Event Name: PMI Midlands Lunch Event
Event Subtitle: Lunch and Learn
Event Day and Dates: Monday, June 15, 2015
Event Time (Start/End): 11:30 AM – 1:00PM
Location Info (Name, Street, City, State, Zip): IT-ology, 1301 Gervais St., Columbia, SC 29201
Workshop Topic: NCR Corporation, A brief history: Change and rebirth since 1884. Survive and thrive for NCR and an NCR employee’s journey to Senior Project Manager."
PDU Credits: 1
The purpose of this presentation is to provide historical and anecdotal information that PMs can use when thinking about theirown careers and organizations.
Workshop Objective(s):
This presentation begins with a brief history of NCR describing the leadership challenges/resolution that NCR executive teams had to make over the past 130 years. The NCR history is overlaid with other companies that paved the computing path.
Keith Sarto was an employee of the NCR Corporation for 27 years and will provide his career as a case study with lessons learned. He has some interesting stories to tell about how he was hired at NCR as a sales training course developer and transitioned via a diverse set of positions to his final position as a senior project manager – and, ultimate offer of program manager.
Keith will weave his career story into the history of NCR that we hope you find interesting and worthwhile. His experiences include his personal team leadership growth and promotion as well as creating team cohesiveness. He will discuss how corporate and environmental changes lead to the need to change from Traditional Waterfall PM to iterative, Agile and hybrid methodologies.
The changes from a company that literally produced every part of their product, down to machining the nuts and bolts, in Dayton, Ohio to a worldwide operation parallels changes that many other companies have experienced over the decades. This will include the PM and development strategy changes that lead to offshoring and outsourcing. The lessons learned from NCR and its employees should be helpful insight to any PM practitioner who needs to ensure his project aligns with corporate strategy and direction.
The purpose of this presentation is to provide historical and anecdotal information that PMs can use when thinking about their own careers and organizations:
- The presentation will have some interesting stories that are not in the official NCR history.
- Learn about the first “business machines” company and some of its famous people
- Learn more about AT&T, along with the BUNCH and other companies that paved the computing path
- Be inspired to read NCR history to understand how it has responded to change over the decades:
- Discover innovative products/practices that changed history
- Hear how NCR was able to survive and thrive by adapting: from mechanical to electronic to digital to today’s self-service and best-in-class mobile strategy
- Learn how one NCR Senior PM responded to these changes from the mid-80’s; how NCR IT adapted its Program and Project management practices
- Bonus resources: PM tools and training suggestions; discussion of mono- vs multi-lingual and a Colombian YouTube divertido
Workshop Speaker Bio
Keith Sarto is currently on a PM consulting assignment for a state agency through TM Floyd Company. Keith recently completed a 15-month assignment as Chief of Support Services for the SC Legislative Services Agency. After 27 years in the corporate world, it was an interesting, refreshing and enlightening experience for Keith to see where government begins - the legislature.
Previously, Keith was an employee of the NCR Corporation for 27 years. He has some interesting stories to tell about how he was hired at NCR as a sales training course developer and transitioned via a diverse set of positions to his final position as a senior project manager – and, ultimate offer of program manager. Keith will weave his career story into the history of NCR that we hope you find interesting and worthwhile.
As a senior project manager with the NCR Corporation, Keith completed deployments of many enterprise-wide software solutions. Keith also managed operations support for the deployed applications.
As one of his first project management assignments, Keith helped to implement a regional data processing center in Columbia SC. Keith has also held product management, network support, IT management, manufacturing support and training positions at NCR.
Keith holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology (Organizational and Business focus) from the University of Dayton and a Master of Arts in Applied Behavioral Science (Training and Development) from Wright State University.
He has earned a Masters Certificate in Project Management from George Washington University. Early in his career, Keith also taught at four colleges as an adjunct professor.
Keith has been certified by the Project Management Institute as a Project Management Professional since 1998. He was certified by NCR as a (Six Sigma Process Improvement) yellow belt and holds a Scrum Fundamentals certificate from ScrumStudy.
Keith is a member of the Midlands SC Chapter of the Project Management Institute (PMI). Keith has worked in Japan, India, Canada, Ireland and Scotland for NCR and has traveled to other European countries. He has also visited Mexico, Panama and travels regularly to Colombia, his wife’s native country.