OSPMI January 2023 Virtual Chapter Meeting
January Virtual Chapter Meeting
Simultaneous Excellence –
How to Diagnose the Fundamental Nature of any Task and Allocate Appropriate Methods
Randall Iliff
Join us for this special January Virtual Meeting, the last in our free series, as we welcome a distinguished guest, Randall Iliff, to discuss Simultaneous Excellence and the intersection of Agile and Waterfall Project Management.
In order to sell common sense you must first give it a brand name, then a unique set of rules and terms, and finally argue that your version is better than all the other versions that have ever existed. It can be a lucrative business, and seemingly inexhaustible, but what the average user ends up with is at best no longer common, and at worst no longer even makes sense.
Look no further than “Agile” which has morphed from a clever reminder that stepwise refinement is a really useful approach whenever the goal is unclear, to a holy crusade fighting the evil “Waterfall” for domination of the development thought universe.
The constants are things we just need to execute again, and have established definitions of success we can test against for variance. The variables are things we must imagine, define, constrain, react to, or otherwise determine so that they can then be executed. These two task types are mixed like grains of different colored sand, always distinct at the most basic level, yet blurred to the casual view.
Mr. Iliff has over 45 years’ experience on developmental efforts ranging in size from a few thousand to billions of dollars. Both a seasoned Program Manager and expert Systems Engineer, he has a solid record of disruptive innovation in aerospace, medical, scientific, commercial and consumer markets.
Mr. Iliff is founder and principal at Eclectic Intellect, LLC where he specializes in helping clients implement and improve innovation processes. Before founding Eclectic Intellect, he was Vice President at the award-winning product development firm bb7, served as Systems Engineering Manager for IceCube - a University of Wisconsin led cubic kilometer scale neutrino telescope at the South Pole, an Engineering Manager at Motorola Government Electronics Group, a Program Manager / Senior Systems Engineer at Martin Marietta Denver Aerospace, and a junior member of the “skunkworks” Advanced Development Group at McDonnell-Douglas Astronautics.
Mr. Iliff holds a BS in Engineering / Industrial Design from Michigan State University, and an MS in Systems Management, Research and Development from the University of Southern California.
Mr. Iliff has significantly contributed to both PM and SE practice capabilities. He is a charter member of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) and currently serves as the INCOSE representative on an alliance between INCOSE, PMI, and the MIT Consortium for Engineering Program Excellence. In February of 2017 that alliance published “Integrating Program Management and Systems Engineering: Methods, Tools and Organizational Systems for Improving Performance”. This work explains why the quality of integration between PM and SE is so critical to program outcome.
A frequent speaker, Mr. Iliff has developed and conducted training covering all aspects of product development, particularly integrating Systems Engineering and Program Management. Thousands of people have attended his classes, thousands more have heard his ideas on development during keynote / featured speaker presentations.
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