Welcome to the asapm November/December, 2011 Newsletter!Welcome to the asapm November/December, 2011 Newsletter!
This opt-in Newsletter is from asapm, the American Society for the Advancement of Project Management. We are IPMA-USA, the USA member association of the International Project Management Association. Enjoy!
In This Issue
1. Project Managers Are Change Agents: President's Message, by Stacy Goff
2. asapm Project and Program Management Symposium, March 5, 2012, Arlington, VA
3. Project Management Success and Decision-Making Under Difficult Contexts, by Stacy Goff
4. asapm celebrates the 200th edition of the Project Management Podcast!
5. Making the Case: Why Product Management Is Critical to Company Success
6. More asapm, Certification, Jobs, and IPMA News
7. Root Cause Analysis and Corrective Action for Project Managers
8. Tangoing Your Way Through the Executive/PMO Relationship, by O'Brochta and Finch
9. Introducing Tim Herd in Our New Series on Leadership
10. Gin, The Dancing Dog
1. Project Managers Are Change Agents: President's Blog, by Stacy Goff
Our Change Agents blog embraces the change that the practice of Project Management brings to the USA, and to Society. We post below a teaser from this month's blog posting; click the bold linked heading to see the posting.
Experiencing Newvember
Typically, and especially in the USA, November is a slow month—the calm before the storm of December, with its end-of-year project deadlines, and fiscal close-out for non-governmental organizations. It is a bit of a relief from the intensity of September and October. This effect is accentuated in the USA by the Thanksgiving week late in the month, that disrupts any schedule for a two week period.
But not this year.
I traveled more this month (on behalf of professional organizations) than any period since May-June, with:
Whew! Wore me out just reading it! But, that is the consequence of being a Change Agent... More
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2. asapm Project and Program Management Symposium, March 5, 2012, Arlington, VA
We invite you to join asapm members and friends for our Project and Program Management Symposium, March 5, 2012. With the theme, Delivering the Promise, borrowed from the IPMA World Congress, speakers include David Hudson, AIPM President (IPMA-Australia), Donna Fitzgerald, Director, Gartner Program and Portfolio Research, and William Duncan, Chair of asapm's Certification Program.
About the theme, Delivering the Promise
Today’s competent project teams are Delivering the Promise. What is this promise? It varies by audience: PM Practitioners expect to improve project performance, increase job satisfaction and add new career opportunities. Project Team Members and Stakeholders deserve, from their project efforts, recognition, a sense of gratification, and measurable business results.
Enterprise Executives expect greater transparency into project efforts, and demonstrated return on investment. And they expect this promise to be kept: Projects are the actions that implement our strategies. And, Nations and Society expect that we will manage successful change, for a better life for all citizens.
Two Tracks, plus Keynotes, focus upon the theme, with the topics reflecting the above promises:
The price for this 1-day asapm PPM Symposium is $289. A limited number of special "promotional codes" is available for Early Bird registrations, and separately, for current asapm and IPMA members. Registration is open now. Download the Symposium flyer for more information, or go to the Symposium Registration site (asapm and IPMA members, contact us for your discount code! Student participants must be attending at least two classes). Then, watch our asapm website Symposium Section for Speaker and Topic updates. We hope to see you Delivering the Promise!
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3. Project Management Success and Decision-Making Under Difficult Contexts, by Stacy Goff
This paper was the keynote address at (the Symposium of) AMIP, IPMA-Mexico, 2nd International de la Associacion Mexicano de Ingeniera de Proyectos Symposio. The event was 28-29 November in Saltillo Mexico, and was a great event, with excellent organization, huge attendance, and wonderful presentations by all speakers. In addition, we had the great opportunity to meet with the leaders of AMIP, and with many other great people, including Luis C. Ferreora K. Vice President of Project Management Asociatión Panameńa de Gestion de Proyectos, IPMA-Panama.
Project success depends on many factors; and, at the same time, little agreement exists about the definitions of success. In this session we discuss the challenges of difficult project contexts, and frameworks for minimizing those challenges. We then weigh the decision-making trade-offs in key factors that contribute to success. And then we see another challenge: What are the impacts of personal behavioral styles, and interpersonal skills? Do they impact success? Do they add or reduce difficulty? Finally, we discuss differing definitions of success, with a conclusion that they are singly wrong, and together correct.
