Patricia Ensworth is a business anthropologist who helps organizations develop products, processes and systems to achieve their strategic goals and accomodate their diverse user communities.

Patricia is President of Harborlight Management Services, a consultancy specializing in project management, usability engineering, quality assurance, strategic sourcing, and cross-cultural communication. Harborlight's activities include performing qualitative and quantitative ethnographic research, implementing organizational change, developing and delivering customized training, creating content for electronic and print media, and coaching executive, professional and technical staff.

Her book The Accidental Project Manager: Surviving the Transition from Techie to Manager (John Wiley & Sons, 2001) is a guide to software project management. It offers practical advice for new managers on how to get the job done, translating concepts from ISO, CMM and Six Sigma models into an action plan adaptable for many types of organizations. The Mandarin translation of the book was endorsed by China’s Department of Electronics and IT Products and adopted as a text in government-sponsored training programs.

Her expertise as a consultant is often based upon lessons learned as a manager employed by global IT organizations to lead strategic initiatives.

At UBS Investment Bank, Patricia was a Director in the Fixed Income, Rates and Currencies IT division. She was responsible for implementing the group's offshore outsourcing strategy. She managed the operational relationship with the leading offshore supplier of outsourced development and testing services, resolving critical issues involving security, performance and technology infrastructure, and substantially increased both the size of the engagement and the satisfaction of internal clients. In collaboration with development and testing managers, she advised IT project teams on success factors and best practices for offshore outsourcing. She united the testing managers from the various development teams to form FIRC IT's first cross-stream quality assurance function for coordinating outsourcing, budgeting, infrastructure capacity planning, and test automation strategies.

At Moody’s Investors Service, Patricia established and led the firm’s first software quality assurance group. She conducted assessments of the project management and software engineering procedures employed by development teams. She advised project managers on selecting tools and adapting processes to achieve quality improvements. When the organization created a Project Office, she served on the management team that defined and implemented appropriate methodologies. To ensure that the firm’s information systems operated effectively for users outside the United States, she represented the systems development group on the IT management committee supporting technology in the international offices. Working closely with technology managers in Europe and Asia, she coordinated globalization and localization issues for more than a dozen core software products upon which the firm’s day-to-day operations depended. During her nine-year tenure, she rose from the position of a staff tester to a Vice President of Systems Development.

At Merrill Lynch, Patricia was responsible for testing two international retail brokerage systems. In the role of a product manager, she acted as a liaison between the user communities and the development teams. She prepared marketing materials, analyzed requirements, wrote documentation, developed and delivered training, and provided technical support. She also managed the office automation systems at 150 U.S. branches, planning and supervising the transition from dedicated word processing equipment to PCs.

The introduction of PCs as a business tool caused realignments in the IT function at many organizations. At Westinghouse, Patricia joined a team of PC experts created to mediate between the new “power users” in the business units and the central MIS department of mainframe programmers. She performed business and systems analysis to integrate a recently-acquired cable television company into the organization’s existing energy and broadcasting operations. She developed applications for spreadsheets, databases and word processing programs, and conducted training for new PC users.

Patricia graduated from Northwestern University with a B.A. degree in English and Phi Beta Kappa honors. She earned a M.A. degree in Anthropology from Columbia University. The subject of her master’s thesis was the business relations between energy companies and Native American tribes, and the effects of economic development upon traditional political structures.

Her professional certifications include Project Management Professional (PMP), Certified Software Quality Engineer (CSQE), International Software Testing Qualifications Board Foundation (ISTQB), and Certificate for English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA).

CV

Client list and references upon request

Last update: January 2010