Tag Archives: Personal brand

New PM Articles for the Week of June 3 – 9

Posted on by
Reply

New PM articles published on the web during the week of June 3 – 9.  Dave and Sandra read all of this stuff so you don’t have to!  Recommended:

  • John Ager looks at the human capital management of projects: planning staffing to get the work done on schedule.
  • Elizabeth Harrin gets some advice from coach Janice Haddon on returning to work after maternity leave.  Or any other extended absence.
  • Dave West wants to apply the principles described in “The Lean Startup” with application life cycle management.
  • Don Kim calls our attention to an article on the Scrum Alliance site that advocates Kanban as a better alternative, under certain circumstances.
  • Carmen Nobel reports on a research project at Harvard Business School that looked at the effects of rituals.  Like, the Scrum daily stand-up?
  • Bertrand Duperrin reviews Paul Miller’s book, “The Digital Workplace: How Technology is Liberating Work.”
  • Mary Shacklett lists ten highly valued “soft” skills for IT professionals.  Time for a self-assessment!
  • Michael Wood reports on what’s changed in the new COBIT 5 IT governance framework.
  • Roz Baker focuses in on the five most important artifacts for managing a project.
  • Chuck Morton begins a series on the process of (project, not organizational) change management.
  • J. LeRoy Ward extols the virtues and value of the business analyst.
  • Tristan Wember explains how to manage project issues.
  • Brad Egeland looks at the process needed to deal with the “problem” team member.
  • Patrick Richard keeps seeing the same recruitment ads, and wonders how many projects are being delayed, waiting for the perfect candidate?
  • Daniel Burrus warns us that we should never let our business become a commodity.  Good career advice, too!
  • Bob Lewis presents a slide show listing tips for sure fire IT project success, adapted from his book, “Bare Bones Project Management.”
  • Glen Alleman explains his dislike of the “triple constraint” notion of project management.
  • Ian Webster takes on the notion of “percent complete.”  And broken clocks.
  • Dave Gordon uses a long-ago blizzard to explain the difference between conditions and risks.  Thanks for letting me share a guest post, Tristan!
  • Bob Tarne reports from the PMI Leadership Meeting for the communities, where the Agile Community held a retrospective.  Of course!
  • Joel Bancroft-Connors and Hogarth celebrate one hundred imaginary conversations.
  • Shim Marom has found a possible replacement for the soon-to-be-departed Google Reader.  It’s called “The Old Reader.”
  • Kerry Wills anticipated that you would ask that question, and he has an answer ready.  So, Kerry, why is abbreviation such a long word?

Remember: Beginning on July 31, 2013, the PMP exam will be based on the Fifth Edition of the PMBOK.  Schedule accordingly, and don’t wait until the last minute!

Enjoy!

For Selfish Reasons

Posted on by
Reply

Earlier this year, I made the decision to upgrade my “functional credential” to the Global Professional in Human Resources, and upgrade / supplement my PMP with PMI-ACP.  I passed the GPHR exam yesterday, and in a couple of weeks, the HR Certification Institute will be sending me something to frame.  I’ll start wading through Mike Griffith’s book, “PMI-ACP Exam Prep,” after I catch up on my sleep.  But before I do, I wanted to capture some thoughts about why I’m doing this.

Last month, I wrote about the GPHR exam prep class I attended in Seattle.  As I noted at the time, I was in a room with two dozen heavy hitters.  We spent three days preparing for the exam by reviewing everything from financial models for expatriate compensation, to sociological models of cultures, to workforce development models, to relevant legislation in the US, Canada, Mexico, the UK, the EU, India, China, and Brazil.  We considered multiple models for building and managing businesses across borders, and went into details on a dozen or so organizations from the WTO to the ILO that lead thinking and practice in that space.  We even looked at key aspects of project management, risk management, team building, and collaboration in multicultural groups.  As someone mentioned in class, it felt like a three day MBA program.

The HR Certification Institute reports that there were 2,888 GPHR credential holders as of August, 2012, out of a population of 127,439 HR credential holders.  As you might expect from the range of subject matter, the exam is extraordinarily difficult.  HRCI offers the exam in two windows, spring and fall.  The average pass rate in the last four exam cycles has been 55%.  When I took the exam yesterday, even after 100+ hours of preparation and well over a decade of professional experience in this specialty, they still stumped me on a few questions.  It was the intellectual equivalent of an Iron Man Triathlon, and I survived.  And then went home and slept for four hours.

