We are extremely excited to roll out our newly developed Project Management Excellence Award. The program is designed to recognize and celebrate consultants who have gone above and beyond expectations. Please look below to see this quarter’s featured consultants:

Elsa Lee

Elsa joined eBay in August to lead an extremely sensitive ERP implementation. Between her tireless work ethic, her political savvy and her resilience in the face of adversity, Elsa’s success has been noted by 100% of the stakeholders that we interviewed at eBay. The Manager of the Global Technology PMO of eBay, spoke of Elsa as “setting the standard for future Project Managers at eBay.”

Veerabhadresh Veeranna

Veer joined GAP more than 18 months ago and has been leading multiple high profile, important projects for GAP Corporate IT. Veer’s dedication and hard work has been continually praised by his co-workers and the PMO leadership at GAP, leading to multiple contract extensions. The Director of PMO at GAP recently proclaimed that without Veer’s tireless oversight they would have only achieved a fraction of the success that they have enjoyed this year.

Padmaja Mummaneni

back in 2009 as a Business Systems Analyst. She has an amazing work ethic and has been recognized countless times for her success by her management and peers. Padmaja has continued to extend her contracts at Netapp and just most recently, converted from a Business Systems Analyst into a Project Management role. It has been a great pleasure working with Padmaja and we know that she will only find success in her new role.

As 2011 comes to a close, I want to take a moment to wish you and your family happy holidays and share my thoughts as we end what has been a momentous year for our company.

When I reflect back on this past year, I can honestly say that 2011 has been a phenomenal year – definitely one for the books. It’s been an interesting 12 months, with many ups and down, and even more milestones to highlight. I’d like to bring focus to a couple of achievements that I think really helped define this past year and propel cPrime forward as we continue to pioneer in Project Management, Agile Methodologies & Training.

We are continuing the development and launch of the LMS and we are hard at work creating and refining its capabilities. We expect 2012 to be a great year for this application as we continue to roll out this new and innovative tool.

Internally, we have begun rolling out a new semi-monthly payment plan. This is due to largely due to the great feedback we got back from our consultant survey. Your answers really allowed us to target and pinpoint pain areas and work together to correct this issue.

As we continue to invest in the practice, we  have brought on new Agile instructors, coaches, and consultants to help lead the charge. Our Training & Agile offerings are evolving through the development of the EAD (Enterprise Agile Development), ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner), and “one day” Agile courses. We are focused on continuing to change the project management sphere  through branching out these services and expanding our practices.

Our internal family is also growing as we welcome five new members to the cPrime team:

• Colleen Corning will come on as a senior consultant to help with a few key projects to help us prepare for an amazing 2012.  She will be working closely with John Niec to develop our own content in the PMP prep and Waterfall Light methodology areas.

• Erin Veneziano will be leading and managing our training operations department. Erin brings a strong background in project management and education development and delivery to cPrime.  She will be responsible for all of training delivery, including the build out of our training material and maturing our training operations.   

• Jeff Howey is our most recent addition to round out our Agile development team. Jeff has been working in the Agile area for eight years, with MapQuest and Nationwide Insurance. He migrated from QA work into the role of ScrumMaster and coach, and has been very successful in helping these companies implement Scrum effectively. He has trained both developers and stakeholders, and has his CSM. He is also a PMI member, and is currently working towards his PMP certification.    

• John Niec, a Sr. Instructor, mentor, and coach, will bring his incredible background in PMP Prep and Waterfall education to cPrime.  He will be responsible for developing several key trainings within the waterfall arena and then delivering those trainings to both our public and private classes.  John has been delivering PMP training classes for the last 4 years at VelociTeach.

• Shazia Alam comes on as our new sales support rockstar. She will be a phenominal addition to our sales team and will be supporting key sales activities and sales functions critical to our business.
  

2011 has been an extraordinary year and I am astounded by how much we have achieved in such a short amount of time. With the coming of 2012, we expect to continue to grow and diversify our company and services even more. On the back end, we are still working to provide our consultants with the best service and support, as well as recognition for their hard work and dedication. On the front end, we plan on putting a greater emphasis on building the cPrime community for our consultants to build a network of project management excellence.

This year has been such an amazing journey and I am so proud of all the milestones we have accomplished. I welcome 2012 with open arms and I know that we will be able to meet and rise above all the  challenges the new year will bring.

cPrime has taken a new initiative to be a more active host for SF Agile Meetup events in 2012!  Our experts are on the cutting edge of all things agile; gather with us as well as like-minded peers and colleagues to learn about new and trending agile topics!

Upcoming cPrime SF Agile Meetup Events

The New Agile Certification!

Learn about the latest Agile Certification from the PMI – The PMI Agile Certified Practitioner! The PMI has recently announced that they will be offering a new Certification for Agile Project Managers. The certification will validate a PM’s experience and mastery of the agile principals and processes. An Agile certified practitioner will have the knowledge of both Agile and Waterfall practices and is able to lead teams on Agile projects. By holding this Agile Practitioner Certification, which is more credible than other agile certifications out there, a practitioner can verify their agile expertise to companies looking to adopt the agile methodology. For more info on the certification and courses to help you prepare, visit our PMI Agile Certified Practitioner Exam Prep page.

To be held 2/7/11 at 6:30pm, location TBD -  Visit sfagile.org for more info!

Validate Agile with Financial Metrics

Learn how to financially identify the benefits of Agile and the differences between “Agile-like” behaviors and highly functioning teams.  This  topic will focus on how to financially identify the impact of agile to an organization.  Many firms that have been doing agile a while, yet cannot give metrics to determine if agile has helped them and what it has meant to the company.

To be held 3/13/11 at 6:30pm , Location TBD – Visit sfagile.org for more info!

VEER VEERANA IS NAMED CPRIME CONSULTANT OF THE MONTH FOR NOVEMBER 2011!

Veer is a PMP certified, seasoned, business savvy, result oriented Project manager who has hands on experience in Business Intelligence(BI), Enterprise Data Warehouse(EDW), Inventory Management, Infrastructure and Healthcare. Veer has bachelors degree in Computer Science from Bangalore university

Apart from key proactive project management activities (Risk, budget, time, issue, quality, resource, vendor management), Veer actively practices following key additional points at Gap which helps in successful project implementation:

• When there are multiple/competing priorities, prioritize the priorities for yourself and your team members and set the right expectation
• Guide/ Help individual team members become successful which in turn helps the project to be successful
• Keep it simple

PHOTOS FROM AWARD CEREMONY

A FEW WORDS FROM THE CEO

It seems like just a few weeks ago when we started the push into Q2, and here we are having just wrapped up Q3 already!! Three months later, I am happy to say that we are pushing forward, stronger and faster, towards another record setting and groundbreaking year. There are several achievements I would like to highlight that is  propelling cPrime forward as we continue to pioneer in Project Management, Agile Methodologies & Training.

We have brought on new Agile instructors, coaches, consultants as well as a new VP of Agile Services as we continue to invest in the practice. We are also focused on branching out our services by educating executives on the benefits of agile project management. Leading the Agile charge is Kevin Thompson, Agile Practice Lead.  Under his guidance and example, Kevin is aligning our Agile Team to take on and conquer all of the new and great opportunities that the cPrime Teams are closing.