The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
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I sat in an informal briefing of a strategic project this week. It was clear that some really good work had gone into the project. I was particularly impressed and excited about the market research that had produced data that had been effectively translated to information that drove some important decisions and debunked some ingrained assumptions. It was also clear that scope had not been broadly enough defined and as a result, some key stakeholders had not been included. Now, at this late date, the viability of the project and its cost estimates were suddenly in question.
Here’s a quick summary of the kind of project this was, and the PM problems I perceived.
Summary
The project researched the client’s product licensing and service delivery models exhaustively and sought to recommend steps that could be taken to improve repeat sales as a key revenue stream. The research was impressive and served to shed light on some powerful assumptions held within the organization. Recommendations to adjust licensing and delivery models had already been made and accepted. (While my team had some misgivings about those recommendations, that’s not the point of this writing. Such misgivings are inevitable when recommending core changes.)
Problems
- The scope was defined only around creation of the program change recommendations.
- Operational implementation was included in scope only to the extent to be able to provide operational sign-off. The details of the operational implementation were out of scope.
- The technical requirements for implementation were not considered at all in scope. Technical requirements showed up only in project assumptions — technology always works for us, we’re not doing anything dramatically different from recent past (actually they were, but that part of the assumption was reasonable), and therefore there’s no need to scope out technology for this. That’s downstream from this project’s scope.
- As a result, all stakeholders (“all those affected by the project”) were not involved.
- In particular, the technology group that would be responsible for implementing the technological foundation for key recommendations were not involved at all. In the end, the final recommendations increased risk and created new risk to the relevant and aging infrastructure.
- Cost models and ROI models, therefore, did not include what may end up being some very important technological costs in order to ensure success.
The technology group committed to help drive the best possible result — that’s the characteristic of this organization — even if the PM doesn’t agree with them yet on what that best plan is. The team took the self-identified task to define a comprehensive risk plan. Summary views of that were rolled up to management the following day.
A PMP Perspective – the Upside
One thing that I called out to this technology group was how easily this conversation was held within the group now that there were a few more PMPs in the mix.
- There was an immediate and common understanding of “risk,” and how to go about defining it in a “risk plan.” That’s serious time saved on that project already!
- There was a common understanding of the ethical obligations involved. That is, the group felt ethically obliged to present the full picture of costs though they were asked by the PM not to present that information as being related to the project. (That request was not made with unethical overtones. Rather, it was made quite reasonably given the perspective of scope held by the PM.)
That new, common framework of PM knowledge is already proving helpful in this well-established team. It’s fun to watch it happen!
PMP Training
Need to explore PMP Training? See my recent post about how these folks trained and certified, and my take on some alternatives.
I’m looking forward to attending some PM training this week. My local PMI chapter, the Northern Utah Chapter (PMINUC), is hosting its annual “Professional Development Day.” My new PMP colleagues are attending with me. We all attended last year, and look forward to returning with a few additional colleagues this year. As new PMPs, they can take advantage of the 8 PDUs for the day-long event.
As is the case with many conferences, only some of the sessions were solid enough to merit the time. Among my favorites last year was a 2-session training on the WBS. Among my least favorites was a final keynote speaker who discussed his book about organizational maturity.
Still, events like these are worth it. No event, no conference can offer sessions that all meet your particular needs completely. Instead, one goes to a day-long event looking to find 1 or 2 key ideas that can be taken back and used effectively.
If you can’t make it to any such training, consider some podcasting sources that can help you stay current, tease your thinking, and even offer PDUs. I enjoy the Project Management Podcast and the PDU Podcast. Check ‘em out.
I just started helping out on a sister department’s project. My formal function on the team is to ensure that the end product/system/tools/etc are all fully reportable. I’m the metrics guy. But I quickly spotted room for some traditional PM tools and approaches, so I offered to help out. The offer was gleefully accepted.
The key with such projects, I find, is this: Keep It Simple Stupid
Cliché though it be, it’s true. You can’t walk into a project team and start throwing around the PMBOK as if it mattered. It doesn’t matter. Not to them. What matters is how you can quickly bring focus to the planning, helping them focus their energies on getting the right things done in the right order.
Beyond keeping it simple, I find a lot of small project teams are filled with really talented Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and they like to jump very quickly to solution. In our first meetings about the over-arching business objectives related to the project, we left with a totally redacted list of objectives that included things like building an evangelists blog for the new solution, training of relevant teams, etc. — all good things and things should end up in the project plan, but not “business objectives” material. That’s when I started hinting at the project leadership that perhaps I could help.
