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Author: Andrea Brockmeier

Top 10 Business Trends to Watch for in 2022

By Andrea Brockmeier, Jason Cassidy, Susan Heidorn, Jose Marcial Portilla, and Mike Stuedemann

While 2021 has been better in many ways than 2020, it doesn’t feel much more predictable. Yet, at Educate 360 we have identified some the biggest trends we are seeing and expect organizations to continue experiencing in Project Management, Business Analysis, Agile, Data Science, and Leadership in the year ahead.

Overall, the theme of working remotely comes through loud and clear and we expect it to impact almost every area that we covered.

Here are our Top 10 trends to watch for in 2022. We’d love to hear your thoughts about our observations and prognostications.


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Project Management

Project Managers as Project Leaders

The recognition that project managers are both leaders and managers is not new, but the need for the leadership aspect of the role has intensified in the last couple of years and will continue to do so in 2022. In fact, we are hearing more organizations using the title project leader as opposed to project manager.

To be sure, the technical aspects of the job such as scheduling, budgeting, and tracking haven’t been eliminated, but the need for skills like influencing, facilitating, communicating and other “soft” skills associated with the PM as leader has become paramount. Project managers as leaders are going to continue to be challenged in 2022 with distributed teams and all the distractions of ever-changing global and work environments. Leading the team and engaging stakeholders to sustain buy-in is going to continue to be job one for effective PMs in 2022.

More Organizations Using Project Management Tools

In 2022, expect to see a continued increase in the use of project management tools beyond the standard Microsoft Office suite. We used to see only the occasional client using a PM application of any kind and it was almost always Microsoft Project. Whether because people are working remotely, tools have become more cost effective, or tools have become more accessible and easier to use, we see more organizations using PM-specific tools and we’re seeing a wider variety of tools, as well.

At first this may seem contradictory to the previous trend of project leadership getting emphasized over project management; tools are not generally used for the leadership aspects of the PM role. Perhaps these trends are mutually reinforcing in that tools like Asana, Wrike, Easy Project, Smartsheet and others help with project management which allows the PM to tend to the demands of project leadership. Whatever the reason, we look ahead to 2022 as a robust year for PM tool implementation.

Business Analysis

Strong Facilitation and Communication Skills for Remote Business Analysts

We have all have heard about the Great Resignation – employees leaving their jobs in record numbers in search of better pay and career opportunities, a healthier work-life balance, a less toxic working environment, and desire to continue to work remotely. As a result, many companies are reducing their carbon footprint as well as costs, so they either have smaller offices, holding a space for meetings or providing “hoteling” spaces when employees need or want to go into the office to work. Organizations are also realizing that they can hire talent around the globe.

So, what does this mean for business analysts? It means we must get better at communicating and facilitating in a virtual environment. We must learn how to build trust when we can’t directly “see” stakeholders daily. We must be able to facilitate virtually to ensure we elicit inclusive requirements and not just those from a few vocal stakeholders. We need to learn to creatively collaborate with our team members, colleagues, and key stakeholders to ensure we have their buy-in.

BAs need to think about communicating and facilitating with more intention. This calls for mindful facilitation as opposed to simply the ability to use Microsoft Teams, Slack, or other communication platforms. We are already starting to see – and we continue to see in 2022 – more BAs focus on learning how to create safe, trust-laden, and collaborative environments within which stakeholders readily share information in a world that has been changed forever.

Digital Transformation Strategy Supported by Business Analysis

Digital transformation has been a trend for some years, and it is still going full steam ahead. Yet, most of these efforts fail. There are many reasons cited for this failure; among the most common include:

  • NOT understanding the business problem, but instead just throwing solutions or technology at the wall to see what sticks.
  • NOT determining success criteria so organizations have no way of knowing if the initiative has been successful because there was not a shared understanding of what success looked like.
  • NOT realizing that digital transformation introduces cultural changes in the organization (which is also one of the reasons many organizations had difficulty adopting agile).

Because of these failures, organizations moving toward digital transformation will rely more on business analysis capabilities to effectively address root causes of the problems above. BAs will be used on digital transformation initiatives to ensure the business problem or opportunity has been fully analyzed and understood, to verify that the organization is ready to adopt the new culture, and to identify overall success measures as well as identifying smaller, incremental success measures that can be measured throughout the project.

