allPM Newsletter Co-publisher, Judy Umlas

Where to start. Where to start...Right now I feel like a kid in a candy store. There are so many exciting things going on with allPM.com and our phenomenal PM community! What should I tell you about first? Okay, I'll start with the "Lifesavers" in my virtual candy store. Soon after we sent out the March edition of allPM Today, I received this sweet, delightful email from allPM.com member David Baldwin, Vice President of RiteNet Corporation:

"The newsletter is like going to a 10 course dinner in a fine restaurant. You take things slowly, eating a little bit now (soup), waiting and talking with others. Then going to the next course (salad), waiting and talking with others. Then the main course, etc., etc. So, the newsletter, for me is not a one shot, get it out of the way deal (fast food restaurant). It's more of savoring the information (flavors) bit by bit and internalizing the information. Keep up the good work."

That email was pure poetry to me, even if it didn't rhyme! A million thanks, David.

And then the chocolate bar in my candy store: This email came to Co-Publisher Frank Saladis, PMP and me from Juan Jose Infante Diaz, Lider de Proyecto PMP at SAP Mexico. He wrote:

Frank and Judy,

"This note is only to thank you for your great work with the allPM Today in March, 2005. I enjoyed all the information and learned or remembered very good points, specially the articles about Positive Leadership in Project Management and Acceptance Criteria. You are the right persons and form a perfect couple to do this job. Please continue with the same enthusiasm; I am sure that many PMs are being benefited by that."

Now what more could a pair 'a publishers want to hear from their constituents? And I will take a moment to tell you that I have to agree with Juan Jose. Frank Saladis is a delight to work with and our skills and styles do seem to complement each other. So for example, when I continue nagging him month after month after month (about two years' worth of nagging) to give me the wonderful rendition of "Project Manager Blues" that he composed and has played on his guitar at PMI conferences (so I can put it on allPM.com for you to hear and enjoy), he ignores me.

However, instead he took one little hint that I gave him a while back that due to his creative bent, he should come up with a PM crossword puzzle or two for our members. This was after we shared with you one created by Dr. Harold Kerzner, and our members downloaded it by the thousands! So what does Frank do? Well, here's the Reese's Pieces of my candy store: that dear, delightful, creative and knowledgeable individual I have the honor to be Co-Publisher with, decides he is creating a monthly crossword puzzle for you guys - with no nagging from me! We are calling this PM Crossword Connections™ - Having Fun While Learning the PMBOK® Guide.  

In this one a month series, allPM.com is introducing challenging crossword puzzles developed from the nine knowledge areas of the PMBOK Guide to help you prepare for the PMP® exam, brush up on your knowledge or just help pass the time when your project is going so well you have time to relax. Enjoy! So this month's puzzle is on SCOPE, and next month's (already completed and ready to go) is on COST! The solutions will be provided for those of you who need them. Thanks, Frank! You are a creative genius and I am very proud that we can offer these. And about that song, Frank...

Okay, now for the M&M's in our virtual candy store: all kinds of different colored, yummy articles in this month's edition of allPM Today. Our theme of the month is Project Management and Quality, and the lead article is Quality in Project Performance: People Make the Difference by George Pitagorsky, PMP. Then there is the second of the series of three articles on Acceptance Criteria, last month's theme, and it is called Acceptance Criteria - The process of acceptance by Eoin Callan, PMP. Over 600 of you downloaded Part I of the series, so we think you will enjoy this latest installment. Then there is Part II of the three part series PMBOK® Guide, Third Edition --Is more really better? by Max Wideman. We think you will find this article interesting, worthwhile and controversial! Close to 1,000 of you downloaded Part I. How about some feedback?

And now for the "jawbreakers" in our virtual candy store. Dr. Kerzner gives us Migraine Headache #5 which deals with "The Cash Flow Dilemma" and as always we invite you , our readers,  to submit your migraine  remedies  for the current month's challenge.  Last month your votes for the best solution produced a tie, so Kishore Kelekar and Cam Stevens are BOTH winners!  Each will each receive an autographed copy of the Kerzner text of their choice.  Thanks for your participation, and let's get some more solutions in the coming month.

