Berkshire Consulting is a premier destination for high-caliber solution delivery leaders. Our unique business model, combined with our selective recruiting process and criteria, are designed exclusively to deliver results that will leave your business better than before. We consider solution delivery, in all of its forms, a passion and a lifestyle. We have individuals that are available now to help you achieve results in a productive, cost-effective manner, which is especially valuable when your own internal staff is on the brink of being over-committed. Our ‘wow’ factor is a good indication that we will continue to delight clients and put structure on ambiguity. Your projects never had IT so good. Contact me so we can get acquainted and understand your business objectives.

I am thrilled to be selected to help PMWorld 360 provide business leaders and professionals with a 360-degree view into all aspects of project management and leadership. This position is a perfect fit with my passion for helping busy business professionals make the best possible decisions to achieve their strategic objectives by sharing my expertise. At the moment, I am focusing on sharing best practices, opinions, resources and advice about scope management, project offices and portfolio management. You can view my articles at https://www.pmworld360.com/blog/author/jan-schiller/, where you can find helpful articles about how to:--define scope as well as the implications of skipping it, --tell the difference between project management and project tracking, --distinguish between project, solution and outcome management, --identify your stakeholders and what to do with them once you've identified them,--be a rock-star PMO director or project portfolio manager,--empower your teams,--identify stakeholders......and much more!

Helping democratize wine-making by making a small investment in at least 74 talented independent winemakers from around the world, giving them the opportunity to create wines that otherwise might never come to be so, and supporting their focus on their passion.https://us.nakedwines.com/taster/j-schiller

Thrilled to help HellermannTyton's IT division accurately articulate their resource utilization in support of predictable schedule development and informed decision-making at project intake and project change management.

I'm excited to contribute to the success of HellermannTyton's focus on improving quality. I'm working with Operations and their Center of Excellence to deliver improvements to select operational and portfolio management processes.

Thanks to Affinity, Inc. for recognizing my ability to put structure on ambiguity and be effective immediately to help a leading wholesale printer recover their efforts to migrate to a centralized eCommerce platform and regain schedule credibility and transparency with executives. As Product Manager, I’m joining in to maximize their success on a 6-week proof-of-concept while concurrently setting the stage for a successful rollout to their print clients. In just 3 days, I’ve contributed to their best practices library, helped the Project Manager apply the best practices, provided advice on how to quickly get a handle on their use of JIRA, and have aggregated many emails and documents into a concise, clear statement of project scope across three phases. (If you know me, you know I’m basically a project scope junkie). I’m mapping current product features to business strategy, providing scope change management structure to support informed decision-making about product feature changes, helping them make sense of a chaotic support/maintenance backlog to improve levels of customer service, and developing a product and project management framework that will set both the client and the next Product Manager up for success. As Program Manager, I'm responsible for putting structure on ambiguity and creating a hybrid project approach customized to the customer's objectives and considerations, and encouraging proper schedule performance by consistently applying a project change management process that helps illustrate when (not if) the client will realize the value of desired features. A focus on delivering parity with their current state for the initial migration launch helped stabilize the project from a quality and progress perspective. As scrum master, I focus my team on delivering on their commitments every two weeks in alignment with features prioritized by the product owner and product management team.

Contributed to the success at the makers of Tiki Brand torches to facilitate a group of cross-functional stakeholders in a unbiased, and effective manner to encourage their participation, involvement, ownership and creativity as they collaborated to define their ideal future project management state.

Delighted to contribute to the success of Accelare’s engagement with American Type Culture Collection ( ATCC) and help their portfolio managers and PMO director become self-sufficient by:• Evaluating the current state of ATCC’s project management practices and system implementations for four enterprise solutions focused on serving ATCC’s customers and supporting organizational digital assets and data.• Identifying recommendations designed to address pain points and stabilize ATCC’s practices related to creating an enterprise-level PMO, stabilizing project outcomes, and managing select enterprise systems. • Contributing to ATCC’s strategy implementation by establishing value-based portfolio management best practices that enable a consistent, stabilized enterprise operation. Inventory -->Analyze-->Align-->Manage. • Acting as interim Portfolio Director to ensure projects are focused on objectives and the capabilities ATCC needs to ensure they realize the value of the investments delivering their strategy.• Defined and applied the project portfolio intake process from ideation to project closure, including statuses that clearly identified the difference between project initiation, project launch, solution delivery, and acquisition management. • Collaboratively defining the EPMO Director, Project Portfolio Manager, Project Manager and Project Coordinator roles and staffing descriptions to help ATCC be a self-sustaining organization in the project management arena.• Creating and maintaining a real-time model of the programs and projects in their digital portofolio so they can assess the implications and impacts of making adjustments in response to changes. • Enabling collaborative and informed decision-making. • Establishing best practices for their project management, and helping project managers successfully apply them. • Assessing ATCC's project management maturity. Create-->Inform-->Apply-->Adopt.

