Bonnie Biafore, PMP, BS/MS; Presents at Regis Project Management Institute (PMI) South Roundtable | YourHub - The Denver Post

Bonnie Biafore, PMP, BS/MS; Consultant, Trainer, and award-winning Author presented to the Regis Project Management Institute (PMI) South Roundtable project managers (PMs) on October 26, 2022.  Don Gier, Associate Professor in the Anderson College of Business and Computing Regis University supported PMI Mile Hi Chapter volunteers and the guest speaker with session orientation/setup, management and webinar recording ensuring the event was a success.

Bonnie's presentation titled Working on Hybrid Agile/Waterfall Projects with MS Project was an interactive discussion with attending PMs.  She addressed the challenges to effectively manage hybrid projects and how to incorporate both Agile and Waterfall actions of diverse teams into an integrated schedule.  Bonnie started by talking about hybrid projects and solicited attendee input on how their teams interact.  Throughout the roundtable she provided tips for integrating agile and waterfall project management efforts.  She shared how PMs could effectively architect their project management approach by:

• Defining the direction of the dependency between Agile and Waterfall efforts
• Working with stakeholders to identify what makes sense
• Appointing a liaison between teams (business analyst, PM, other)

She discussed what is important to PMs managing hybrid projects from a tool-agnostic perspective.  In MS Project, Bonnie depicted options for managing a hybrid project as an example of using PM tools for integration.  She addressed various facets of schedule integration such as:

• Waterfall – typical milestones
• Agile milestones (sprint completion, releases)
• Waterfall – Add milestones at same frequency as sprints

About the Speaker.  Bonnie Biafore (bonniebiafore.com) is a project management consultant with more than 30 years' experience managing projects of all sizes in many industries.  She is a LinkedIn Learning instructor with courses on project management, Microsoft Project, and QuickBooks.  Her course, Project Management Foundations, has been viewed by almost 2 million people.  Also, Bonnie is an award-winning author with more than 30 published books to her credit, including self-published Practical Project Management with Microsoft Project and Practical Bookkeeping with QuickBooks 2018. In her early career, Bonnie gained experience with multiple firms (e.g., McDonnell Douglas, EDS, Convergent Group).  Her career migrated to author, technical writing, and to Project Management consultant and educator.

Drawing further on the experiences of the attendees, she had numerous PMs share their successes and challenges using other tools such Jira, Azure DevOps, PowerAutomate, Zapier, and Smartsheet.  Bonnie then stressed the criticality of continuous, effective communication.  She highlighted how Reporting is a vital part of communication and stakeholder management. 

• Waterfall milestone status/upcoming work
• Waterfall performance measures
• Completed sprint status/upcoming features
• Burndown charts
• What does sponsor and management team expect in reports? Prepare them for waterfall/agile differences reporting

Bonnie earned a BS degree in Architecture from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an MS in Structural Engineering from Columbia University, and a certificate in project management from Denver University. In her spare time, she mixes it up with improv and sketch comedy, hiking, biking, travel, and cooking ethnic cuisines. 

Regis PMI South Roundtable. The Regis PMI South Roundtable is an affiliate of the PMI Mile High Chapter (pmimilehi.org), a chapter that has consistently been among the top 5% of chapters worldwide. Project Management Institute (www.pmi.org) is the leading professional association for project management, and the authority for a growing global community of millions of project professionals and individuals who use project management skills.