Another of our delicious M&Ms is Dr. David Hillson's colorfully written Risk Management briefing, Making It Work. Great, down to earth pointers in one page and in multiple languages - French, Spanish, German and Chinese - for those of you in other than English speaking countries out there! We also have the start of a series of tips on Microsoft Project 2003, Top Ten of Project 2003 Best Practices by Eric Uyttewaal, PMP who has just published a book called Dynamic Scheduling with Microsoft® Office Project 2003. You can check the book out by going to http://www.iil.com/iil_shortdescr.asp?sku=PT246

Then we also have an eye-opening Excel tip from Excel Guru Bob Umlas, which is an excerpt from his soon to be published book (working title), This is not Excel - it's Magic!

We are pleased to have another article from Kate McLeod, PMP, who wrote about PM Stress last month, after returning from her stress leave. This time she writes about another challenge faced by project managers: Personal Issues - When They are Your Business . And let's not forget yet another contribution by our multi-talented Co-Publisher, this one from his Positive Leadership in project Management series: The PNR (Positive to Negative Ratio) - it's quite fascinating! And last but certainly not least, we have a poem you all will undoubtedly relate to by Frank Saladis (you can't keep that boy down!), entitled Why Me?

And it was exactly two years ago that I cited the line from TS Elliott's poem, The Wasteland that started all of this. I wrote, "April is the cruelest month" for a variety of reasons at that time, and followed it with this: Is there a PM "Type" out there who also loves poetry? The stereotype is that project managers don't like poetry, so I would love to prove this wrong. If I am wrong, please tell me your favorite poem."Well, not only did you tell me your favorite poems, but you also started writing your own PM Poetry. Every single month since then, we have featured one of your PM poems. In fact, we published them in a little "booklette" last year and are happy to send one or several to anyone who submits a PM poem to me at judy.umlas@allpm.com . You guys are great! Don't ever forget it.

Now I would like you to all welcome and applaud (can we do this virtually?) the next allPM.com MVP (Most Valuable Professional) that we have carefully selected. Gerald Leech III is one of our most frequent, authoritative and helpful allPM.com Forum contributors. When you check out these forums, you will see the quality and frequency of his contributions. Gerald joined allPM.com as registered user #4276 - we now have 24,708 members as of this writing -- so you can see he has been around a while. He is a PMP, and is certified in PRINCE2 and MCSD. He works for a Latin American consulting group based in Guatemala, Central America . Gerald, your tangible acknowledgments of your importance to our PM community are forthcoming. Thank you, and please stay actively engaged with us at least until we reach 500,000 members!

Now I will end this never-ending letter with the final part of the quote I started with - the part that I didn't share with you then. After saying such wonderful things about our newsletter, David Baldwin ended his creative restaurant and food analogy for allPM Today this way: "...if you cut back on the amount of information per month, I wouldn't complain. Sometimes I get too full!" David, you tell it like it is, don't you?! I wouldn't have it any other way. My thanks to all of you, have a great month, don't forget to stop, smell the sweet blooms of spring, and go eat some candy! Yours until the next time.

Judy Umlas Co-publisher allPM.com
Judy.Umlas@allPM.com

From the Co-publisher's Desk- Frank P. Saladis, PMP

As project managers, one of our main goals is to achieve customer or client satisfaction by delivering excellent performance. "Good enough" should never be good enough for a project manager his or her team. We strive for completion by meeting the expectations of our key stakeholders, including our project teams. To accomplish our goals and project objectives we have to leverage the talents of the project team. Mediocre results are not acceptable. Even if our teams are not considered to be "superstars" by management or the sponsor, the project manager can achieve extraordinary results by believing in the team and demonstrating support for the team.

