The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
|
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?
There are plenty of lists and rules and checklists and such out there for successful project management. Today, here’s my list. Tomorrow my list might be different. That doesn’t invalidate this list (can one even call 2 things a list?), but means tomorrow something else might suddenly matter more in my consciousness.
Welcome to project management. 
My 2 rules? Value and Scale.
Value
Projects exist to create value. So create it.
It’s true that you need to keep you eye on the standard PTSC measures of Performance (Quality), Time, Scope, and Cost. Traditionally, if you hit those marks, we call the project a success. But you could hit those marks and still not create the intended value for the enterprise. You need to quantify the value that the project is to create, then build a picture of that value (“vision”) and keep it in front of yourself, your team, and your stakeholders.
It’s like the old ISO quality program joke: You could create a cement life jacket that was perfectly ISO compliant. You can do the same with your project.
If at any time the value creation is at risk or seems soft, focus your resources on solving that problem.
Me, I love the concept of the project vision, or said in a more friendly way: “What does ‘done’ look like?” If you can paint that picture for all involved, a lot of things fall into place much better.
This may be especially important for you in a Cottage PM environment where your organization may have committed a huge percentage of resources to the project.
Scale
One must scale the level of project management to the needs of the project.
Think about it. You were doing pretty well leading your projects. Then you went to that project management course and learned of all those PM tools that you weren’t using:
Charters, Preliminary Scope Statements, Scope Statements, Stakeholder Lists, Communication Plans, Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), WBS Dictionary, Lessons Learned Reviews, Status Reports, Configuration Management, Scheduling, Resource Leveling, Procurement Processes, Budgets. Then, of course, there are all those formulas, like those used for Earned Value Analysis. (PM Prepcast counts 49 PM formulas!)
Then you realized all that stuff you weren’t doing. So you started trying to use it all. And you got overwhelmed. And your project team got overwhelmed. And instead of more clarity and control, you had less of both.
What happened? You over-scaled your project management.
Remember that all those tools and processes and formulas are like a menu from which you can choose. It’s up to you to pick the ones that are meaningful and relevant to your project, the ones that will give you, your team, and your stakeholders more clarity and control.
What’s the right level of PM? Just enough and not one bit more. Strive for the level that lets you both control and communicate effectively.
Me, I picked a core set of things that worked in my Cottage PM organization and worked to use those consistently. We expanded that list as needed. I started with WBS, which naturally improved existing scheduling and resourcing practices. We now also include Charters, too, when we recognized a pattern of big disconnects about initial project expectations.
Again, this may be even more important in a Cottage PM environment where you may not have a lot of PM formality or PM knowledge in the organization. Certainly work to improve project performance by introducing the right PM tools, but be careful not to overwhelm the organization with too much new PM stuff all at once. Each new tool and process needs to have a clear payoff for everyone involved.
Conclusions
That’s it. That’s my list of 2 over-riding rules for PM. What do you think?
Yesterday, I submitted the last PDUs I needed for the 3-year cycle and was able to renew my certification early. Here’s how I did it, and some additional ideas.
PDU Overview
PDUs are Professional Development Units. For PMI, 1 PDU = 1 hour of PM training or study.Whether or not you need or will benefit from pursuing PDU activities and resources depends on where you’re at in your PM study:
Certified PMP: If you’ve certified PMP already, then you must get 60 PDUs in 3 years to maintain your certification.
PMP Candidate: If you’ve not yet certified or are new to PM, you don’t need PDUs. Traditional PDU sources usually do not count toward the required 35 contact hours you’ll need to apply to take the exam.Still, traditional PDU activities and resources are excellent opportunities to learn and review PM concepts and tools, but they may not always align completely to the PMBOK, and that should be your focus for exam prep. (Check out my PM Prepcast page for good exam prep resources.)
PM Student: If you’re a PM student not yet seeking certification, traditional PDU activities are an excellent way to gain new PM knowledge in short bites over time. I highly recommend that approach, so keep reading. (As a PM Student, you’ll probably also enjoy Josh Nankivel’s new site, Project Management e-Learning.)
How I earned my PDUs
I earned all 60 PDUs within the first year of my certification. Here are the activities I pursued:
- Teach classes on PM topics: I took a good, straightforward, introductory PM book and designed a class / book club discussion cycle around that book for my staff. See my post about this here: http://www.cottagepm.com/blog/archives/143. Designing a class garners a certain number of PDUs, and teaching the class garners more. I taught the class twice during the first year, and am teaching it again now in another department at my company. I also taught classes on other PM topics, such as Communication skills.
