Mr. Johnson will be presenting during two sessions, both are listed below along with their presentation times.
Presentation 1: Lean or Agile: Lessons Learned from a Tech Startup scheduled for May 4, 2017 from 1:15pm – 2:20pm
Abstract: This case study evaluates project management techniques by using a technology startup case study to explore the extreme conditions which clarify when Lean and Agile management are most successful given the organization’s goals. The paper presents novel insights on the indicators of when and where it is most appropriate to use Lean or Agile project management techniques, and how to transition between the two. The case study enriches the proposed theory with real-world examples of the success and failure in applying these techniques. The business case is of a startup, Second Nature Software LLC, that began with no product or target market, and within one year developed a cutting edge application piloted by 5 large research institutes, including two institutes at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). “Lean or Agile” provides a model of how any businesses can discover, develop, and deploy innovative solutions under extreme uncertainty.
Influences and project management theories referenced include: Lean Startup, Customer Development, Product Development, Design Thinking, Theory of Constraints, Scrum, Disciplined Agile Delivery, Kanban, and Total Quality Management.
Presentation 2: Panel: Agile Challenges: Procurement & Leadership scheduled for May 5, 2017 from 10:20am – 11:25am
Abstract: Agile prescribes varying scope and empowering teams – so how do you reconcile that with firm-fixed price contracts and policy-driven departments?
- Contracting Agile using firm-fixed price
- Empowering teams in policy-driven environments
- Staying Agile with distributed or outsourced teams
- Agile project tracking compliance with traditional PMOs
- Enabling Agile with independent verification & validation (IV&V)
- Preventing team burnout on long-term Agile contracts
- Preventing product owners from losing influence, relevance, and political power
- Conflict management when whole teams can’t reconcile competing department priorities
Biography: Mr. Johnson, is a Co-Founder of oneYear LLC, a software product company operating in the DMV area focused on building innovative new products and making a strong positive social impact in local communities.
Prior to co-founding oneYear LLC, Mr. Johnson was a Senior Agile Project Manager with IBM, where he led multiple development teams building applications for the National Archives Records Administration (NARA) to process, store, and search of government records. He provided strategic consulting and management of agile development teams to forecast and defend budgets, evolve current systems, and pilot cutting edge big data search applications to support the potential hundreds of petabytes of electronic records expected by 2020.
Mr. Johnson worked as a Management Consultant with Booz Allen Hamilton, where he led projects for the Marine Corps, Air Force, and Navy from optimizing site investments and posture for Reserve forces, to developing award-winning project analysis and portfolio management software to optimize billions in shore energy investments. He has also worked as an airport master planning consultant for Ricondo & Associates, Inc.; a researcher for the UMD Institute for Systems Research; and independent branch operator for College Works Painting, Inc. He was published in the International Conference on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), 2008 for his work on Concurrent Behavioral Modeling of the Panama Canal operations. Mr. Johnson holds a Masters in Systems Engineering and a B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Maryland; as well as a graduate certificate from the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) program at Penn State University.
