April 23, 2008
7th Annual Spring Symposium

Clement James Goebel III PMP

• Consider several different dimensions of diversity and how organizations often fall into the trap of building teams that all think alike
  
  
• Help attenedees identify barriers to diversity that they may have not considered previously
  
  
• Identify how changing entrenched business processes can increase the opportunities for diversity
  

James is a founding partner in a product design company that uses highly collaborative project teams to design and implement innovative products for clients that place a high value on user adoption.

He has worked with a variety of organizations from start-up firms as small as 2 employees up to billion dollar organizations. As a coach and change agent, James has helped organizations achieve dramatic transformations in both process and culture. He enjoys sharing the lessons he has learned at conferences and other professional speaking engagements.

James Goebel is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP), a certified SCRUM master, a licensed Michigan Residential Builder, and has an MBA from Eastern Michigan University. He has practiced software product development for more than twenty years as a developer, team lead, system architect, project manager, practice director, and executive coach. The past ten years have been spent building and managing Agile software teams.

• introduction
  
  
• explore the dynamics of a typical recruiting and interviewing
  
  
• share how some well known organizations creatively select new team members
  
  
• review in detail how one organization selects new team members to build diversity on their team
  
  
• summary & implications
  
  
• q&a
  

High performance teams often require diversity in their membership. But it is all too easy to think of diversity occuring along a single dimension. Diversity actaully occurs along a multitude of dimensions and it is very important to carefully consider the process that organizations use to add new team members and how those processes inhibit diversity.

This presentation explores how changing the way an organization selects new team members can affect the diversity of their teams and as a consequence the success of their projects.