Well, I spent my first day in the exam preparation course for the Project Management Institute's professional certification. It's called a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification. An unfortunate name.. I would have worked hard to come up with a different acronym but it is what it is.
Interesting course. Especially since a number of the instructors said that we had to learn to think the PMI way and that this didn't necessarily reflect reality or "real-life" experience. I find that a bit unfortunate.
The last couple of years I've tried to follow the PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge--the bible of PMI's methodology) in the projects I've administered. I guess I've been fortunate in having support from the highest levels of management for doing things the "right way". Consequently, the projects have gone very well, finished on-time and on-budget. Admittedly, there was a small element of luck but not that much. We spent a lot of time in planning and managed changes very closely which helps a great deal.
(Re-reading this before posting it sounds like I'm beating my own drum here. But my point is rather that anyone can manage a project well if they follow a consistent methodology and have support to adhere to core principles.)
But I think it's a sad statement on project management (and how well it is accepted) that not all organizations are willing to accept or adopt a formal and rigorous methodology. I'm a firm believer in collecting data during the process of doing a project so that it can be analysed when we're all done. Otherwise, how are we to learn?
When I was the new boy on product teams, doing builds or bug hunting or the documentation, I was part of a lot of projects that went off the rails. Very frustrating to work for a year and see a project cancelled or completely restructured. So this was my motivation to learn how to do project management formally. A really good text that I used when starting out was 5-Phase Project Management. It's an easy introduction to project management principles--especially useful if you're in a small firm.
When I started my own firm the first thing I did was to start a formal project management methodology and train my team leaders as project managers. It was a competitive advantage for us in the early days of Web design firms (1994-1995).
The exam looks fairly difficult (200 multiple choice questions, 4 hours). The average candidate studies between 80-300 hours to pass it. I've got to take it in April if I want to be certified before my visit to England in May.
Posted by artandscience at February 29, 2004 08:52 AMForgot to mention "Good Luck" in your exams. I heard the "Forget what would happen in real life" for the PRINCE 2 exams. Reason being that if you work in a large coporation on projects or programmes spanning multiple business units - you may only have 2 PMP's (in the general sense) out of a cast of many. PRINCE 2 specifically says you can cherry pick what you need from the methodology that works for your situation. You could use the whole thing, or you may only use the quality aspects. Sometimes with Project deadlines and resourcing issues you don't have time to educate those that haven't gone through formal training...which reminds me I may have a presentation I designed for Junior Project Managers to understand Risks somewhere - must dig for that :)
Posted by: Gary at March 1, 2004 08:34 AMPMI doesn't seem that sophisticated. I don't think there is any explicit declaration that one can cherry pick elements of the methodology. That being said, that's exactly what I do in "hostile" environments.
Posted by: stefan at March 1, 2004 09:30 AMGood luck to ya! I hope to tread down that path one day. As of right now, I sit more on the tech side than on the pm side.
Posted by: michael at March 3, 2004 02:43 PMThanks, I've got a lot of hours of studying ahead and a lot of class time. And a date (April) that I have to make.. Arrghgh.
Posted by: stefan at March 3, 2004 04:39 PM