Capella University Project Management Roundtable

About: Michael Stratton

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Profile: Michael J. Stratton is a senior project manager at The Boeing Company. He presently works in the Boeing Commercial Airplanes Program Management Office (PMO) in the Program Planning & Control (PP&C) organization in the Puget Sound region of Washington state. In his role, Mike helps manage the PMO and project portfolio management process for the organization including integration of the various projects. He also serves as a project manager on occasion. The PP&C group in which Mike works focuses on developing, improving and documenting production processes and software tools for managing changes, schedules and programs in the commercial business. He celebrated 30 years with Boeing in August 2009. Most recently, Mike helped to establish the new processes and tools for Customer Introductions and for creating and maintaining Variable and Customer-Requested Options on the 787 Dreamliner. Prior to that assignment, Mike worked for eight years in the Shared Services Group (SSG) Finance organization. There he developed an extensive Business Case Process Guide and array of templates and tools for use within Boeing. He regularly contributed his expertise in the development of Business Cases throughout the company for projects, many of which were Information Technology-related, worth millions of dollars to Boeing. Mike played a key role in establishing the Investment/Project Management Process for SSG. Mike represents The Boeing Company through speaking engagements and technical papers at such venues as: the Project Management Institute’s (PMI) North American Global Congress; ProjectWorld; Gartner Group’s Project Portfolio Management Summit, the Project Portfolio Management National Conference; Project/Program Management Office Summit; Enterprise Project Management Summit; the Institute of Configuration Management Annual Conference; and the Crystal Ball User’s Conference. His career at Boeing includes working in the Boeing Commercial Airplanes business unit on nearly all of the commercial jetliners in a variety of positions including Manufacturing Engineering, Make/Buy, Communications and Training. Mike also served as a consultant and program manager in the high-tech industry for a short time outside of Boeing during 2000 and 2001. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communications, specializing in journalism with a minor in history, from Washington State University. He also earned a Masters in Business Administration from City University. Mike is currently pursuing his PhD in organization and development focusing on project management at Capella University. Mike is a certified Project Management Professional, or PMP, (since 1991 -- #611) through PMI. He is a founding member of the Enterprise Portfolio Management Council with member companies throughout the United States and in and Europe. Mike is one of six Boeing employees who founded the Boeing Project Management Interest Group (PMIG) in 1997. PMIG now has more than 3,000 members coast-to-coast and has helped in certifying the majority of the nearly 700 PMPs in the company. His other certifications include: Stanford Certified Project Manager (SCPM) through the Stanford Advanced Project Management program; IT Project + through CompTIA; and Configuration Management II through the Configuration Management Institute and the University of Arizona. Mike was born in Waco, Texas, but moved to Pullman, Washington at age six. His father is a Washington State University Professor Emeritus and former history department chairman. Mike and his wife Cheryl celebrated their 33rd wedding anniversary May 29, 2009. They have two married children, Candice (wed to Darby) and Shaun (wed to Marissa). Candice and Darby are raising seven-year-old Aria and a very two-year-old Benjamin. Shaun and Marissa are bringing up six-year old Lilje (Norwegian for Lily), four-year-old Josiah and two-year old Annabel. The three families all live in the Puget Sound region and are active in their Presbyterian churches.