When I joined, OCL had a great team that succeeded because of their extensive skill and initiative. When I left, that team was supported by an agile process and coordinated leadership, and executives had target dates for the first time, including visibility into changes to those target dates + the reason for the change. I was instrumental in improving the company's solution delivery credibility with their Board. I helped the talented IT team by coordinating interdependencies and by removing obstacles. I achieved results in an accelerated timeframe by defining and implementing an agile-based solution delivery best practice that closed the gap between developers and business stakeholders with the needs and requirements. More importantly, I created a single source of truth for product backlog refinement. When I began, there were 24 JIRA boards and product backlog refinement was by ticket; I helped shift the focus from tickets to stories and epics on one board. I supported the organization by managing solution delivery in alignment with that new agile process; I supported the teams by coaching them through an effective transition and application of that agile process; I eased the business transition to agile-based delivery by managing and providing oversight for projects delivering value in their real estate, financial services and healthcare markets, as well as projects reducing technical debt. I contributed my insights and perspective to help shape a healthier team organization. I performed a current state assessment of their health care and career learning programs and by identifying the critical paths, interdependencies and resource allocations that were crucial to proactively identifying the need for additional staff--how many, what type, and when. I repeated that process for their entire portfolio, providing an initial, detailed plan (by resource, by hour) in two weeks.

Selected to join a talented team working together to improve a financial institution's ability to continuously deliver solutions by leveraging ability to put structure on ambiguity and assimilate multiple perspectives into a cohesive plan and approach. Coordinated the development of the organizational and technology changes required to rapidly respond to the ever-increasing business and market demands in a timely manner and in parallel with the ongoing need for stability and uptime. Partnered with stakeholders of projects delivering private and public clouds to address necessary and critical organizational changes in team staffing and service management. Coordinated the development of a data center strategy outlining the path forward to a modernized and cost-effective configuration involving colocation and data center infrastructure management services. Effective in the role with minimal onboarding and minimal supervision. Demonstrated high levels of collaboration with three other project managers to deliver seven tracks of a program focused on delivering continuously available business value. Complimented for understanding, sharing knowledge about, and applying Agile, Lean and Scrum techniques. Ensured a positive team culture by encouraging collaboration in a self-directed team and by applying servant leadership principles and best practices.

Contributed as program manager to a major insurer’s desire to revise their distribution strategy by focusing on two of three elements of the enterprise-wide initiative: strengthening the front-line leader value proposition (both numbers and effectiveness) and ensuring appropriate, healthy and efficient growth at all levels in the distribution system. The insurer needed to create a solution delivery plan for the three-year, $15-million effort. In 14 weeks, I developed the plan that supported the launch of the first increment, staffed my team and successfully delivered that increment with no prior experience with the client base or solution space by applying extensive program management and entrepreneurial skills and talent. Doing so required both the urgency to take action as well as the endurance to effectively execute solutions in seven result streams concurrently. Transitioned the work thoroughly to the incoming program manager in two weeks, who referred to me as a ‘power user’ of MSProject. Managed a very large, $17-million, 3-year program requiring coordination with regulatory agencies and several suppliers in the derivative management arena. I concurrently put structure on the ambiguity, created a business case, developed a plan and coordinated the work of a very talented team of IT and operational staff. I employ ‘road map’ or ‘swim lane’ diagrams to show interdependencies, and focused on discrete prioritization as a way to maintain progress in an environment where regulatory agencies routinely miss their own deadlines. I am very proud to have mentored my replacement in nine months. Invited to put structure on an strategic effort in the intranet arena. Successfully managed the delivery of a 5-page Sharepoint 2010 site for leaders with an immovable target date.