These efforts will also require a business analyst’s in-depth knowledge of agile business analysis approaches, tools, and techniques that will be critical as organizations strive to become more agile in their ability to respond to customers and competitors. Look for lots of opportunities in 2022 for BAs to plug in as key strategic resources on digital transformations.

Agile

Teams Continue to be Distributed – By Choice, Not Necessity

It can be argued that the COVID 19 pandemic did more to transform the world of work than any document, framework, certification approach or technology. One of the lasting impacts of the pandemic is that distributed teams are here to stay. Product development team members and their leaders will need to permanently adjust to working in a distributed fashion.

While many still share the perception that all Agile frameworks require co-located teams (see principle 6 associated with the Agile Manifesto), technology has advanced to the point where a team adopting a framework doesn’t need to all be in the same location. Continued discipline, particularly in the area of communication and team working together agreements, will be required as teams shift from distributed work by necessity to distributed work by choice.

Scaling – Addition by Addition or Addition by Subtraction?

The marketplace continues to see the emergence and growth of a number of Agile scaling frameworks. The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Large Scale Scrum (LeSS), Scrum at Scale (S@S) and Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) are just a few of the prominent entries in this space. Next year will see organizations continue to adopt these frameworks as they seek to realize the benefits of being more responsive to change at a global level.

Current thoughts are mixed regarding how to achieve this goal. While many of the current frameworks (e.g., SAFe) advocate adding structure and layers, some like LeSS believe that true organizational agility can only be achieved by removing items from the organization that don’t directly contribute to the delivery of customer value. This debate is even more nuanced when the idea that some additional structure might be necessary on a temporary basis while the organization is being transformed. In 2022, we expect to see continued debate as to what steps are actually necessary to achieve agility on a global scale.

Agile Outside of Software

The Agile movement was born in the software development space. After all, it is called the “Manifesto for Agile Software Development”. In recent years, other domains have adopted a number of the values and principles that define the Agile movement in attempt to accrue its benefits. For example, there is currently an Agile Marketing Manifesto as well as efforts to bring an Agile mindset and some of its practices into education.

This trend will accelerate in 2022 as events such as the pandemic, natural disaster, and political and economic shifts remind organizations that the only constant is change.

Data Science

Increasing Application of Artificial Intelligence and Reinforcement Learning

We often hear that Artificial Intelligence is one of the trends that will change the world. This past year certainly validates that sentiment, and 2022 will continue to see evidence of this powerful trend.

But what is actually meant by the term “Artificial Intelligence”? Technically speaking, AI systems typically incorporate a special type of machine learning known as “Reinforcement Learning.” These specialized programs allow a computer to learn the same way a human does, through experience with trial and error.

In 2016, DeepMind (an Alphabet company) made headlines when its computer program AlphaGo beat the world’s best Go player, a feat many previously thought was impossible. The AlphaGo program worked through Reinforcement Learning methods, where the computer played thousands of games against itself, learning the best tactics to win the game of Go.

Fortunately, Reinforcement Learning has applications beyond just board games. In 2021, DeepMind released AlphaFold 2, a computer AI program that can accurately predict protein folding structures, opening up new possibilities in drug discovery and medicine.

The application of AI and reinforcement learning will definitely be a trend to keep an eye on, as the progress has increased exponentially.

Huge Strides to Continue with Natural Language Processing

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is the use of machine learning models to interpret raw text data, such as Wikipedia articles or even code written by humans. Traditionally, NLP technology has been used for classifying text articles into categories or sentiment analysis of reviews. By simply training NLP models on existing text data sets, the models can learn the topic of a new article, or whether a movie review is positive or negative.

Huge strides have recently been made in the capabilities of upcoming NLP technology. In 2020, OpenAI released “Generative Pre-trained Transformed 3,” commonly known as GPT-3, which has the ability to generate text that is nearly indistinguishable from that written by a human. GPT-3 was trained on hundreds of billions of words that were scraped from the internet and is even capable of coding in CSS, JSX, Python, among others.

In 2021, OpenAI further expanded on the idea of an NLP model that can code, by releasing Codex and Github Copilot. These futuristic state-of-the-art models can not only automatically complete large portions of code, but they can also accept a description of what the code should do and produce the corresponding code. Check out this Codex demo launch video.