Project Management standards can help in answering these questions, and increasingly, they are all moving in the same direction: From Knowledge to Competence, from Technical knowledge areas to broader understand-ing of the most important factors for project success. And today, our discipline, with its supporting standards, is embracing difficult contexts by moving from memorized processes to practiced behaviors and competences. Success in difficult contexts results from integration of all these factors, and this session provides the roadmap for that integration... More
And in Spanish, courtesy of Jesus Martinez-Almela, PE, Certified Projects Director, (IPMA-A), IPMA Programme Director for LACC. Gracias, Jesus! Jesus has helped six Latin American countries to join the IPMA Family, and is working on more:
El éxito en la Dirección de Proyectos y la toma de decisiones en Contextos Difíciles, por Stacy Goff
El éxito del proyecto depende de muchos factores, y, al mismo tiempo, hay poco acuerdo acerca de cuál es la definición de éxito. En esta sesión discutiremos los desafíos de los contextos difíciles de los proyectos y los marcos para reducir al mínimo esos problemas. A continuación, pesaremos la toma de decisiones y las ventajas y desventajas de los factores claves que contribuyen al éxito. Y luego veremos otro reto: ¿Tienen algún impacto los estilos personales de conducta y las habilidades interpersonales? ¿Pueden afectar al éxito? ¿Añaden o reducen la dificultad? Por último, analizaremos las diferentes definiciones de éxito, y llegaremos a la conclusión de que ambas son correctas.
Los estándares en Dirección de Proyectos pueden ayudar a contestar estas preguntas, y cada vez más, se mueven en la misma dirección: del conocimiento a la competencia, de las áreas de conocimiento técnico a una comprensión más amplia de los factores más importantes para el éxito del proyecto. Y hoy, nuestra disciplina, con sus estándares de apoyo, está adoptando contextos difíciles al pasar de los procesos memorizados a los comportamientos y las competencias practicados. El éxito en los resultados de contextos de difícil integración de todos estos factores, y esta sesión proporcionarán la hoja de ruta para la integración ... More
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4. asapm celebrates the 200th edition of the Project Management Podcast!
The 200th episode of The Project Management Podcast is released the end of November, celebrating 6 years of bringing project management topics to beginners and experts.
The four-part episode includes interviews with twenty project management experts who all provide their unique opinions about the number-one challenge that project management is facing today.
"Our 'bicentennial' podcast both looks back at how far project management has come and reflects on the future," says Cornelius Fichtner, PMP, President, OSP International LLC and host of The Project Management Podcast. "We are used to working with project management experts on the show, but this is our biggest interview podcast ever. I'm really pleased we have so many great contributions from industry leaders."
The project management superstars sharing their expertise with listeners include Mark Perry, Peter Taylor, Margaret Meloni, Andy Kaufman, Elizabeth Harrin as well as the presidents of three leading project management associations: Mark Langley (PMI), Roberto Mori (IPMA) and Stacy Goff (asapm).
Serial author Max Wideman is also contributing. "Project management as a discipline is interesting because it consists of a number of integrated functional areas," Wideman says in his podcast segment. "Some of these functions are comparatively well established, whereas other areas are but young neophytes and are not so responsive to the same approach. Project management may be about 'getting things done', but it is also about the process or manner of getting things done. "Congratulations Cornelius! See the full Press Release! Or, Listen to the four-part 200th PM Podcast! Navigation Tip: IPMA President Roberto Mori's comments are at 4:30 of Part 2, and Stacy's are at 16:10 of Part 2.
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5. Making the Case: Why Product Management Is Critical to Company Success
Greg Geracie, of Actuation Consulting, a Marketing and Product Management firm, is helping us to continue our exploration of the relationship between Project and Program Management and related disciplines. In our last newsletter we explored the relationship between Product Management and Business Analysis. This article is our second in this series, and we hope to continue with a discussion about how Project and Product Managers work together. Thank you Greg!
Ask virtually any person inside your organization what the value of product management is and you're likely to get a series of different answers or even quizzical looks. This is ironic, because product management is critical to company success. Although no one inside the organization wants to eliminate product management, few people can succinctly describe its value to the organization.
This begs the question, why is it so difficult for people to understand and communicate product management's value? The main contributor to this confusion can be traced to the lack of a body of knowledge to lay the cornerstone of the profession. Without industry-wide clarity on the profession's core language, process groups, and knowledge areas, it's easy to understand why product managers and extended team members struggle to describe product management's core value proposition ... More
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6. More asapm, Certification, Jobs, and IPMA News
John Colville's Proportion training company scores!
asapm Member and friend John Colville has trained more IPMA Level D® certificants than anyone else in the Americas. And recently, he has added two noteworthy items to his collection of cudos.