- Attend local PMI chapter events: My local PMI chapter hosts a monthly luncheon and lecture. The monthly event gets you 1 PDU. That’s 10 per year (they skip summer). The chapter events have also provided me networking opportunities with local PMs and given me insight into some interesting PM topics. My chapter also hosts a “Professional Development Day” once each year. That’s worth 8 PDUs.
- Attend PM topic training: This is easier than it sounds. Relevant training can cover any of the many Knowledge Areas you see listed in PMBOK. For example, we decided to bring in an Email training class for our department based on the book, “The Hamster Revolution.” The beta class was 4 hours = 4 PDUs. It wasn’t PM training; it was Communication training. Communication is a Knowledge Area for PMBOK, and training in Communication is relevant to PM and counts as PDUs. A Time Management course would also count.
- Read relevant books: I read a handful of books whose topics are relevant to PM. I blogged about one of them here: http://www.cottagepm.com/blog/archives/340. Time spent reading these materials counts as PDUs — self-training, self-directed learning activities. There are limits on how many PDUs you can get in the category.
- Mentor PMP Candidates: Do you work with PMP candidates? Time spent mentoring them on PM skills, on study tips, on the exam application process, etc., all count as PDUs.
- Listen to the Project Management Podcast: Cornelius Fichtner provides a free podcast on PM topics. He also has a Premium subscription version. I subscribed and the time spent listening to these excellent podcasts garners 15 free PDUs! Cornelius just launched a new podcast service called PDU Podcast. This more formal offering qualifies for more PDUs (no limits). Check it out here.
There are a lot more activities and categories where you can get PDUs, too. Notice how each of these activities was either a direct skill and knowledge benefit to me or to my organization. I working with my organization, I chose activities and materials that were immediately relevant to them. Also notice that I didn’t spend a dime on PDU training.
But if you’re not into handling the high-yield PDUs like teaching classes and such, then there are some really economical ways to get the needed PDU training. I recommend Cornelius Fichtner’s PDU Podcast. The list of podcasts for the first year is impressive and comprehensive. Check it out here.
How did you do it?
How have you gotten your PDUs? Comment below and share your own ideas!
One of the challenges in Cottage PM, I believe, is the problem of scale. Most PM literature deals with huge projects that require lots of PM processes and tools to scope them, manage them, and control them correctly.
But what if you just want to learn some basics? How do you filter through the huge pile of knowledge and options and recommendations to find what’s going to work for your environment? And whom do you ask?
If you’re exploring project management, then you’re a PM student. If you’re looking for a way to learn PM in a straightforward, scaleable, real-world way, then I recommend turning to Josh Nankivel’s new web site, Project Management e-Learning.
At Project Management e-Learning, you’ll find great self-study resources — Josh is a great online video presenter with an easy cadence to listen to — and you’ll find lots of opportunity for online discussion and Q&A with Josh, other PMs, and other PM students.
So check it out. Sign up for Josh’s Early Bird list and he’ll give you 20% off!
And watch for me out there. Even as a PMP, I’m enjoying reviewing the basic materials and commenting on them.
See you there!
Found this today and couldn’t resist reposting.
 from ilovecharts.tumblr.com I think I’ve written on project status report updates before.
You can totally over do them. Really.
Your status update should inform, yes, but it can — should? — also motivate.
Or de-motivate.
You may need to create multiple status updates for different audiences: really high-level for the sponsor and stakeholders; more detailed for project team.
But not too detailed, even for project team.
So how do you do that?
I really like the One-Page Project Manager (OPPM) as a communication and planning tool.
The whole friggin’ thing on one page.
With pictures.
Really.
Check it out at http://www.onepageprojectmanager.com.
And that’s not even an affiliate link.
Spotted this little gem on the ‘net today:
 from darkgreyindustries.com Don’t you love that!
OK, on one location where I saw it, the comments were all about where the various technologies really belonged on the graph.
*sigh*
I don’t know what many of those technologies are.
But specific technologies aside, it’s a good glimpse into one of the challenges of project managers in technologies.
It speaks to risk.
It speaks to project team motivation.
It speaks to negotiation.
It speaks to stakeholder communication.
It speaks to objectives.
And it’s just plain funny.
Hope you enjoyed it, too.
BTW, did you know that they’re no longer teaching the kids in school to put a comma before the work “too?” For that matter, did you know that they’re no longer teaching the kids to put the questin mark inside the quote marks? If grammar is changing, you can bet that project management practices are changing. You need to keep up. More on that later.
|
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.
|
Category: 
