to various industry standards.