The future is already here! We are definitely looking for exciting new applications of NLP continue to make headlines in 2022.

Leadership

Attracting & Retaining Talent – But Different Than Before

Attracting and retaining talent is the most prominent topic of conversation we’ve observed in media related to leadership, specifically attracting and retaining talent in a COVID-changed environment. It’s not clear anyone has permanently figured out the solution as the situation is still in flux, so we have listed key points that we hear leaders weighing in with in their decisions related to remote work and its implications for finding quality team members.

Let’s start by making a broad assumption (that certainly can still be refuted) that some jobs cannot be done remotely (e.g., printing and shipping) and some jobs potentially can be done remotely. Below are the key topics of debate that will continue to shape this discussion in 2022:

  • Job Equity: Is it fair to the people whose roles cannot be done remotely and who have to come into the workplace that others can work at home? As this question is discussed topics related to safety, expenses, commute time, flexibility, teamwork, fairness all come into play.
  • Productivity: Even if jobs can be done remotely, what is the level of productivity of remote work versus work in the office? As this question is discussed one hears that people work longer hours at home because they are not commuting, that people are more productive at home because they can focus and not be disturbed. On the other hand, you hear others say that people are less productive at home because they are distracted by non-work items and that people are less productive at home because they are not being watched. You also hear discussion of managers’ ability to manage in-person versus remote team members.
  • Cultural Impact: Even if a job can be done at home, is it better for the organizational culture? As this question is discussed topics related to collaboration, mentoring, camaraderie, organic problem solving and innovation, and work-life balance come into play.

These debates and questions will dominate leadership conversations in the coming year as leaders continue the challenge of finding and hanging on to top talent.

Jason Cassidy, PMP, is CEO of Educate 360, the parent company of Project Management Academy, Watermark Learning, and Pierian Data. – training partners of choice helping organizations improve organizational efficiency and effectiveness, increase cross-functional alignment, and drive results to help meet and exceed business performance goals.

Andrea Brockmeier, PMP, is Director of Project Management at Watermark Learning, an Educate 360 partner company. Dr. Susan Heidorn, PMP, CBAP, BRMP is Director of Business Solutions at Watermark Learning. Jose Marcel Portilla is Head of Data Science at Pierian Data Inc., an Educate 360 partner. Mike Stuedemann, PMP, CST, is a Scrum-Focused, Agile Agnostic Coach and Trainer at AgilityIRL and partners with Watermark Learning for Scrum courses.

Join our webinar on December 10 to hear our contributors talk about these trends and answer questions.

Top 5 Questions About The PMI-PBA Exam Update

It’s been a busy year at Project Management Institute (PMI®) with many of their exams changing. Students often wonder about timing issues when an exam update is on the horizon.

Below are the top 5 questions that we get from students about the PMI-PBA® exam that is changing on June 25:

Q: Do I really have enough time to prepare for the PMI-PBA exam between now and June 25?

A: Absolutely. It will take some concerted effort, but you have time. I recommend somewhere in the 40-50 hours of study after taking a PMI-PBA Bootcamp, either live, virtual, or our Anytime Learning (ATL). If you haven’t taken a class, I would add 30-40 hours to that. At this point, for example, you could still devote a modest 1-2 hours per day or 10-12 hours per week to prepping and have plenty of time to be ready before the end of June.

Q: What is the advantage of taking the PMI-PBA exam before it changes?

A: The advantage is that we have a pretty good understanding about the exam (not exact questions) in terms of things that are emphasized or topics that show up because we have had many years of informal and formal feedback. We have had a long time to tweak our material to ensure that it is adequately preparing students for the exam.

Q: Will the exam be dramatically different after June 25?

A: The biggest driver of change for any PMI exam is a change to the relevant Exam Content Outline (ECO) which identifies the tasks, knowledge, and skill competencies required of a practitioner, in this case a Professional in Business Analysis (PBA). The PBA ECO has not changed.
The June 25 exam update is primarily in response to the November 2017 release of PMI’s new Guide to Business Analysis; the purpose of the update is to ensure consistency of terms and language between the exam and this new PMI standard. In addition, there is likely to be more emphasis on adaptive (agile) approaches and how that impacts BA work done in the context of projects and programs.