First, he has received accreditation by the City of Chicago for his Proportion Training IPMA Level D® course. This means Chicago will fund a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) grant to those who qualify. Participants have to be in a TIF area but if they qualify, depending on their level of income, they can get either 75% or 100% funding. Current funding ends Dec 31st , but already a classful of practitioners have benefited. Congratulations John!
Second, as we frequently hear, John has received glowing feedback from a participant in a recent training. This one is from Canada, where John also works, with our sister IPMA Member Association PMAC-AGPC. The participant was so satisfied with the offering that he contacted both John Colville, and Kevin Aguanno, President of PMAC-AGPC. In his note to Kevin, he also expressed interest in moving into the IPMA advanced certifications. This is the third or fourth praising emails we've seen about John Colville's efforts. Now that's PM Performance!
Hi John,
I would like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation for your project management course preparing for IPMA-level D certification, also equivalent to CPMA (Certified Project Management Associate) certification from Project Management Association of Canada (PMAC) here in Canada.Having spent the last 7 years executing a number of global projects, I decided to pursue the International Project Management Association (IPMA) certification path as it offers increasing certification at higher levels, unlike the Project Management Institute's single-level certification that is only knowledge based.
I found your 4-day course very helpful in preparing for the foundation level-D certification exams. It was an excellent review of the IPMA's Competence Baseline (ICB) materials supplemented by your many realistic examples, experiences and exercises. The level of detail was appropriate to make the best use of our time over the four days. I particulary enjoyed the one-on-one format as you delivered the training remotely over Skype from Chicago to my office location in Vancouver.
The training turned out to be very interactive and engaging. I also appreciated the focus on managing people and teams later in the course to supplement the strong grounding in project management principles during the first 3 days. I strongly recommend the course as a great way to prepare for the certification exam and the Skype format as an excellent alternative for course delivery.
Sincere thanks and best regards,
(name withheld for privacy purposes)
Ohio Company Seeks Manager, R&D Project Management Office
From the job posting...
We are currently seeking a Manager, R&D Project Management to join our North America R&D team at our world headquarters in Perrysburg, Ohio. This position has responsibilities to create, direct and manage O-I’s Research and Development project management office. This office will be responsible for managing and executing the R&D program portfolio. This position requires extensive interaction with all research and technical disciplines within R&D and from outside the company; and with the R&D governance team.
Note that although the job description states that it requires other certifications, in communiucation with the company spokesperson, they state they do "prefer a candidate that has a certification that would be above and beyond" the one cited. That sounds to us like one of the asapm/IPMA Advanced certifications.
3rd Quarter IPMA Newsletter Is Available
One of the benefits of asapm membership is that you receive two memberships in one! So, in addition to member discounts on the IPMA World Congress and on the IPMA Journal (see below), you can see the goings-on of the rest of the nations of The IPMA Family. The current newsletter has reports from major conferences, including our friends in Canada, PMAC-AGPC. Download the latest IPMA Newsletter!
IPMA Journal Open Subscription Period
The International Journal of Project Management (IJoPM) is the premier, juried journal for International Project and Program Managers. Available at the same price as last year, the IPMA Journal is available to paid-up and current asapm members at a significantly discounted price. You can subscribe or renew during the December-Jamuary sign-up period by clicking the link at the beginning of this item. Sorry, but this is a members-only benefit. On the other hand, asapm membership plus the subscription is only half the price of the normal subscription price!
IPMA Young Crew Presentt: Global eCollaboration Competition 2012
The Global Competition on eCollaboration (GeCCo) improves contact between the 15 IPMA Young Crews around the globe.
During this global pioneer event, 90 young project managers from 15 countries all over the world will experience intercultural and international collaboration through virtual environments. In 24 hours, each multinational team will work distributed on case studies and present their strategic solution to a jury at the end of the workshop, where the most successful team will be selected. Virtual communication, group dynamics in distributed teams, management of different cultures and time zones are some of the factors that make this project unique.
