Completing Your Projects On Time And On Budget for Engineering, R&D, and Technology Teams

Engineering, R&D, and technology teams are under constant pressure to deliver complex projects faster, smarter, and with tighter financial discipline—without compromising innovation, quality, or strategic impact. This practical 60-minute presentation will show attendees how to keep projects moving on schedule and on budget by improving planning, decision-making, cross-functional coordination, risk management, and accountability at every stage of execution. Participants will leave with actionable strategies they can apply immediately to reduce delays, control costs, strengthen team performance, and deliver results with greater confidence.

Learning Objective:

• Understand the most common reasons engineering, R&D, and technology projects fall behind schedule or exceed budget.
• Learn practical methods for planning projects more accurately from the start, including scope, timelines, resources, and cost expectations.
• Discover how to balance speed, innovation, quality, and budget discipline in highly technical environments.
• Improve your ability to identify risks early and respond before they create major delays or cost overruns.
• Strengthen communication and coordination across technical teams, leadership, and other key stakeholders.
• Gain strategies for setting priorities, managing competing demands, and keeping project work aligned with business goals.
• Learn how to track progress, manage changes, and make better project decisions throughout execution.
• Leave with actionable ideas to help your team deliver projects more predictably, efficiently, and successfully.

About the Speaker

Chris DeVany is the founder and president of Pinnacle Performance Improvement Worldwide, a firm which focuses on management and organization development. Pinnacle’s clients include government agencies from the United States, the Royal Government of Saudi Arabia, Canada, Cayman Islands, global organizations such as Visa International, Cadence Design Systems, Coca Cola, Sprint, Microsoft, Aviva Insurance, Schlumberger and over 500 other organizations in 22 countries.

He has published numerous articles in the fields of surviving mergers and acquisitions, surviving change, project management, management, sales, team-building, leadership, ethics, customer service, diversity and work-life balance, in publications ranging from ASTD/Performance In Practice to Customer Service Management.  His book, “90 Days to a High-Performance Team”, has been published by McGraw Hill, and is helping thousands of executives, managers and team leaders improve performance.  

He has appeared hundreds of times on radio and television interview programs to discuss mergers and acquisitions (how to manage and survive them), project management, sales, customer service, effective workplace communication, management, handling rapid personal and organizational change and other topical business issues.  He has served or is currently serving as a board member of the International Association of Facilitators, Sales and Marketing Executives International, American Management Association, American Society of Training and Development, Institute of Management Consultants, American Society of Association Executives, Meeting Professionals International and National Speakers Association.  Chris is an award-winning Toastmaster’s International Competition speaker.  He recently participated in the Fortune 500 Annual Management Forum as a speaker, panelist and seminar leader.

Chris has distinguished himself professionally by serving multiple corporations as manager and trainer of sales, operations, project management, IT, customer service and marketing professionals.  Included among those business leaders are Prudential Insurance, Sprint, BayBank (now part of Bank of America), US Health Care and Marriott Corporation.  He has assisted these organizations in mergers and acquisitions, facilitating post-merger and acquisition integration, developing project management, sales, customer service and marketing strategies, organizing inbound and outbound call center programs, training and development of management and new hires, and fostering corporate growth through creative change and innovation initiatives. 

Chris holds degrees in management studies and organizational behavior from Boston University.  He has traveled to 22 countries and 47 states in the course of his career.