Q: Other than prepping for the exam itself, what else do I need to know if I ‘m planning to take it before the update?

A: Get your application completed and sent in asap. Sometimes there is a rush of people trying to take a PMI test just before it changes and that can make it hard to get a test timeslot at Prometric. Some people end up having to schedule their exam at Prometric sites that are not closest to them. For that reason, it is critical to get your application in as soon as possible and get the seat reserved. Get your application submitted and approved and get that test scheduled…then get going on the exam prep!

Q: How much work is the application to take the PMI-PBA exam?

A: It a bit of work, but don’t let it deter you from taking the exam. Sometimes people get a little too worked up about the application. PMI’s online application is really very easy to use so just get started and you can save it and go back to it as you collect more information. It will likely take you 3-6 hours or maybe even a little more, depending on how recent your projects and education were and how much effort it takes to pull it all together. Remember that you will need to document several things:

35 Contact hours (BA-related education) – This may have been from someone like Watermark Learning or it could have been training offered within your organization. And there is no time limit on the contact hours; it could have been a class you took 10 years ago. You will need to be able to provide a transcript or proof, if audited.
Business analysis experience (4500 or 6500 hours, depending on project experience) – Your experience will need to cover all the ECO domains, but use the ECO tasks as a guide to understand how to describe your experience.
Contact information of someone who can verify your experience – Make sure it is someone you can get in touch with easily in case you get audited. Note that if your business analysis experience has been as a consultant, you may use someone at your consulting organization as the contact person for your experience if they are able to verify that you did the work. 

Q: What if I take the exam before June 25 and fail and then retake the exam after June 25? What version will the retake be?

A: All exams administered after June 25 will be the updated version. No exceptions. Any retakes after June 25 for failed exams prior to June 25 will be the new version. Even if you experience a delay due to an audit, any exam after June 25 will be the new version. (Note that PMI typically turns audits around quickly).

The PMI-PBA is the fastest growing PMI exam and it’s a great credential for anyone doing the work of business analysis, regardless of your title. You’ve got time. Go for it!

Top 5 Questions about the PMI-PBA Exam Change

It’s been a busy year at Project Management Institute (PMI®) with many of their exams changing. Students often wonder about timing issues when an exam update is on the horizon.

Below are the top 5 questions that we get from students about the PMI-PBA® exam that is changing on June 25:

Q: Do I really have enough time to prepare for the PMI-PBA exam between now and June 25?
A: Absolutely. It will take some concerted effort, but you have time. I recommend somewhere in the 40-50 hours of study after taking a PMI-PBA Bootcamp, either live, virtual, or our Anytime Learning (ATL). If you haven’t taken a class, I would add 30-40 hours to that. At this point, for example, you could still devote a modest 1-2 hours per day or 10-12 hours per week to prepping and have plenty of time to be ready before the end of June.

Q: What is the advantage of taking the PMI-PBA exam before it changes?
A: The advantage is that we have a pretty good understanding about the exam (not exact questions) in terms of things that are emphasized or topics that show up because we have had many years of informal and formal feedback. We have had a long time to tweak our material to ensure that it is adequately preparing students for the exam.

Q: Will the exam be dramatically different after June 25?
A: The biggest driver of change for any PMI exam is a change to the relevant Exam Content Outline (ECO) which identifies the tasks, knowledge, and skill competencies required of a practitioner, in this case a Professional in Business Analysis (PBA). The PBA ECO has not changed.

The June 25 exam update is primarily in response to the November 2017 release of PMI’s new Guide to Business Analysis; the purpose of the update is to ensure consistency of terms and language between the exam and this new PMI standard. In addition, there is likely to be more emphasis on adaptive (agile) approaches and how that impacts BA work done in the context of projects and programs.


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Q: Other than prepping for the exam itself, what else do I need to know if I ‘m planning to take it before the update?
A: Get your application completed and sent in asap. Sometimes there is a rush of people trying to take a PMI test just before it changes and that can make it hard to get a test timeslot at Prometric. Some people end up having to schedule their exam at Prometric sites that are not closest to them. For that reason, it is critical to get your application in as soon as possible and get the seat reserved. Get your application submitted and approved and get that test scheduled…then get going on the exam prep!

