About Us

PACT’s Principal Consultant is Pat O'Toole, one of the most active CMMI lead appraisers and highly qualified industry leaders.  He has led appraisals spanning all maturity levels, including one of the largest and most complex Level 5 assessments conducted to date.  He was among the first CMMI professionals invited to become a certified high maturity lead appraiser.

Pat is an SEI-authorized instructor for the “Intro to CMMI” course and has taught it more than 70 times in many countries.  When delivering the course, Pat supplements the standard SEI material with additional content designed to illustrate key points using a very real-world and practical approach.  He also incorporates unique teaching techniques to enhance engagement and learning.   He is also one of the very few certified instructors for the SEI’s 3-day “Intro to CMMI for Services” course (5 certified instructors) as well as the SEI’s 3-day “ML2 for Practitioners” and “ML3 for Practitioners” courses.

Pat has been awarded the position of Consultant at the SEI where he teaches the “Intermediate Concepts of the CMMI” course on their behalf.  He also serves as the SEI observer for candidate “Intro to CMMI” instructors, determining whether or not they should be authorized to teach the course on their own.

On a monthly basis, Pat publishes a series of articles entitled “Do’s and Don’ts of Process Improvement” to over 5,000 process improvement professionals around the world.  Each one-page article focuses on a specific model or organizational change management issue and employs humor and real life analogies to drive home the point.

Pat also authors and facilitates "ATLAS" (“Ask The Lead AppraiserS”).  This email-based forum elicits feedback from SEI-authorized personnel on a wide variety of CMMI- and SCAMPI-related issues.  In many cases, responses from non-authorized people are also solicited and comparative analyses are performed.  The topics explored by this forum have ranged from bi-directional traceability, applicability of Supplier Agreement Management, alternative practices, TSP, high maturity practices, etc.

Pat is a graduate of the University of Michigan.  He earned a Bachelors of Science in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics (double major), as well as a Masters in Business Administration focusing on Information Systems.  Pat continues to co-teach a course in the Masters of Software Engineering program at the University of Minnesota.