Secrets of Managing Investment and IT-projects from an Expert with International Experience
At the end of HSE – Perm Module 3, a guest specialist William J. Wardly gave a series of master classes for graduate students (programs “Finance” and “Project Management: project analysis, investments, technologies of implementation”).
At the end of HSE – Perm Module 3, a guest specialist William J. Wardly gave a series of master classes for graduate students (programs “Finance” and “Project Management: project analysis, investments, technologies of implementation”).
As a recognized expert in Finance and Project Management, Bill has 40 years’ experience in international companies such as Pratt & Whitney, Borden Chemical Inc., Otis Elevator Company, and American Express Company. Over the span of his career, he held various positions, including those of a Finance Analyst and Director of Finance Department. That gave him invaluable experience which he gladly shared with HSE – Perm’ students.
The theme of the first lecture given on December 13, 2012, was "Capital Budgeting". The lecture was given within the framework of research workshop for graduate students of Programs “Finance” and “Project Management: project analysis, investment, technologies of implementation”. In his master class, the expert talked about selection methods, prioritization, and details of managing investment projects when acquiring and modernizing long-term assets of the enterprise. The unique value of this transfer of knowledge was that the students were able to see all the complexity of activities in such projects: from understanding the company strategy, development of a financial plan and cash flow forecast on to efficiency parameters and on how to make a steady profit.
What is also important, the role of a Finance Manager in such projects was touched upon, as well as his responsibilities and importance of analytical skills. According to Bill, the Finance Manager must possess powerful analytical skills and act proactively, not yield to emotional “trends” which unfortunately, many enterprises still do, when launching capital investment projects.
As a result, the lecture turned out to be a very useful financial literacy course for project managers, as well as for functional specialists.
The theme of the next master class Bill Wardly gave on December 20 was "Success in IT-projects". The lecture gathered students of Master’s program “Project Management: project analysis, investments, and technologies of implementation”. It was based on Bill’s great experience of participation in projects for software development and deployment in order to integrate financial systems of branches of international companies (Otis Elevator and others), as well as ERP-systems deployment, integrating hundreds of companies’ network resources all over the world.
Bill consistently and methodically explained all the nuances of successful management of such IT-projects. He focused on every success factor: the quality of software technical implementation, competent system of planning and allocation of resources to the project, the project team composition, and the role of Project Manager, the importance of the training component in the project, the structure of accompanying documentation, and the need for regular updates. That is only a partial list of the success factors covered by the expert during the master class. These factors should be taken into account when managing IT-projects.
The special value of the speech delivered by Bill Wardly was that he did not relay the theoretical foundations of project management but discussed the practice-driven approach which answered questions "What should be done, who should do it, when and how" to bring your IT-project to a successful outcome.
All the methodological calculations provided by the expert were accompanied by realistic examples of companies and calculations, which clearly showed the superiority of the tools he proposed.
One should note that the graduate students showed keen interest in the subject. Questions addressed to Bill, were related both to the specifics ("On what basis, what data to make forecasts?") and alternative methods ("To what extent can one use intuition when planning such projects?") The scientific workshop ended with an interesting discussion initiated by one of the students: "Do you like your job?"
Following the second master class given by Bill, some students exchanged contact information with the expert in order to maintain business ties in the future. Needless to say, the guest’s positive attitude inspired the audience. Everybody was looking forward to new exciting and useful meetings with the expert! All the more reason for this: agreement had already been reached to continue cooperation between HSE – Perm and Bill Wardly in 2013.