Visit this site to help coordinate this project and bring this idea now to reality. Join in and support us! Visit us on: www.facebook
Cheers! Alena Vejsadová, Niklas Bein
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7. Root Cause Analysis and Corrective Action for Project Managers
by Byatt, Hamilton, Hodgkinson and Oakes
Project managers have the immense task of juggling requirements and resources that are often not under their direct control in order to produce the required project deliverables within the limited constraints to which they must adhere (scope, time, quality, etc.). Even if the perfect project plan could be designed and executed, it would not remove all of the risks that could ultimately impact a project. Plans must inevitably change for one reason or another.
During the phases of a project, it could be said that there are three major activities focused on reducing project risk. The first risk reduction activity occurs during project planning, when a proactive risk assessment is conducted and the identified risks are either mitigated or avoided (e.g., by modifying the project plan), transferred (such as through insurance) or accepted (by doing nothing and accepting that “if it happens, it happens”). The second activity is the continual assessment of risk throughout the project. The final risk reduction activity is to hold a retrospective “lessons learned” at the end of the project, which will have the least impact on the current project but will serve to benefit others in the future.
However, for the unforeseen problems that occur throughout a project, risk management is too late, since it has already been completed, and lessons learned are too early, since that is conducted at the conclusion of the project. Corrective action is then a critical process for dealing with ad-hoc problems encountered during projects.... More
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8. Tangoing Your Way Through the Executive/PMO Relationship, by O'Brochta and Finch
This is part 1 of a 2-part series. This first article focuses on the co-dependent relationship between executives and PMOs. In part 2, we will describe specific key performance indicators that a newly-established PMO can use to measure itself to ensure alignment with the needs of the organization.
“It takes two to tango.” This idiomatic expression, which originated in a 1952 song by Pearl Bailey and was later popularized in 1982 when President Ronald Reagan quipped about Russian-American relations, is an accurate description of the relationship between a project management office (PMO) and an executive. At the end of the day, success for either of them is dependent on the other. Executives depend on the work accomplished by project management offices for their own success, just as project management offices depend on executives for their success.
In a provocative 1999 article in Fortune magazine that addresses why executives fail, the authors get directly to the point and state that the number one reason for executive failure is “bad execution…as simple as that…not getting things done…not delivering on commitments.” The article also states that executives who do not deliver are three times more likely to get fired than their counterparts who are delivering. Think about it. What is the dominant purpose of a project? Getting things done! Projects deliver products and services, and they do so according to a schedule. Projects deliver on commitments. Executives need projects so they can deliver on commitments, thus avoiding the number one reason for executive failure ... More
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9. Introducing Tim Herd in Our New Series on Leadership
We have started a new feature; now that most organizations and PM practitioners have figured out that the so-called "Soft Side" is key to to project success, what are we doing about it? In addition to practicing those skills, whether based on our 15 Behavioral Elements of our National Competence Baseline, or other sources, we have found an author who will share a regular series on Leadership.
From his note at the bottom of each article: Leadership trainer and speaker Tim Herd is a career executive with extensive service in both private and public sector enterprises. He was the founder of America's first fully mobile environmental education center, and is currently the Executive Director of the Stroud Region Open Space and Recreation Commission. He is the honored recipient of the Shelburne Environmental Leadership Award from the Northeast Pennsylvania Environmental Partners.
Starting Things
Olympic champions, bodybuilders and dieters, sales representatives, and all your basic goal-setters keep before them a clear picture of the desired end results even as they work toward them from afar off.
You see, our brains are gullible: they believe what they are consistently told.
The teen berated as a screw-up continues as one; the girl ostracized for being different becomes a loner; the man who confesses he has no willpower succumbs to temptation. On the other hand, the child praised for being thoughtful continues to be; a student who believes she can overcome dyslexia does; a disadvantaged young adult rises to the challenge of being a single parent. All of us act according to what we believe we are capable of doing, to the degree we believe it.
Sometimes the "facts" are irrelevant. You wish to be a professional musician, but you're simply not proficient enough. That may be true. But it doesn't mean it always will be. A professional musician practices many hours every day to hone and maintain his or her skills; so does the aspiring professional musician. We must take on the habits and behaviors of the professional before we actually become the professional ... More
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10. Gin, The Dancing Dog
From all us animal lovers, thanks to Rose for sending this along! We are going to adore this one, watch and smile as Gin performs!
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asapm, IPMA-USA, is the American Society for the Advancement of Project Management. We are a not-for-profit organization, staffed with volunteers who are dedicated to improving Performance Competence in Project and Program Management. asapm is a registered trademark of the American Society for the Advancement of Project Management. See our past newsletters at our website.
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