The sub-adviser add/change platform (see next paragraph) quickly proved its projected benefits when an external board decided that one of the sub-advisers of two 1940 Act Series Fund portfolios should be changed to best serve the interest of contract and policy owners investing in those portfolios. The project was completed in seven weeks, and impacted over 30 systems in the investment and product domains. My curiosity, experience working with global delivery teams, servant leadership and tenacity played a role in the successful implementation of the result; the most challenging part was staffing the teams in a timely manner. This project broadened my understanding of the entire enterprise trading value stream. Persistent teams was a critical success factor, and I was invited as program manager to deliver two additional sub-adviser add/changes over the next two years and mentor a program manager on the third. In the meantime, I collaborated with delivery and governance teams to standardize the governance process to align with the repeatable nature of the business process. Filling multiple management roles, I helped deliver process improvements by realigning existing systems and by standardizing and preprocessing trades from sub-advisers. I worked first with the business stakeholders to create a business case based on a solid understanding of the current state and the targeted future state, which required the collaboration and cooperation of the company’s treasury, investment compliance, investment operations and mutual fund accounting areas in 2 hours per week over 16 weeks. The resulting sub-adviser add/change platform was delivered in one year and required the coordination of over 100 team members in nine organizations in geographically distributed locations to land on a single, fixed target date. The project’s result exceeded the target ROI of 16%--four times the interest rate at the time. The time to add or change a sub-adviser was reduced by half.

Invited to join the program management team to complete the third in a series of three projects delivering significant front-to-back improvements for over-the-counter derivative management. Coordinated the efforts of five functional areas on a shoe-string of team availability (while second project was still in progress) to confirm the program's business case and cost-benefit analysis to deliver all remaining objectives across trade, risk management, collateral management, hedge accounting and enterprise reporting in $5M or less. Invited to manage the next gate in the project focusing on requirement definition and high-level design definition for nine project tracks requiring the contributions of 43 people. Joined the project portfolio management team consisting of 8 program managers. Developed a business case justifying the need to continue the project, which was approved despite a significant downturn in the economy.This project showcased my ability to deliver value as a project manager with limited subject matter expertise in the solution domain, and raised the bar on the use of MSProject to better articulate resource capacity.

Assisted with the development of the project's business case for improving the business process of producing mutual fund financial reports, which was approved by the corporate project governance board. Acted as the single point of accountability for the project's success, from RFP and supplier selection and award to implementation, delivering a $1.1M project on time and under budget and involved project team members three internal departments and the professional services of the supplier.Coordinated the efforts of a talented team of technology, business, corporate sourcing and legal clients to develop a business case to justify the improvement to a Fortune 500 company’s mutual fund reporting process. Asked to continue with the team as the program manager and single point of accountability and responsibility for all aspects of the project at each of four project gates. Shared my experience with structuring a project that included supplier evaluation and selection, software acquisition and contract negotiation and award. Addressed several challenges, from aligning the supplier’s project methodology (PRINCE) with the client’s two governance processes, to gaining consensus between the project sponsor and the project team to select a supplier. Delivered the $1.8 million dollar project on time despite several delays; delivered under budget in part due to successful negotiation with the supplier to reduce the impact of a supplier’s change request.

Selected as the business project manager to develop a business case for streamlining the workflow for sub-advised managed investments. Coordinated the efforts of a cross-functional project team supporting the workflow from trade and compliance through investment operations and accounting. Business case for this $1.7M project was approved by the company's governance board.

Contributed to Northwestern Mutual's success as a client project manager of a project delivering $250K of cost savings by improving the tax reporting business processes and supporting applications. Applied Six Sigma methodology from business case through implementation.Selected to manage the creation of a business case to justify improving the process by which a Fortune 500 insurer prepared tax quotes in order to improve the timeliness and accuracy of tax-related balances for investments while making this process more efficient. Acted as liaison between the technology team and the project sponsor to develop an application to systematically adjust and provide the mechanism to store tax balances at four points in time. Exceeded expectations by creating a recommendation (cost, schedule, resource capacity and usage) based on the DMAIC process (Six Sigma) with 5% project team resource availability in four months. Recommendation was approved; invited to manage the entire portfolio of tax planning initiatives at the same insurer.

