Welcome to the asapm November 2005 email Newsletter!
Breaking News! asapm suggests you celebrate International Project Management Day November 3, by taking a Project Manager to Lunch! See topic #3, below.
This is an Opt-in Newsletter. Subscribe/unsubscribe information is at the end of this Newsletter. This Newsletter is in html, with links to the asapm website. Enjoy!
In This Issue
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1. PrezSays: Lew Ireland writes about Trust and Commitment
2. USA-National Competence Baseline Released
3. Member Services Director John McHugh Updates Us on PMCoPs
4. asapm Promoting IQPC TotalPMO Conference, San Diego 6-7 December
5. Ed Fern Reviews Earned Value Project Management, Third Edition, by Fleming and Koppelman
6. Everything You Wanted to Know About Issue Management, by Donna Fitzgerald
7. asapm promotes ProjectWorld Conference, Orlando, Nov. 15-18, 2005
8. asapm supports International PM Day, November 3
9. asapm Links a Little This Month
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1. PrezSays: Lew Ireland writes about Trust and Commitment
Successful project managers know their stuff and can talk for hours on the technical aspects of planning a project or implementing components. But is it only the technical part of project management that a person must know to perform effectively? It has been my observation that project management skills alone are only part of the competence that a person needs to be successful. Companies hire individuals for their technical qualifications, but terminate them for lack of interpersonal skills.
Interpersonal skills are extremely important whether a person is the project manger, project consultant, or a project team participant. Skills that assure one can do his or her job in a professional manner without giving offense is important to the productivity of a project. Two of the many skills are perhaps most important — building trust and commitment.
This is part of the Intro in Lew's latest PrezSays. To go to Lew's observations, click this link.
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2. USA-National Competence Baseline Released
USA-NCB is Here! A team of dedicated Project Managers has been working for over a year on the USA's National Competence Baseline, the foundation for our 4-Level-Certification program. Based on the International Competence Baseline of International Project Management Association, this is a foundation of a proven international certification program that certifies the competence and knowledge of multiple different levels of Project Managers and Project Practitioners.
Get NCB
Click here to download the official release of USA-NCB, in Adobe Acrobat format (pdf, 550K); -or-
to link to a copy on FlashPaper (similar to pdf, but uses Macromedia Flash), click here instead.
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3. Member Services Director John McHugh Updates Us on PMCoPs
Over the past year we have been working on the PMCoP (Project Management Community of Practice) initiative. The PMCoPs are designed to provide a grass roots means of disseminating project management information. This information can be best practices, life experiences, new ideas relating to the field, a new tool, you name it.
The PMCoP can be very flexible in size and makeup. It can be a small group of people – 4-10 – that get together at the workplace if they are all from the same company or in someone’s living room if they are from disparate places or if they want to get together away from the workplace. The idea is to provide a comfortable arena to discuss topics around project management. This information can be translated into doing a better job, or advancing through the certification process, or just a better understanding of the processes involved, since in some form or another everyone winds up in a project sometime in their life, either professionally or personally.
But the PMCoP can also scale. If you want to get 40 people together and bring in a speaker, more power to you. And the 40 people can be a gathering of several local smaller PMCoPs that get together occasionally for doing something too big for a small group, i.e. the PMCoP is a flexible entity.
To expedite this process we have in place some starter materials. Presentations about the asapm and our activities, a couple of starter presentations such as one on risk, that can be used to kick off a meeting, and the support of our group in helping you get started and be successful in making this happen. We also look forward to the groups themselves becoming self-supporting; through communal discussions and helping build the library of reference materials for other PMCoPs to use.
For more information and for a starter kit, please contact John McHugh – Director of asapm Member Services.
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4. asapm Promoting IQPC TotalPMO Conference, San Diego 6-7 December
Ready for Sunny weather? We love San Diego! At this conference you will learn not only how to build a successful PMO from the ground up but also how to develop it into an enterprise and a portfolio management office. In an intimate, individual focused environment you'll be able to hear and ask questions about the best practices that help companies like yours to attain its financial, organizational and customer related goals.