Last week, the consultant sent over to me a draft of her proposal. A proposal for a new learning environment is the key output from the first phase of the project. (Later phases will implement the proposal.) The proposal looked spot on for an early draft, which was exciting to see. Still, I was missing a project-level view and wanted to put her great work into the context of the larger project both as a planning exercise and as a validation of understanding exercise. Either I’d nail it, or I’d get it wrong, and either way, we’d be that much closer to common understanding. Because you know that you have to get to that common understanding quickly in your project, before too much “work” is done.
So I took the heads of her proposal and call that the elements of an early WBS using my favorite mind mapping tool, XMind Pro. Around it, I put other elements that need to precede the WBS: Problem Statement (problem/opportunity), the Vision (what does “done” look like), and Project Objectives (which different from the proposal’s objectives). Finally, I took the WBS deliverables — her proposal headings — and set them in a basic network using my assumptions of precedence.
And voila. There’s a high-level picture of the project, holes that need to be and could be filled quickly, and a quick look and what work needs to happen first, and how it impacts the next work down the line.
With that simple picture, I think that I can help the team to quickly settle on a problem definition, which seriously impacts the scope in this particular project, and also settle on vision and objectives. It will help them think in terms both of the project and of the proposal, keeping them separate, and putting focus on work assignments for the proposal.
Here are the 2 images that I’m using now. These have already been updated and changed in their scope and message based on team conversations. And they’ll change again tomorrow. That’s the point, and the beauty of the XMind Pro tool for doing this kind of imaging.
Now, obviously, this set of info is for getting buy-in and alignment on a planning approach and on an execution approach. After locking in that understanding of scope and output, then one needs to move on to other tools to manage the project itself. I’ve drafted a sample One Page Project Manager (OPPM) to present tomorrow, too, to lead us into the next step.
Four of my colleagues passed the PMP exam today! All 4 participated in a boot camp training this week, then took the exam today. Now we have 5 PMPs in our immediate organization of <25 employees.
I’ve scheduled a celebration session with the 5 of us. Soon, I’ll brief them on the PDU requirements and we can brainstorm some approaches to help them along there. We’ll also brainstorm some ideas on how to leverage this new PMP knowledge within our organization’s practices.
Looking forward to this!
Aren’t so many things really simpler than we think? Sometimes we spin up things to make them more complicated for ourselves than they really are. And sometimes, we buy into others’ stories of complication and accept it at face value. But I think that a lot of things are really simpler than we make them out to be.
I’m thinking of 2 examples: baking bread and PMP exam prep.
Baking Bread
I bake bread. Specifically, I bake sourdough bread. Even more specifically, I bake 100% whole wheat (sometimes a few other grains, too) sourdough bread. And I’m good at it. Today, I kept forgetting my bread dough rising, and that bread should never have worked. And, of course, it ended up being some of the best bread I’ve ever made!
I started making my whole wheat sourdough bread last year. I killed 3 starters before I got the hang of maintaining a starter. I got some good instructions from a good web site and followed them carefully. But instead of getting hung up on specific steps and methods, I looked for the key principles to maintaining a starter and baking bread.
Today, I let the bread rise 3 times (twice in a bowl, and once in the loaf pans). That’s how I normally do it. I rise it to double each time. Today, I forgot about it. All 3 times. Each time, the dough tripled. (It’s a strong starter!) And you know what? The bread was some of the best I’ve ever made. I was totally relaxed about that dough, and it made great bread. All the worries about over-rising bread, % hydration, etc., etc., is good info, but they’re not constraints. Making bread is really simple, and we shouldn’t complicate it.
PMP Exam Prep
The PMP exam is very similar. I have 4 colleagues sitting in a 4-day prep course this week. We’ve had a good laugh about the course already. It’s a boot camp kind of course. We’ve concluded that they really feed the mythology around the PMP exam — that it’s a terrible ordeal for which one must carefully and diligently prepare.
Really? OK, it’s a 4-hour exam. It takes study and learning and prep, yes. But this course has students giving up caffeine, eating only certain foods to maximize brain function, doing stretching exercises, etc. Really? For an exam?
It’s just another case of spinning up problems and making them more complicated than they really are. (It could even be a case of creating problems where there are none, just so that you can sell a solution.)