Invited to be an instructor for the ASQ Milwaukee Section's one-day Project Management course. Developed and delivered the curriculum and supporting materials designed to help attendees become more familiar with general project management processes and how their approach to managing solution delivery can improve quality. Topics focused on the basic steps of problem solving, essential project management processes, the typical role of a project manager, the difference between solution delivery and project management, effective team management, and guidelines for tailoring those processes to project environments and objectives.

Delivered several projects supporting enterprise content management objectives that improved business processes for the Legal and Health Management functions, from software selection to implementation.Worked in partnership with a business project manager to lead a team in taking the first steps towards a paperless environment for a major health insurer’s medical records. Worked directly with the executive responsible for achieving the corporate vision for a common repository of electronic medical records retrievable with ease by anyone in the company. A key deliverable of the project was the process and workflow analysis of the current and future states such that the application of indexing (InputAccel) and imaging (FileNET) technologies would support the desired solution.Managed a $1.7 million, 90-person team consisting of both onsite and offshore team members to rewrite and port 13 internet applications on a very aggressive timeline with a fixed budget and limited resources. Contributed to evaluation and negotiations towards a winning contract with four short-listed vendors. Managed all project phases with a vendor new to the client to deliver a new solution to a major health insurer’s local headquarters. Managed schedule expectations through rigorous and consistent use of scope and software change management processes. Rated a ‘1’/Exceeds expectations on overall performance (15 rating components) by the onsite project manager for the offshore supplier.Delivered structure to the project (work plan, SDP) that outlines approach for implementing branding requirements at a major health insurer. Provided overall coordination across all affected applications (Captiva, FileNET, Interlink, Legal applications) and across other related projects. Contributed to the software engineer’s professional development objective of improving ability to strategize with others.

Selected to join Milwaukee itec's Innovate track as a speaker at a one-day, multi-track information and technology conference. Developed and interactively discussed "Achieving IT Success Through PM Best Practices". Session was well-received, scoring a 3.8 on a 4.0 scale, with attendees indicating the content was well-balanced between strategy and tactics.

Shared my project management knowledge and experience with 22 adult students in an instructor-led classroom setting for the first of three courses required to complete an Advanced Technical Certificate in Project Management. Received excellent student evaluation at the end of the semester.Selected to teach an 18-week course introducing project management principles at a local technical college. This was the foundation course in the technical college’s advanced technical certification in project management. Helped students apply concepts illustrated and discussed in Kathy Schwalbe’s textbook using a pragmatic, exercise-oriented approach, culminating in the presentation of a project management plan developed for the course’s outside project.

Structured the approach and then worked with internal and third-party team members to expand the company's business model to include mortgage loan origination.

(as Miller Brewing Company)Supported the organization's enterprise project management platform decision by evaluating and assessing all major industry alternatives and presenting a recommendation to top management.

Integrated a third-party, web-based application supporting the vertical health care industry's purchasing function. Successfully introduced a project management methodology and related deliverables. Provided superior project management and integration services in a NT/SQL Server environment to deliver an application service provider’s web-enabled purchasing platform for the national office of a major assisted living services organization ahead of schedule and under budget while exceeding customer expectations. Trained Purchasing and Accounting customers to ensure effective use and acceptance of the new solution. Implemented a knowledge transition process from the new development team to the help desk staff to ensure a viable solution. Managed a team of 33 and a budget of 5250 hours/$374,000.Managed a project to initiate, execute and deliver the e-learning vision. Delivered a solution that provided the training and education department with quantifiable measurements and information that contributed to improved understanding of training benefits and impact on the corporate bottom line. Recommended approach and budget (2000 hours/$175660) for achieving completeness and quality goals was accepted by senior management.Managed a project to implement the Project Control Office. Managed the software and organizational change management processes to improve the quality and timeliness of information that enabled informed decisions regarding resource allocation and management.Managed a ‘just in time’ project to automate the base contract required to document and maintain a major health insurer’s product offering prior to filing in with the Department of Insurance. Defined the project approach and delivered the user interface and database in two months with no assigned resources via effective and timely use of negotiation and schedule management skills

Managed a suite of projects to deliver improved performance of a Fortune 500 company’s most critical business process, with a combined budget of 22,000 hours/$1.9 million/25 team members. Integrated outsourced application support for the policy/ underwriting/issue process, improved the quality of client information across the application portfolio, and successfully negotiated a contract with a major consulting firm to deliver $35 million in savings related to medical requirement expense management in a highly matrixed environment.

