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Price: $340 Requirements: GAQM body of knowledge study and e-course. No formal education or experience requirements, but candidates should have at least some project management experience to pass the exam. Expert project management certifications Certified Project Director (CPD) The Certified Project Director certification is GAQM’s highest-level PM cert. This designation is designed for experienced project managers involved in directing multiple complex projects and programs. The certification focuses on managing, budgeting, and determining scope for multiple projects, multiple project teams, and assessing and mitigating interdependent risks to deliver projects successfully. The CDP program is only for those who have significant project management experience. Price: $280 Requirements: Qualified candidates must have a bachelor’s degree or post-graduate degree or global equivalent, and must hold one of the following certifications: a PPM certification from GAQM, a PMP certification from PMI, a PRINCE2 Practitioner certification from APMG, or a CPM certification from GIAC.  Master Project Manager (MPM) 3 The American Academy of Project Management (AAPM) has modeled the Master Project Manager (MPM) after the professional licensure model that many professions such as pilots, engineers, doctors, and lawyers follow. The AAPM focuses on professional project managers, but also includes professionals with business and technical management responsibilities. The MPM certification is aimed at senior project managers and project directors who have an undergraduate or master’s degree.   Price: $300 for application, review, processing, initiation, and certification. Requirements: Three years of PM experience and training. Waivers available for professionals holding a master’s degree or other qualified training and experience, and military or project management instructors. Program Management Professional (PgMP) The Program Management Professional (PgMP) certification offered by the PMI is designed for program managers who are senior-level practitioners responsible for advancing the organization’s strategic goals. Candidates for this exam should have extensive experience managing multiple related projects, and navigating complex environments across different departments, job functions, regions, or cultures to align results with organizational goals. The exam covers topics including strategic program management, program life cycles, benefits management, stakeholder management, and governance. Price: $800 for members and $1,000 for non-members. Requirements: A secondary degree or global equivalent, 48 months of PM experience or a PMP certification, and 84 months of program management experience within the past 15 years. Those with a four-year degree will need 48 months of PM experience or a PMP certification, and 48 months of PM experience within the past 15 years. source

And not only can users turn to the companion for help, Wickström and his team use the capabilities to make machinery on the factory floor proactive too. If a piece of equipment issues an alarm that something is wrong, for instance, that alarm can trigger the companion to take the initiative, and query possible diagnoses and solutions that it can then provide proactively to an operator. Simplifying complexities Husqvarna has been on a digital transformation journey for years, seeking to improve the efficiency of its operations, so the AI Factory Companion is just one piece of the journey. The challenge for the company, and many manufacturers, is that legacy industrial equipment can be in place for decades, and getting data out of that machinery and integrating it with modern systems is no easy task. The need for low latency on the factory floor means some of the data infrastructure needs to sit locally, at the edge. But it also needs resource capacity of the cloud. Husqvarna’s answer has been to leverage Azure IoT Operations as the central hub for collecting and processing data from its industrial equipment. IoT Operations is meant to help organizations transform their physical operations via Microsoft’s adaptive cloud approach, which unifies siloed teams, distributed sites, and systems into a single operations, security, application, and data model. source

Of course, when it comes to tech debt, the best prevention is avoiding it in the first place. Justin Ramos, CEO of Compai, says that AI tools are “super helpful at easily creating unit tests, which prevents the buildup of tech debt. This used to be an arduous yet valuable task, but tools like Claude are making that easier.” In fact, AI tools can help improve testing coverage in specialized scenarios that had previously resisted testing altogether. “Testing has historically been a challenge for ML/AI models due to their nondeterministic outputs, often leading teams to undertest complex systems,” says Jarrod Vawdrey, field chief data scientist at Domino Data Lab. “AI is changing this by automatically generating comprehensive test suites that account for the probabilistic behavior of models and can validate outputs across a spectrum of scenarios.” Turning debt into strategy Many companies are starting to use AI tools as an infrastructural ecosystem that supports quantifying and correcting tech debt. Dev Nag, CEO and founder of QueryPal, says that AI can go beyond just surfacing code smells to creating entire dashboards, “with hotspots, churn rates, entropy metrics, and even predicted cost-of-change per module. That makes technical debt legible to the business.” source

I set her traits to natural, friendly and consistent. I set her communication style to chatty, empathetic and curious. One user said she asked too many questions, but others said no, I do that, so I left it. Instead of making her my private AI (to help me remember things) or a shared AI (to talk with people I’ve specifically approved, e.g., paying clients), I made her public, to talk with anyone and everyone (much like myself, CJ1). She’s set to auto-respond, but I could have set her to copilot if I wanted to review and then send. I gave her a landing page (CJ2.personal.ai), a bio and an opening phrase for conversations, letting people know that she has a similarity score to CJ1. If her answer to a question is less than 45%, maybe you should check with CJ1. source

Now, contrast that with a transformation effort inside a global enterprise where two business units, each generating billions in revenue, are asked to stop operating independently and start delivering holistic solutions that span the full customer value chain. No less complex. No less consequential. Yet often, there’s no centralized team guiding the integration of strategy, architecture and execution. Why? Because in transformation, accountability is often distributed. And when everyone’s in charge, no one is. Breaking the cycle of siloed execution Despite shared objectives, legacy org structures tend to reinforce autonomy. Business units prioritize their own roadmaps, KPIs and budgets. Even when transformation requires convergence — of product strategy, customer experience or technical systems — teams revert to what’s familiar. source