Are you considering the PMP exam? Consider this:
- If you’re doing PM work, then the PMP is going to be an extension of what you already know and already do.
- You will need to study, but you don’t have to create a new lifestyle just to take the exam.
- You can spend a $1k or $2k to prepare the exam, or you can spend $100-$200.
Want some effective, economical resources to help you study for the exam? Check out PM Prep Cast.
I recently joined Josh Nankivel at pmStudent e-Learning for a chat about Project Charters. We took a free-form approach and just chatted about charters and compared how they’re used in my small project environment, how Josh used them in former jobs that were in smaller project environments, and how they’re typically used in larger project environments.
I find that scaling PM tools appropriately is an important skill and challenge for those of us practicing in these smaller project environments — Cottage PM, as I call it.
The podcast is now live at elearning.pmstudent.com in Lesson 3. (Here’s a direct link to the interview.) pmStudent e-Learning is a good subscription service where Josh guides PMs through a series of lessons to help them learn PM skills. The lessons are supported by an active forum of fellow students and contributing PMs — like me!
So go sign up here and enjoy Josh’s $1 trial offer! You can listen to my podcast there, and check out the other things Josh has to offer.
I spent some time yesterday with a colleague of mine who is getting really serious about his PMP now. He and I embarked on this path together and took a prep course in March of last year. But like many, work and family life forced a reprioritization so that he didn’t complete the PMP last year. But now he’s ready. Could have something to do with the new surprise baby coming — #5. 
Anyway, I thought I’d share with you some of the things we talked about yesterday, in case you’re considering the PMP exam in the near future. I’ve already written a lot about study resources and recommendations; that’s found all over my site, so I’m not going to re-write that. Here are some other ideas to consider.
Reference
There, you’ll find an explanation of the credential and a free downloadable guide to certifying, the PMP Handbook. Download it. Really.
There is quite a bit of work to do to get ready for the exam — and not just the studying. The PMP Handbook will explain that process. In short:
- You must meet minimum educational and experience requirements before you can take the exam.
- You will have to take some formal PM training as one of your application requirements. You can spend $2,500 plus travel. You can spend $99 for high quality self study materials. You can pay almost any amount in between for almost any flavor and format of training you’d prefer.
- You must apply to take the exam. That application could be turned down if you don’t have all the requirements met. You’re going to spend time just preparing your exam application to prove that you are qualified to pay PMI to take the exam. The requirements on in the PMP Handbook.
- Your application might get audited, requiring more steps verify the information you put on your application. I recommend assuming that you’ll be audited and having all the verifiers lined up and prepped. I’ll explain below.
After you get through those hurdles — which should be a cinch for any PM worth his salt — then you’ll have a 1-year approval to schedule and take your PMP exam. It’s perfectly reasonable — even advisable — to get your requirements met and application approved before you embark on the heavy-duty study, unless you’re embarking on a “boot camp”style training, then you should follow their timing recommendations. Once approved, you have a year to take the exam and certify.
Requirment: Tracking PM Hours
One of the application requirements that gave me real heartache was how to count my PM hours over a 7-year period. I wanted to be sure that the hours I reported were completely defensible. It’s that whole ethics thing, eh. So, not having kept an hour-by-hour log of my project work for 7 years, which would have had to include a categorization of the leading and directing projects broken in to 5 process groups: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring & Controlling, and Closing, I had to come up with a way to extrapolate that responsibly. (And if any of you actually do have such a detailed and categorized log, well, OMG!)
Remember, PMI doesn’t care about your “project experience;” they care about your “project management” experience — your experience “leading and directing” projects. Many PMs, including those in the Cottage PM space, lead and direct projects and also produce other work in the project which is not “leading and directing.” That’s OK, but you need to report to PMI your “leading and directing” time.
So, I built myself a spreadsheet — Type A much? — that considered the following:
- Groups of related projects (I had 5 different projects through 7 years relating to a CRM deployment: the initial deployment, user acceptance training events over 3 years, a major revision of the training materials, etc.)
- Start and End dates (years) for each project — you’ll need that for the application, I think.
- # months on the project — that let me account for partial years lest I overstate.
- # work hours per month (assuming 20 8-hour days — you can assume more hours/day, of course, but this gave me a reasonable, conservative estimate)
- % of my work-month, on average, spent on that project (including but not limited to “leading and directing”)
- % of that project work that was “leading and directing”
- The name of the “verifier” for each project or project group (to help me prep for possible application audit)
- % of the resulting PM time spend on the 5 process groups.
