Project Manager Success Stories

Michael A. Kaplan’s Success Story

Michael A. Kaplan is a Project Management Technology leader who has been working in this field for years now. He started this journey by first getting a bachelor’s degree in Construction Management from the University of Florida. This four-year program served as a foundation for his industry knowledge and helped him gain skills in management and develop different interpersonal skills.

Michael is a PMI-certified Project Management Professional who has also served in different companies as an IT project manager. These companies include Morgan Stanley and AXA. This guy is also a Certified Scrum Master and ITIL-Certified in IT Service Management.

Expert Program Manager

Michael is an expert program manager who has over ten years of experience in this field. He has been facilitating the delivery of large-scale programs and projects within time and budget limits.

Huge Successes:

Playing this role has allowed Michael to make a name for himself.
He was able to deliver a $10 million IT project portfolio for a New York insurance company that encompasses ITIL/ITSM re-engineering projects. This resulted in a 15% reduction in service desk tickets in 1 year.
Michael led a cross-functional team of a financial services company and helped in delivering 27 projects for a computer software company that generated $2.8 million in revenues.

Achievements:

For five years that is, from 2010 to 2015, Michael founded and led SoftPMO which is a PM Software company based in New York. This company had one goal and that was to help project managers in planning and delivering projects successfully. He was able to create an online PMBOK Guide-aligned methodology that acted as a unique solution for managing projects in the cloud. This company somehow managed to become a solutions company that could help organizations like Walgreens and NYCHHC deliver mission-critical programs.
Michael has also written leadership and management articles on LinkedIn, the PMI, Project Management Times, and others.
He also tweets at MKaplanPMP and has around 270,000+ followers.
Michael is included among the top project management experts and thought leaders of great influence in the PM industry and is also a USMC Veteran.
As a technology project expert, Michael has worked with almost all kinds of teams and that includes distributed project teams as well. Therefore, we can say Michael is indeed an expert project manager who with all his hard work and dedication got to where he is today.

More Interesting Success Stories

Esther Derby’s Success Story

Esther Derby is a coach, and author of a recently published book “7 Rules for Positive, Productive Change.” She started her career as a programmer, as she had a great interest in programming. During her journey, she has worn many hats as she acted as a business owner, internal consultant, and manager as well. Esther has spent the last twenty-five years helping different companies design their environment, culture, and human dynamics for optimum success. No matter which company she works in, she greatly impacts the level of individual, team, and company success.

She is also the founder of the AYE Conference. With that, she is serving her second term as a member of the Board of Directors for the Agile Alliance. She was also one of the founders of the Scrum Alliance.

As per her educational history is concerned, Esther has done MA in Organizational Leadership. She also has a certificate in Human System Dynamics.

Today she is a well-known coach and a person who everyone looks up to for guidance. People attend her webinar workshops and buy her books all the time to understand how they can work in an agile environment or how they can create a great environment at work.

Brett Harned’s Success Story

Brett Harned is a highly skilled and well-renowned professional who has made a name for himself in project management. He has been working in the field of project management for the past 15 years now. He has managed all types of projects be it building flash banners or creating iOS applications, he has proven his worth to everyone at every phase of project management. Brett has also worked with corporate names such as YNPN, Navy Federal Credit Union, Simple, and an array of digital agencies.

Similarly, Brett earned his name as a leader in digital project management by writing on the subject and organizing a community of digital PMs.

Achievements:

He wrote a book named “Project Management for Humans” that gave him a lot of fame.
He has the honor to serve big professional clients such as Monotype, MTV, and Zappos.
Brett has also built the global digital PM community and founded the Digital PM Summit which is a great source of communication and knowledge for professionals.

Brett has this passion to create processes and communication that not only work for the project but for the people involved in it and allow them to give their best. He takes real pride in managing project teams and project managers alike and inspires teams to do the best job at all times.