Q: How much work is the application to take the PMI-PBA exam?
A: It a bit of work, but don’t let it deter you from taking the exam. Sometimes people get a little too worked up about the application. PMI’s online application is really very easy to use so just get started and you can save it and go back to it as you collect more information. It will likely take you 3-6 hours or maybe even a little more, depending on how recent your projects and education were and how much effort it takes to pull it all together. Remember that you will need to document several things:
35 Contact hours (BA-related education) – This may have been from someone like Watermark Learning or it could have been training offered within your organization. And there is no time limit on the contact hours; it could have been a class you took 10 years ago. You will need to be able to provide a transcript or proof, if audited.

Business analysis experience (4500 or 6500 hours, depending on project experience) – Your experience will need to cover all the ECO domains, but use the ECO tasks as a guide to understand how to describe your experience.
Contact information of someone who can verify your experience – Make sure it is someone you can get in touch with easily in case you get audited. Note that if your business analysis experience has been as a consultant, you may use someone at your consulting organization as the contact person for your experience if they are able to verify that you did the work.

Q: What if I take the exam before June 25 and fail and then retake the exam after June 25? What version will the retake be?
A: All exams administered after June 25 will be the updated version. No exceptions. Any retakes after June 25 for failed exams prior to June 25 will be the new version. Even if you experience a delay due to an audit, any exam after June 25 will be the new version. (Note that PMI typically turns audits around quickly).

The PMI-PBA is the fastest growing PMI exam and it’s a great credential for anyone doing the work of business analysis, regardless of your title. You’ve got time. Go for it!

What is Courage?

Fotolia 45692635 articleThe Quiet.  The Unknown. The Courageous

The ability to influence others is a requisite skill for any project professional.  It sure would be handy to be able to march around and dictate that people do this or that, but the fact is, when team members tell us “You’re not the boss of me,” more often than not, they’re right.

Unfortunately, influencing is one of those soft skills that doesn’t come naturally or easily for many of us.

In their new book, The Influencing Formula: How to Become a Trusted Advisor and Influence Without Authority, authors Elizabeth Larson and Richard Larson describe a “formula” for how to influence:

I = T + P * C
where
Influence = Trust + Preparation * Courage

They explain how influencing requires developing relationships in order to build trust, preparing to interact with others to change their thoughts, actions or feelings, and courage to try to influence others when they may not agree with you.

This certainly speaks to business analysts and project managers.  We need things from people who often don’t report to us, or may be superior to us, or may not see our projects as worthy of support. Considerable time is spent dissecting and defining these elements.  Of the three, it’s the courage piece that leads to the most challenging discussions with students.

What is courage?

As noted in their book, the Larsons observe that courage has always been a dominant theme in literature and movies, from the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz, to the Gryffindors in the Harry Potter series.  Putting oneself in harm’s way to do what is right is an act we admire and see as courageous.

As they go on to explain, courage doesn’t necessarily involve the possibility of physical danger.  In the classic To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch demonstrates moral courage in his opposition to racism in the American South in the 1930s.  Note the Larsons, “Seen through the eyes of his young daughter, Scout, Finch shows courage throughout the novel: ‘I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand.  It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.’”

When discussing what courage means in class, these types of examples come up and all coalesce into a generally agreed upon definition: The ability to face danger even when afraid in order to do what’s right.

It’s the “what is right” piece where I get stuck.  As my very savvy students are quick to point out, what’s right to me may not be right to you.  We get into this ultra-relativistic place where anyone who takes a risk for what they believe is right can be considered courageous.

Who, then, are the examples of courage?  MLK?  JFK?  A military official who leads others into battle to win a war against tyranny? A candidate for political office who takes an unpopular stand on an issue about which they are passionate?  A project manager who makes a tough call on scope change knowing it may alienate a key stakeholder?

To be sure, courage is the willingness to face danger or risk.  But what did any of those examples expect to gain?  Fame?  Fortune?  Wealth?  A promotion?  Does it matter?

I think it does.