Then, I let the spreadsheet do the math. Here’s an image of a sample spreadsheet like that:
 Calculating PM Hours for PMP Exam Application - click for larger image OK, so it’s way overkill. But it satisfied my need to “police” myself and make sure that I was not misleading anyone or over-estimating my PM time. Given the conservative estimates and weighting factors at every step, I was content that it was a reasonable, ethical, defensible estimate.
I also found that I had a lot more hours than I expected to have, even with all the conservative weighting, so I was able to pick the 2 big ones and use only those on the application since they provided enough hours to meet the requirement.
Audit Prep
Most of the audit items would be fairly simple: provide a copy of the masters degree and the required 35 contact hours (training), etc. But verifying those PM hours — that’s something you really should put some thought to before you apply.
This overkill exercise also let me prepare confidently for a possible application audit. I took the management sponsors or overall PM (when I was a sub-project PM, for example) as the verifiers for the 2 projects. I extracted the meaningful detail for just that project and sent an explanation to the verifier in email. I told him I was applying for the PMP exam. As part of that exam, I was reporting on the time I’d spend leading and directing projects. Since I was using projects that they’d sponsored, if that application were audited, they would need to verify in a formal fashion that my report was correct. Then I gave them the hours and some breakdown and asked if that matched their perspective and if they’d be willing to sign off on that if they were asked. Of course, I also followed up in person.
Now, the PMP application audits are a random thing. It is flagged (or not) for audit as soon as you submit the online application — real time.
And sure enough, as soon as I hit submit on my application, the web page notified me that I was being audited. And you know what? No stress. My application was complete, accurate, and defensible. The only stress is that it extended the application time. The application is not passed on for review until the audit is completed. After the audit is passed, then PMI reviews the application and approves or not. That can take a few weeks, and that’s why I say apply early, before you even start the heavy-duty study prep.
Audit Process
Obviously, all of these process steps I describe may change over time as PMI adjusts and refines its processes. When I was audited, the web site immediately provided me full instructions and 2 downloaded PDFs — one for each of the 2 submitted projects — that my named verifiers were required to sign. In true academic style, the verifies had to sign the verification form, put it in an envelope, seal the envelope, then sign across the envelope seal. However, I was able to retain control of the process by then taking the signed-sealed-signed envelope myself and sending it to PMI with the other audit materials. That’s really good process.
Conclusion
I hope that this overkill process will give you some idea of how to track and report on your PM hours responsible if you’re embarking on PMP certification. You certainly don’t have to go quite so far on a detailed estimate. But whatever method you use, you should make sure that your estimates and reporting are fully ethical and fully defensible.
Good luck!
Today’s question:
Question: What do studying for the PMP exam and and studying Algebra have in common?
Answer: You uttered the phrase, “Will I ever use this in real life?!”
Yes, you did. Don’t deny it.
So go apologize to your teenager right now, because when he asked that question last week about Algebra (with a sufficient dose of teen indignation), you answered that it was good for his general education, it taught him how to think and reason, and that it could lead to understanding other other maths and sciences.
And after apologizing, repeat your answer back to yourself. It’s the same reasoning.
The Pedantic PMP Exam
I have a colleague who used to be PMP certified but who accidentally let it lapse a few years ago. She and a few others are now starting to study up to (re-)certify. She stopped me in the hallway today:
Oh, my! I’ve started studying that PMP Study Guide, and it’s clear that the PMP is even more picky on stupid stuff than it was when I first certified! It’s all this nit-picky stuff that you’ll never use in real life. It’s only about things you might use on a multi-million dollar, many-year project.
And she’s right. At least partly.
My beef with most PMP / PM training is exactly that. It’s scaled for so large a project that the poor PM is left to have to scale it all back down to his own project.
But General Knowledge Is Good
And this is where the Algebra comparison comes in.
Studying all that methodology does provide a broad knowledge and awareness of various tools, practices, and approaches that can be applied to projects of varying sizes in different industries.
You probably never factored a single polynomial after 10th grade.
And you may never use the Delphi technique [or insert your favorite hated PMBOK technique] to gather requirements or to conduct a risk analysis.
