E-News 
from Human Systems

In September, Human Systems announced the appointment of Scott Patton to lead the North America business.  “North America has seen an increase in the demand for maturity modelling and benchmarking methods” Scott stated when asked why he joined Human Systems. “What organizations really want to know is how their processes, practices and competencies look against the wider marketplace. Not only does Human Systems have the expertise to approach this with both intellectual and practical knowledge, but they have a large bank of historic data from some of the most significant best practice organizations in the business.  Data on the practices and processes of these blue chip companies offer clients a unique opportunity to find out exactly where they stand, with relatively little intervention needed.”

Scott brings to the Human Systems team over 20 years of extensive experience in technical project management and risk management.  This includes hands-on project management and consulting, focused on developing and improving project management capabilities.  Prior to joining Human Systems, Scott was a senior manager at a large, international management and technology consulting firm, where he led the project management practice.  Early in his career, Scott managed large, international technical projects dealing with the nuclear material control and accountability. Scott has an MBA from Virginia Polytechnic and State University.  He is a PMI® certified Project Management Professional (PMP®) and a PMI certified OPM3® assessor and consultant.  Scott is an adjunct professor for project management courses at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.

Find out about workshops in North America.

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The following companies have recently starting working with us to fast track improvement of their corporate PM capability:

BAE Systems
Royal Bank of Scotland
Eisai
The National Trust

View some of the other companies who work with Human Systems.

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Human Systems Executive Chairman Terry Cooke-Davies chaired the conference panel for this first APM Conference. He reflects on two days of a professional activity event that has helped to shape the future of project management in the coming years.

Interactivity - The End of Passive Learning

Project magazine article by Dr. Terry Cooke-Davies
Download article [264KB PDF file] from Project magazine © APM 2007

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This workshop was designed to analyse the premise that many projects will fail, not because of how they are being run, but because of how the project was set up in the first place. Such projects have an inbuilt ‘self destruct’ mechanism and no amount of good project management can save them. 

On September 11th, we set out to identify what can cause a project to be ‘set up for failure’ and how we could protect ourselves and our organizations from this worrying phenomenon. The discussion was enriched by representation from a range of industries with Abbey, AstraZeneca, Rolls Royce, Thales and Aegon all being represented together with many other organizations. Speakers included Tim Banfield, Director of Defence Acquisition Studies at the National Audit Office, who shared his experience and thoughts on the topic.

Download summary report from this workshop

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7TH ANNUAL GLOBAL WORKSHOP Berlin Hilton, Tuesday 18th & Wednesday 19th November 2008 We are now planning our 7th Global Workshop, which is scheduled to take place on Tuesday 18th and Wednesday 19th November 2008, at the Berlin Hilton. Please put these dates in your diary now, so that you will be available to join us. To register your interest in this event, please contact Rebecca Phillips phillipsr@humansystems.net or telephone +44 (0) 207 290 2766. Travel and accommodation will be the responsibility of individual delegates, but we will shortly be able to pass on details of our discounted accommodation package.

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The following workshops are coming up soon. If you haven’t reserved your place, please email info@humansystems.net for booking details.

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What did you miss?

Even if you haven’t been able to attend a workshop, you can catch up on the presentations and output that resulted from the event through the Human Systems intranet. Output from the following recent events is now on the intranet and can be accessed by members - click here.

If you have any problems accessing workshop output, please email phillipsr@humansystems.net

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“PMI” and OPM3 are services and trademarks of the Project Management Institute, Inc. which is registered in the United States and other nations.
"PMP" and the PMP logo are certification marks of the Project Management Institute which are registered in the United States and other nations.