As a media partner on this conference, asapm will help promote it to our members and friends. This will occur primarily through this newsletter and our website. In return, asapm members and friends benefit from a reduced fee, and IQPC will help publicize asapm and our services to Conference attendees. Other professional organizations are participating in this conference, too. Click here to go to the conference website.
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5. Ed Fern Reviews Earned Value Project Management, Third Edition
Quentin Fleming (with Joel M. Koppelman) literally wrote the book on Earned Value Management. Now, asapm Director of Education Ed Fern provides us with a quick review of Quentin’s latest edition of his popular book.. Summarizes Ed: This new edition is a good deal more than a simple revision with a few extra bells and whistles. The authors have identified fresh insight and documented it well. See the review here.
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6. Everything You Wanted to Know About Issue Management, by Donna Fitzgerald
Much of the conventional advice given about issue management appears to concentrate solely on the routine issues. The basic advice seems to be that if you write everything down on a list you’ll be 50% of the way to resolution. Unfortunately this ignores the fact that some issues can’t go on a list because they’re too politically sensitive and some issues need resolution so quickly it hardly makes sense to put them on the list.
The best way to handle routine issues is to tailor the tracking and the resolution process to the nature and source of the issue.
This is the teaser for Donna's article. To see the whole article, click this link..
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7. asapm promotes ProjectWorld Conference, Orlando, Nov. 15-18, 2005
asapm is once again helping promote this year's ProjectWorld conference. This one is in sunny Orlando, Florida, and is scheduled for November 15-18 at the Walt Disney World Contemporary Resort.
The ProjectWorld Organizer's ask:
Why are hundreds of project managers and business analysts registering for the co-located events ProjectWorld and the World Congress for Business Analysts?
At this year's event there are more case studies, improved conference format, and enriched research driven content. The line-up of keynote and featured speakers is incredible ... including leaders from Walt Disney World, Lockheed Martin, Bloomberg, LP, Balanced Scorecard Collaborative, Structure Tone, AAA, Kenwood, and more!
There is something for everyone
At ProjectWorld and the World Congress for Business Analysts you have control over which sessions you attend and you decide what you want to take away from the conference.
asapm members and friends benefit from a 25% discount off the standard conference price. The priority code is: XM171920ASAPM. To see more details click here to go directly to the ProjectWorld site.
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8. asapm supports International PM Day, November 3
While you are taking a few minutes out of your project time and catching up on the latest project management happenings, check out the
International Project Management Day web site, www.internationalpmday.org. You’ll find some interesting information on this effort to recognize project managers and their teams. You will even find interesting articles from some of our own asapm board members.
Now we suggest that you'all celebrate International Project Management Day by taking a Project Manager to lunch!
Gee, maybe every day should be an International Project Management day...
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9. asapm Links A Litttle This Month
This section is for information and links of interest to Project Managers.
a. As usual, our PM-related humor at Project Millstones is getting top hit-counts. Check out the Anguished English, this month's latest addition. And, last month we had a new Top Score in our Yeti game: 593! Alec Simpson, CEng MIEE MAPM. Those Engineers have the touch!
b. Every time I go to PMForum, I lose several hours, immersed in a wealth of Project Manager-relevant content. What a great way to blow a rainy afternoon. In the PM World Today (that is the newsletter section of PMForum, here is a list of the articles I enjoyed (we intentionally did not provide links, because the site is very easy to navigate):
State of the Art of Project Management, site Editor-in-Chief Hugh Woodward's stirring summary of Russ Archibald's presentation in Moscow—with predictions for Project Management in 2010.
Paul Giammalvo's ongoing quest for Open Sourcing of our own knowledge. Is Paul making progress, or just making waves?
The lead-in on Rob Zanfardino's article sucked me in from the beginning: What Do You Do Around Here? Great insights!
Plus, much more; and, we'll bet that there will be a whole new crop of features and articles before you receive your next asapm Newsletter. Happy Thanksgiving!
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Stacy Goff, PMP
asapm Vice President 2001-2007