Stanford Center for Professional Development
Stanford University
Palo Alto, CA

Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 22:33:43 -0800


Mr. Rod Welch
rowelch@attglobal.net
The Welch Company
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA 94111 2496

Subject:   Advanced PM Program

Rod -

Thanks for the thoughtful letter.

Yes, the theory and application of VDT is a part of the APM introductory course: Converting Strategy into Action. VitéProject models the chance that communications are missed --i.e. not attended to before they expire -- when participants in a project get excessively backlogged.

However, the specific issue you raise of meaning drift or miscommunication -- i.e., incomplete or erroneous transfer of meaning in a communication -- is not addressed by the current versions of VDT nor in the commercial ViteProject SW. It is, however, the subject of research by two of my current students.

We will talk about this ongoing research in the APM courses, and we will try to move the ideas into the commercial tools as soon as they have been worked out and validated.

Does this answer your question?

Sincerely,

Ray

Raymond Levitt
rel@cive.Stanford.EDU


Copy to:

  1. julia.harms@stanford.edu,
  2. enielsen@ipspm.com,
  3. mep@leland.Stanford.EDU,
  4. rel@cive.Stanford.EDU