Courage needs to be defined both by what one has to lose as well as by what one expects to gain.  Yes, courage involves facing risks to do what is believed to be right, but it also includes doing so when the only thing that’s certain to be gained is the ability to look at yourself in the mirror when it’s over and say “I did the right thing.”

To do something utterly brave and take huge risks when the likely outcome will bring fame, wealth, or prestige may take a lot of guts, but not courage.  It makes someone a risk-taker, but not courageous.

To say what others are afraid to say or do what others are afraid to do because you know it’s the right thing, knowing that it will likely bring privilege, celebrity, or fortune, may make someone a great motivator or leader, but it doesn’t make them an example of courage.

So who are the truly courageous?  Does this definition make the list unreasonably short?

The list is plenty long, but it includes fewer names that are familiar and many more that will never be mentioned by those who didn’t know them or written in the pages of any book. Most of the truly courageous are the people who take risks, go out on a limb, and say what others are afraid to say without an audience, stage, or crowd to cheer them on or watch with anticipation to see how things turn out.

This is not to say that good fortune may not land on their doorstep after a courageous act.  Indeed, they may be celebrated, admired, or emulated.  They may inspire parades in the streets  and holidays may be named in their honor.

But the greatest act of courage is one in which the only anticipated reward before going into battle, conflict, or danger is the satisfaction of knowing that what you are doing is right.

So the next time I find myself soliciting a list of examples of courage and it seems that every risk-taker or person who ever put themselves in harm’s way for what they perceived as right makes the list, I will apply a two-part litmus test: What did they have to lose, and what did they expect to gain?  I suspect that will cull the list considerably.

Don’t forget to leave comments below.

Facilitation Top 5

As any instructor will tell you, one of the best things about teaching is learning from your students.  It happens in some way, big or small, every time you get in front of people who are expecting to hear how to do it “right.” 

Of course, there is no “right” a lot of the time.  In my classes, for example, I instruct and inform, but I also facilitate discussions about the options, and the students decide what’s going to work for them.

This brings me to the recent Facilitation Skills Workshop class I taught.  In this class, we learn about different facilitation techniques and then the students do the work; they actually facilitate each of the 12 sessions throughout the class.

Maybe you are like many of the students in this class who are terrified of speaking in front of groups. Their hands shake, they sweat, and some have a hard time breathing.  This fear is not unlike other fears and there is often a visceral response.

It is amazing to watch those folks who are terrified of facilitating get up in front of a group and, with some preparation, tools, and guidance, actually help the group accomplish a goal.  It is enormously validating- for them, the participants, and me.

The last session of the 12 sessions is one in which the facilitator brings the class to consensus on the top 5 characteristics of a good facilitator.  My last class came up with the following Top 5 Characteristics of a Good Facilitator:

1.     Neutrality
The facilitator cares that the group achieves their goal in the session, but they don’t care what the results look like specifically.   

2.   Preparedness
A facilitator needs to be prepared for their session. Facilitation might look easy, but it is hard work. Taking time to understand the group and issues, as well as practice the skills and techniques to be used make for a far more effective facilitator and one who will be much more likely to help the group achieve its goals.

3.   Energetic
A facilitator needs to be neutral, but that doesn’t mean they should be comatose.  Bringing some energy to the session helps keep people focused and engaged. 

4.   Clear idea of Purpose/Agenda
A good facilitator needs to start with a clear understanding of the goal of the session and the tools they might use to achieve that goal.  In short, be flexible, but have a plan. 

5.   Positive
An effective facilitator makes the participants want to achieve the session objective.  Even if it’s addressing a problem, a positive tone will encourage participants to own their part of the outcome.

It wasn’t necessarily the list I would have come up with, although those are certainly things we talk about in the class.  As I sat in the back of the room watching them come to this conclusion together as a group, facilitated by one of the students, it was an interesting and, in some way, teachable moment.  For me.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.


Andrea Brockmeier is the Client Solutions Director for Project Management at Watermark Learning.  Andrea is a PMP® as well as Certified ScrumMaster.  She has 20+ years of experience in project management practice and training. She writes and teaches courses in project management, including PMP® certification, as well as influencing skills. She has long been involved with the PMI® chapter in Minnesota where she was a member of the certification team for over eight years. She has a master’s degree in cultural anthropology and is particularly interested in the impact of social media and new technologies on organizations and projects.