Earlier this week, Mike Griffiths did a “state of the credential” review of the PMI-ACP.  He notes that there are now around 2,600 credential holders, out of a PMI credential total of half a million or so.  The number of credentialed Agile practitioners is growing at a much faster rate than earlier PMI credentials exhibited at their introduction, with lots more room to grow; Mike explores some of the market drivers in his article.  But because the PMI-ACP is based on material from eleven primary sources, and covers elements of all of the major Agile frameworks and methods, it’s not an easy exam to prepare for.  I imagine the actual exam will be a bear.  I doubt the credential numbers will ever approach that of the PMP.

So, why go through all of this?  Certainly not for career advancement.  Indeed.com is a job board aggregator, so any keyword search results you see are likely to include a lot of duplicates.  The 157 hits I got for GPHR probably equates to around 40 actual jobs; the 125 hits for PMI-ACP might be a little over 30.  But these aren’t credentials you pursue to qualify for a job; Hell, you have to be well established in your career to even sit for them.  No, these credentials are career capstones.  We pursue them for selfish reasons; for our own gratification.  We put them on our business cards, not because people will be impressed, but because we can.  Like getting a tattoo after through-hiking the Appalachian Trail, it’s about marking the way the incredibly long, expensive journey has changed you.  Selfish?  You bet.  My wife says she’ll at least confirm that much.  But she’s smiling when she says it.

The Future of Everything is Project Management

Posted on by
2

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post about the project manager as a generalist or a specialist. I am most definitely a specialist.  Every project I undertake is to implement or extend human capital management systems, including payroll, timekeeping, recruiting, and employee benefits administration systems.  I’ve been working almost exclusively in this domain since 1989, and in addition to my PMP credential, I have professional level credentials in both human resources and benefits administration.  Most of my customers are global firms, and my ability to talk about the details of their business practices and legal compliance challenges has given me a lot of credibility with their subject matter experts.  It’s a big chunk of my personal value proposition.

I was in Seattle this week, attending a review course prior to taking the Global Professional in Human Resources exam.  I’ve held the Senior Professional in Human Resources credential for nine years now, and decided in January that an upgrade would be worth the time and money.  It was quite an experience, sitting in a room for three days with a mix of twenty-four very senior HR people from industry, universities, and NGO’s.  We were all Boomers and Generation X; this is not an entry-level topic.   Several of the attendees hold PhD’s.  About a third of them were from other countries, as was the instructor, Lisbeth Claus.  By the end of day three, we were all exhausted, but I probably doubled the value of my address book with the contacts I made.

But the money shot, as it were, happened on the morning of the second day.  Lisbeth is essentially the founder of the Global Professional program within the Society for Human Resource Management.  In addition to teaching at the Willamette University MBA program, she has held executive HR positions with two global firms.  She is one of the dozen or so primary thought leaders in the field of human capital management.  In the midst of reviewing business issues in outsourcing, Lisbeth stopped and said, “Eighty percent of the things you are doing today in the HR department are going to be gone in five years.  They will be outsourced to specialists.  You need to prepare for what you will be doing with the rest of your time, five years from now.  Do you know what that will be?”  She paused for effect.  “Project management.”

We use the term “accidental project manager” to describe someone whose primary job function is something else, but somehow ended up managing a project in their domain.  Many of these folks have had little or no preparation for leading a project, and receive little guidance from experienced project managers.  Most flail, some fail outright.  But some of them develop a taste for it, and find other projects to manage.  These folks are going to be the professional development models for most organizations over the next few years.  Develop competency in some functional area, and then develop project management skills.  And as Lisbeth warned: if you don’t, expect to be doing the low value-added, transaction processing jobs.  And expect to be paid a lot less than the people driving change.

The future of everything, at least in management, is project management.  But don’t feel too comfortable about that idea, because if you’re not already competing for project management jobs with domain specialists, you soon will be.  And if enough of these domain specialists take Lisbeth’s advice, there soon won’t be anything accidental about them.