I contributed to Northwestern Mutual's success in several progressively challenging positions after obtaining an entry level developer position in their Information Systems department: systems analyst, business analyst, data specialist, founding member of the application architecture practice, object-oriented committee and related proof-of-concept, test coordinator, acquisition manager, project manager and project office manager. Was a part of a team and lead teams that produced results for in-force ledgers, billing and collection, contract administration, new business and governance. Managed more than 35 projects, at least 5 of which were in the top 5 list of corporate projects.

Established and delivered the project management strategy in a Fortune 500 company, managing a budget of $900,000 and four people. Developed and delivered the presentation to introduce and create demand for IT project management services at all levels of the department. Identified and delivered key services to support project managers with purchased and custom-developed software in a mixed platform client-server environment. Helped project managers understand and successfully apply standard project management processes to their projects. Acted as the help desk for project managers with questions regarding the effective use of MSProject. Planned and delivered a Microsoft Project upgrade affecting 150 project managers. Named Chairperson of the Project Management Steering Committee. Selected as Corporate Project Management Consultant. Coordinated planning activities of 12 solution support areas.

Defined and structured the Project Management Office supporting the field force for a Fortune 500 company, as part of a $2.5 million program to improve the stability and reliability of the systems responsible for critical financial transactions. Encouraged experience and knowledge sharing among project managers by introducing the concept of affinity groups. Developed service level agreements for all software used to plan and track project progress. Managed a budget of $500,000, and worked with a team of five to set up and deliver an operational project office in five months, providing reporting and mentoring services in a complex client/server environment to 36 project and program managers and their teams under budget, on time, and exceeding scope and expectations.Successfully negotiated realignment of the technology project office's accountabilities with the solution delivery process. Created a mousepad illustrating the 50,000-foot view of the solution delivery process as it integrated with the project management process that became a legacy (still in use in 2007)

Maintained momentum of the Project Services support organization, providing ongoing consultation, with a special project to evaluate the state of Project Management throughout IS, and recommend prudent next steps based on constituency feedback. Conducted stakeholder impact analysis with 53 project managers, performed gap analysis on findings, and presented a proposal with recommendations for closing gaps and levering strengths of the existing IT project management environment of a Fortune 500 company in two months.

Coordinated six large, complex legacy renewal projects with fixed target dates in a Fortune 500 company. The objective was to migrate all contract data from tape to disc to enable application scalability and agility; accomplished in 7 phases (easiest data to most complex) over 4 years. This project is the basis for most of my project management lessons learned, as I was able to stay with the project through all phase implementations.Worked effectively with 14 team members and a budget of 14,000 hours/$950,000 to deliver incremental, flexible, extensible business solutions supporting the billing and collection quality initiative. Delivered a Smalltalk prototype as a basis for applying an object-oriented approach to a contract administration application.

Initiated and managed an intra-departmental effort focused on assimilating new hires into the IT department as a member of a Fortune 500 company’s Leadership Program. Recommendations, quick hits and supporting action plan were delivered in four months, four people, and no budget. Provided the initiative for the rollout of the first of five phases in a new employee on-boarding program with a process that consistently prepares for the new employee with the support they need to be productive.The project's result was implemented by the HR department to replace two existing training programs by providing the resources needed for early assimilation and long-term success. This project improved reach, resulted in more effective administration and better timing of information. The project encompassed seven distinct components, beginning with a new employee's arrival through their first year: pre-arrival, Week1, department workshop, Year1 learning series, mentor/buddy assignment, networking, and references to other resources.

Bonded employee. Cashed checks, sold tickets and handled postal orders with high degree of accuracy and communication skills.

Sorted, billed and invoiced photo orders with a high degree of accuracy. Recommended, gained approval and implemented improvements in the computerized invoicing system.