Presentation: Finding Your North Star: Finding Your Project’s True Scope and Mission in Dark Skies
Abstract: Are your projects constantly battling scope creep, drowning in busy work, or suffering strategic shifts? Do you feel confident in the problem you are truly trying to solve, and know where that may be changing over the duration of your projects or program initiatives?
You need to find your North Star to follow to lighten up the dark sky of an uncertain project landscape.
This presentation outlines a clear, actionable roadmap for finding and anchoring your ultimate definition of success – the true core scope – that defines any initiative’s, portfolio’s, program’s, or project’s ultimate value delivery for success.
We’ll walk through how finding your north star is a non-negotiable filter to eliminate any task or noise that isn’t absolutely critical to success, starting from day one of initiating this thought process and actionable steps.
You’ll walk away with a larger toolkit fit for finding that true scope, and continuing to track its change in positioning as you progress through any initiative set forth for you and your organization to ensure you are still following the north star even when it may shift in the sky.
- Embrace the Darkness, Open Your View with Curiosity: Master the “5 Whys” and the art of constructive focus to define your true scope & mission.
- Navigate the Changing Sky: Implement simple management frameworks fast, like the “Parking Lot Rule” to keep ensuring you are holding to the true north positioning, or keep track of it as it changes over the course of an initiative without adding additional chaos.
- Equip Your Project Telescope with AI: Learn how to leverage LLMs and automation to reduce manual workload, flag deviations, and analyze stakeholder focus through each step of a project lifecycle.
Join me to learn how to find, anchor, and continuously track your North Star!
PMI Talent Triangle: Ways of Working
Biography: Monica Koepper serves as a senior program manager at Tenable Inc, bringing extensive experience in both business and technology leadership to lead Technical Strategic Initiatives within this firm. Prior to Tenable, she led the Patient Recruitment Funnel product line for clinical trial recruitment, supporting FDA-approved treatments across multiple therapeutic areas. She also managed Eli Lilly’s Tempo Platform under Welldoc, a diabetes management solution integrating smart insulin pens with AI-powered insights. Earlier in her career, Monica served as an engineer at Cisco within the Security Business Group, focusing on enterprise firewall products and security platforms. During her career, she has advanced from software engineering, to project and even product management – aiding in her adaptive mindset & wide lens of understanding technical and business mindsets to converge on success for cross-functional projects and programs.