But then again, you may. Or you may use some of the underlying principles in a scaled-down, adapted manner. Or your boss, having just returned from some management seminar, may ask if you’re using such-and-such technique, and you really don’t want to respond with a blank stare. Or you may take a new job in a new industry and the senior PM does use Delphi and now you suddenly need to understand it.
What To Do?
So, suck it up. Man up and approach your PMP study more like you tell your teenager to approach the Algebra. It’s not only for the pragmatic usability — and there is pragmatic usability on PMBOK — but also for the general education and strategic thinking value you’ll gain. If you let yourself.
So let yourself.
I’ve recently spent a little time with PM Prepcast. It’s an impressive package. Here are some quick notes for you.
Installation / Access
I was surprised to see that the PM Prepcast is delivered the same way Cornelius delivers his Podcast. I don’t know why I was surprised by that, but I was. It’s a remarkably smooth delivery mechanism. Upon purchase, delivery instructions tell you how to subscribe to the PrepCast via iTunes. For those of us who don’t use iTunes, Cornelius also includes generic instructions. That was helpful for me, since I’m a linux user, and even if I used Windows, I’d probably still find a way not to use that really unpleasant and bloated iTunes application. I was able to subscribe easily to the PrepCast using both Banshee and GPodder on the openSUSE 11.1 Gnome desktop.
I was further surprised that unlike many purchased packages delivered in similar fashion, Cornelius didn’t make me jump through hoops to subscribe on multiple machines or on multiple software applications. I have a laptop at home and at work and subscribe via a total of 3 applications. They’re all for me, not for sharing, and Cornelius trusts his subscribers to that end. Bravo!
Format and Structure
PM Prepcastt has a complete and comprehensive structure as a training package. Predictably, you have an “episode” or video chapter to view for each process and knowledge area. But in addition, Cornelius includes more “episodes” and chapters. Here’s a quick run down of what you’ll notice immediately:
- episodes for processes and knowledge areas (just as you’d expect)
- introduction to the course
- detailed, understandable instructions for applying for the PMP exam, including tips on how to prepare for and handle an application audit.
- suggestions for effective exam study
- how to leverage the course for exam study
- value-add episodes of interviews with PMPs about their exam experience (fully within ethical guidelines!)
As with any podcast, you can download it all at once, or only as you need it.
Not just for exam prep
Not all practitioners of Cottage PM — project management in less formal PM environments — may need to pursue a PMP certification. But I do think that all practitioners of project management should pursue more knowledge and skill, perhaps most especially where the PM environment of one’s own enterprise doesn’t provide PM structure, norms, and knowledge.
Tools like the PM Podcast and the PM Prepcast can be helpful to practitioners of Cottage PM, whether or not sitting for the PMP exam is on you radar. How does a tool like PM Prepcast help the practitioner? Here are some ideas:
- Get an overview of accepted PM practices, tools, and knowledge areas.
- Enjoy a skill review, a way to freshen skills or find a new tool for a project that’s proving to be a challenge for you.
- Explore inexpensively whether or not to pursue PMP by listening to the requirements and material before committing too many resources or too much time to the effort.
- Practice PMBOK processes and review knowledge areas.
So go get a copy of PM Prepcast. Get a new idea, a new tool, or a new insight that will help you be a better PM.
Enemy Lurks in Briefings on Afghan War – PowerPoint – NYTimes.com.
 from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html?ref=world (Click the link above to read the article.)
The image above is of a powerpoint slide shown in a military briefing in the summer of 2009. It was meant to portray the complexity of the situation. “‘When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war,’ General McChrystal dryly remarked.”
“PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat.
“It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control,” General McMaster said in a telephone interview afterward. “Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”
Does this happen in your projects? I think it’s a risk that comes with over-scaling your project management tools and process: too many or too large status reports, for example.
Does your status report show the good and the bad? Or does it communicate a greater sense of control than really exists?
Do your stakeholders come to status update meetings excited to hear where you’re at and how things are progressing, or do they stumble in ready to endure a powerpoint beating?
Do you run your status meetings like the press conferences referred to in the article?
The news media sessions often last 25 minutes, with 5 minutes left at the end for questions from anyone still awake. Those types of PowerPoint presentations, Dr. Hammes said, are known as “hypnotizing chickens.”
Or do you foster real discussion, discovery, and exploration?
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In some cases, I use "affiliate links" and receive a nominal referral commission. I only link to resources that I trust and recommend personally for PMs like me in the "Cottage PM" space.
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