Peer review programs are like parachutes-proper deployment is essential; otherwise, they inevitably will crash. When effectively implemented, peer reviews have a significant return on investment and result in greater product reliability. Lee Sheiner shares the key features for making peer reviews a value-added practice at Georgia Tech Research Institute, including: selecting the proper type of review for each work product, identifying the right reviewers, focusing on early defect detection, using supporting tools, fostering an environment conducive to reviews, managing the review materials, and much more. Learn from Lee the ways they have crosspollinated peer review methods across the organization and how successful peer reviews encourage project groups to "gel" and become highly productive teams.

Our test teams often struggle for so long ... to do so much ... with so little, and they usually manage to just squeak by. In the next cycle when asked to do even more with even less, they are likely to fail. Working harder and smarter isn't enough-the rules of the game must change. Innovation is the currency of success. Using his experiences from several years of success (and a few months of failure) in driving innovation, Heath Newburn will show you how-through innovation-you can drastically increase your team's value and your contributions to your organization. Uncover the secrets to managing change and learn: how to systematically create innovation and foster creativity, how to generate ideas and use your whole team to identify and build on the best of those ideas, how to implement a plan for success, and how to overcome the inevitable obstacles with the six secrets "they" don't want you to know.

Technical managers often find that their time is taken up by tasks that have the greatest urgency and those that seem to offer the most benefit. All too often our time is focused on project details to the detriment of building and retaining an excellent development team. Martin King's presentation illustrates people- and project-centered styles of management and the consequences of each. Learn the benefits of people-centered leadership and how to shift your style in this direction. Martin explores the issues of honest feedback, conflict resolution, recognition, rewards, performance appraisals, and life balance. By meeting the needs of the people on your team, you will likely be rewarded with hard working, loyal, and productive employees who want to achieve the goals of your current project-and who will be around for the next one.

In most organizations, the project game is not going particularly well-we continue high stakes wagers on business projects, but lose more often than we win. Sometimes the losses are staggering. Risk management practices have received increasing attention recently as a way to improve the odds, but there are limits to what risk management can do for an organization in the absence of committed executive sponsors. This session explores strategies for overcoming resistance to risk management and encourages thoughtful engagement between project managers and sponsoring executives as they consider hedging their bets with more effective approaches to risk.