The Roundtable held its normally abbreviated spring-format meeting in conjunction with the INFORMS Practice meeting in April. The theme of the meeting was "Project Management," based on member preferences from the past.

Project Management increases greatly in importance by comparison with traditional process management as the economy continues its shift in the direction of being IT-based, because first-unit costs tend to outweigh subsequent-unit costs.

Kevin Grant overviewed the general meeting topic, reported on a survey of where firms are in terms of "project management maturity" and highlighted best practices. David Hulett focused his presentation on integrating schedule and cost risk into project management while using simulation. His talk was made specific by real-world project experience and simulation examples.

Another customary Roundtable tradition is for members to share perspectives and experiences regarding the practice of O.R. at their firm. Andrew Bringhurst described O.R. work, the team, evolution since formation in the late 1960s and critical success factors for O.R. practice at Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. (winner of the 2005 INFORMS Prize).

The Roundtable also brainstormed possible strategic initiatives it could sponsor or do, and we met with INFORMS President-elect Brenda Dietrich to review possible next steps on a topic of interest to her: "O.R. Deployment Best Practices."

The Roundtable traditionally places itself at the disposal of the president-elect each spring to offer practitioner advice on topics that the president-elect expects to focus on during their year as president. The Roundtable usually organizes multiple discussion groups to caucus in advance and then report on different questions of interest to the president-elect. This year's topic was the life cycle of O.R. applications, examined from various perspectives with the intention of better understanding best practices for new applications.

The meeting concluded with a Dutch-treat dinner where members enjoyed informal discussion to reflect on the meeting and make plans for the future.

Minutes and photographs from recent Roundtable meetings are available on the Roundtable Web site (http://roundtable.informs.org/public.htm). General information about the Roundtable can be found at http://roundtable.informs.org/.



George Freestone is general secretary of the INFORMS Roundtable.







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