The Practicing IT Project Manager

Over the last twenty years or so, bridged conference calls have become so economical that few project managers are asked to account for the cost in their budgets. Consequently, as distributed projects run by “virtual” teams have proliferated, many of us spend a large part of our day on these calls, and it’s no longer uncommon to have people dialing in from different time zones, and even different continents. My personal record is six time zones on a conference call at the same time – U.S. Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific, plus the respective time zones for Belarus and India. But any time a project manager has to integrate team members across time zones, it can be useful to understand time zone notation.

Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is essentially Greenwich Mean Time, or the local time at the Royal Observatory near London. Folks who work in telecommunications or the military usually refer to it as Zulu time. All other time zones are expressed as “offsets” from UTC. For example, the U.S. Eastern time zone is UTC-5, read as “UTC minus 5.” Thus, when it is 2:00 PM in London, it is five hours earlier, or 9:00 AM in New York. Germany’s time zone is UTC+1, so local time in Frankfurt would be one hour later, or 3:00 PM. To get the difference between any two zones, just subtract the smaller number from the larger number. So the difference between Seattle (UTC-8) and Hong Kong (UTC+8) can be calculated as: 8 – (-8) = 16 hours.

When time zones were originally proposed, the basic idea was to have 24 zones, each about 15 degrees of longitude wide. However, a number of countries preferred to have one time zone for their entire population. In some cases, like Iran, Afghanistan, India and Venezuela, they created their own “zone” offset a half hour from the time zones to their east and west. India’s time zone is thus UTC+5:30. Canada’s province of Newfoundland even has their own zone (UTC-3:30), as do two of Australia’s states, Northern Territory and South Australia (UTC+9:30).  Fortunately, a UTC map is available.

The other interesting wrinkle is daylight savings time (DST), also called “summer time” in the UK. At some point in the spring, clocks are “set forward” one hour, and in the fall, they are “set back” one hour, to standard time. If everyone did this at the same time, then there wouldn’t be a problem. However, while most of North America and Europe observe DST, most of South America, Asia and Africa do not; parts of Australia do, and parts do not; Hawaii, Arizona, Saskatchewan, and several smaller parts of Canada and Mexico do not. Fortunately, there is a world map available that depicts which areas use DST.

If your team and stakeholders are spread out enough to worry about time zones, add a column to your contacts list that includes the UTC and DST information. It’s a little thing, but it helps when planning your project communications schedule.

New project management articles published on the web during the week of July 19-25, 2010.  We read all of this stuff so you don’t have to!  Recommended:

• Rommana Software announced the release of the latest version of their scenario-based Integrated Software Life Cycle Management System.  They’re going to allow use by up to twenty concurrent users for up to six months at no charge.
• Rick Freedman reviews Robert Wysocki’s latest book, Adaptive Project Framework.  Both Freedman and Wysocki are proponents of adapting the PMI methodology to manage Agile software development projects, so it’s definitely an expert’s opinion.
• If you’re using Joseph Phillips’ PMP Study Guide to prepare for the exam, he’s just released a companion book, PMP Project Management Professional Lab Manual.
• Vijay Aluwalia published an interesting back-to-the-basics article on portfolio management.
• Charles Seybold at Liquid Planner published his list of the Top Thinkers in Project Management Today.
• PMI announced that Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Chief Information Officer, Richard Spires, will address the PMI® Global Congress 2010 — North America on Monday, 11 October 2010.  His presentation will address the management of large IT programs in the Federal government, highlighting DHS initiatives to institutionalize best practices.  Mr. Spires currently oversees an IT budget investment of $6.4 billion.
• PMI also announced that all PMI Marketplace online purchases in August will receive free standard shipping within the U.S. and Canada.
• Mark Phillips has an interesting article in Businessweek.  He uses Twitter as starting point for the argument that context matters more than content, and then argues for the same kind of specific, laser-focused communications with project stakeholders.

Enjoy!

According to the July, 2010 edition of PMI Today, there are currently 385,096 active holders of the Project Management Professional (PMP) credential.  When you consider that just seven years ago there were fewer than 100,000 PMP credential holders, that number is staggering.  Plainly, what was once a way for project management professionals to differentiate themselves has become de rigueur.  Still, those who hold the PMP credential earn upwards of $10,000 more per year than their non-credentialed colleagues, according to the Sixth Edition of the PMI Project Management Salary Survey.

Somewhat less impressive is the number of practitioners who have attained the three newer specialty credentials.  Introduced in 2007, only 421 have attained the Program Management Professional (PgMP) credential, which can at least partially be explained by the cost and complexity of the three-part assessment process.  Introduced in 2008, the Risk Management Professional (PMI-RMP) credential has drawn only 357, and the Scheduling Professional (PMI-SP) credential is held by only 320 practitioners, world-wide.   I suspect part of this is the “new” factor – no one is quite sure what these credentials will mean to prospective employers, so few are willing to invest in them.

See the PMI web site for more information about their credentials.