“Close allies are likely getting first dibs on chips, but the line’s long, and prices aren’t dropping,” she says. “Everybody else is getting a limited menu, and some are eyeing the Chinese food truck across the street, even if the quality’s uncertain.” New president, same rules However, the Trump administration appears to be embracing export controls. While a rewrite of the Biden rules may still be coming, the result is likely to be similar to the Biden rules, says Robert Knake, former White House cybersecurity director. But Knake doesn’t see the Biden rules as particularly onerous. “A lot of Silicon Valley’s concerns with Biden-era regulations on AI were overstated in terms of the harm they were causing,” he says. “The AI regulations that were put in place were an incredibly light touch, and I don’t think they were harming our ability to compete with China or anybody else while developing AI.” source

Price: $340 Requirements: GAQM body of knowledge study and e-course. No formal education or experience requirements, but candidates should have at least some project management experience to pass the exam. Expert project management certifications Certified Project Director (CPD) The Certified Project Director certification is GAQM’s highest-level PM cert. This designation is designed for experienced project managers involved in directing multiple complex projects and programs. The certification focuses on managing, budgeting, and determining scope for multiple projects, multiple project teams, and assessing and mitigating interdependent risks to deliver projects successfully. The CDP program is only for those who have significant project management experience. Price: $280 Requirements: Qualified candidates must have a bachelor’s degree or post-graduate degree or global equivalent, and must hold one of the following certifications: a PPM certification from GAQM, a PMP certification from PMI, a PRINCE2 Practitioner certification from APMG, or a CPM certification from GIAC.  Master Project Manager (MPM) 3 The American Academy of Project Management (AAPM) has modeled the Master Project Manager (MPM) after the professional licensure model that many professions such as pilots, engineers, doctors, and lawyers follow. The AAPM focuses on professional project managers, but also includes professionals with business and technical management responsibilities. The MPM certification is aimed at senior project managers and project directors who have an undergraduate or master’s degree.   Price: $300 for application, review, processing, initiation, and certification. Requirements: Three years of PM experience and training. Waivers available for professionals holding a master’s degree or other qualified training and experience, and military or project management instructors. Program Management Professional (PgMP) The Program Management Professional (PgMP) certification offered by the PMI is designed for program managers who are senior-level practitioners responsible for advancing the organization’s strategic goals. Candidates for this exam should have extensive experience managing multiple related projects, and navigating complex environments across different departments, job functions, regions, or cultures to align results with organizational goals. The exam covers topics including strategic program management, program life cycles, benefits management, stakeholder management, and governance. Price: $800 for members and $1,000 for non-members. Requirements: A secondary degree or global equivalent, 48 months of PM experience or a PMP certification, and 84 months of program management experience within the past 15 years. Those with a four-year degree will need 48 months of PM experience or a PMP certification, and 48 months of PM experience within the past 15 years. source

You know, as far as almost, you know, 90% of developers in large enterprises are using coding assistance, but yet we don’t really have great measurements yet for what these, like, productivity returns are supposed to look like, especially, with a coding assistance and developers, we’ve developed some metrics, you know, like, shortened change, lead time to change or you’re introducing more, pull requests more frequently. source

One area is personalizing on-page digital interactions. “Agentic AI can quickly guide consumers to the right product for their needs, or based on consumer reviews,” says Velia Carboni, CIO of SharkNinja, a global product design and technology company. “By leveraging AI-driven solutions, we aim to provide an engaging and intuitive shopping experience.” Salesforce’s Agentforce plays a key role in SharkNinja’s digital transformation, too, with agentic AI being evaluated across user browsing, product selection, recipe discovery, and customer support. For some users, the net gains from AI agents could be life-altering. “We’re harnessing the power of agentic AI to enhance our advising workflows,” says Siva Kumari, CEO of College Possible, a nonprofit that supports students on their path to college that uses AI agents to analyze students’ needs, surface relevant institutions, and synthesize information quickly and accurately. By reducing research time from 35 minutes to under three, coaches can now build better relationships and improve their one-on-one guidance. The result is speed, personalization and, hopefully, more successful college admissions. Streamlining customer support AI agents are useful for automating repetitive support inquiries, says Salesforce’s White. He points to how 1-800Accountant, a large US virtual accounting firm, uses AI agents to deflect 65% of incoming status requests. “By automating these tasks, their human coworkers can focus on more complex client needs,” he says. source

Jürgen Wittmann, head of innovation, virtual factory, and virtual commissioning in BMW’s production department, is currently planning the New Class setup in Munich with the digital twin. The advantages, he says, are obvious. “I can meet with the necessary colleagues at any time in collaboration sessions and discuss topics,” he says. “These can also be external partners, planners, maintenance engineers, or architects. And thanks to the digital twin, we know exactly the current situation and can immediately see the impact of changes.” 3D scanners from NavVIS were used to digitally capture every detail of the 12 BMW vehicle plants. BMW Group But until that point, the current situation had to be documented. So with the support of Munich-based tech startup NavVis, BMW scanned all 12 vehicle plants with 3D scanners, generating high-res, panoramic images and precise point clouds. So these form the digital footprint of BMW’s plants and serve as the basis for virtual models of the factories. And because 3D scans are very time-consuming, BMW is automating the scanning process by using drones or integrating scanning technology into logistics vehicles. In clear view The data obtained this way is being used for the first time via the BMW FactoryViewer web application, which is actively used by about 3,500 employees every month. Among other things, it enables indoor street views, allowing employees to virtually move through the factories, and users can orient themselves using a mini-map, similar to Google Maps. source