I have seen it written in several books that a project manager should shoot for the stars (the excellent performers) when staffing a project but must be prepared to work with the competent. Personally, I think the project manager can create a team of superstars from what others might think of as "competent" people. A large part of the process has to do with attitude -- the positive attitude of the project manager. Project managers have the responsibility to produce the project deliverables at the expected quality level of the client. To do this the project manager must set the stage for team development and create an "environment for success."

To help ensure that the team produces the level of quality expected, the project manager needs a kind of "people plan." This isn't one of the subsidiary plans found in the PMBOK® Guide, but maybe it should be. The people plan consists of:

• Mapping out the really important goals for yourself and your team
• Identifying the needs and expectations of senior management
• Creating a common purpose and sharing the commitment to it
• Clear communications and feedback channels
• Setting standards for performance
• Establishing roles and responsibilities
• Setting performance objectives
• Defining appraisal criteria
• Creating team building activities
• Reward and recognition activities
• Problem solving and conflict resolution procedures
• Escalation procedures

Mediocre performance is a result of mediocre leadership. The team will respond to the behavior and attitude displayed by the project manager. It is up to the project manager to create the high performing team. Look for the best in everyone and build on that. Be careful about how you give feedback and make sure you maintain an awareness of your own behavior. If you fail to keep your behavior positive, you may add to the list of migraines Dr. Kerzner writes about.

allPM can assist you in creating stars within your project team. This month we look at the topic "Assessing Quality in Project management." Quality is achieved in many ways but it starts with the project manager's attitude and ability to lead the team. allPM leads the way by providing tips, tools, insight and promotes creative thinking to help you achieve your project goals. So, take some time, enrich your project management knowledge and improve the quality of your project results through allPM. After all, it is for all project managers.

Frank P. Saladis, PMP
Frank.Saladis@allpm.com

March Poll Results

Acceptance Criteria are:

A) nice to have but I rarely use them 13.89 % (10)
B) usually too vague to do my project any good 6.94 % (5)
C) the difference between success and failure 76.39 % (55)
D) a waste of time because they take too much time 2.78 % (2)

Total votes: 72

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The April poll question is: Does your organization have an active quality assurance process?

A) Yes, we always evaluate project performance
B) Yes, we evaluate our performance from time to time
C ) We have post project reviews but do not evaluate performance across multiple projects
D) We rarely, if ever evaluate project performance

If you have not already done so, please stop by allPM.com and add your opinion today.

Project Management Poetry™, by Frank Saladis, PMP

WHY ME? 

It happened again, another big job,
Just when I thought I could rest.
The sponsor was desperate and needed me now,
With another project I soon would be blessed.

The client wanted the product real soon,
And was asking for everything, including the moon
I thought to myself, this is really nothing new,
I'll work every day, and every weekend too.

The sponsor said please do this for me,
The rewards will be great, just wait and see!
So one more time, I answered the call
And like every project I gave it my all.

I worked with the team from start to the end,
And made every milestone, though some rules I did bend,
When it was complete the client just smiled,
While the lessons learned were all neatly filed.

And I asked myself way I can't get any rest, 
Why am I always being put to the test?
"Because", the sponsor said, with care and with zest
Project managers, my friend, are simply the best!

© 2005 allPM.com

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Frank P. Saladis (PMP) is Senior Consultant with International Institute for Learning, Inc. He has been involved in the development of standardized Project Management Guidelines (PMGs) for the AT&T Corporate Information Technology Services (Corporate ITS) organization and is the author of the Project Evaluation Review Process (PERP). He is the President of the NYC PMI Chapter.

Microsoft Project 2003, Top Ten of Project 2003 Best Practices – Tip #1, by Eric Uyttewaal, PMP

Create a dynamic model of your project instead of a static model!! If you tend to use a spreadsheet to plan your project, or if you tend to print schedules and use it as wall paper, you are creating static models. If a change occurs you typically have to revise on average 50% of the dates in your static schedule. In a dynamic schedule, when one change occurs, you should have to update only one cell and your model produces all accurate forecast dates once again in your schedule. With MS Project you can create dynamic models that allow you to implement this principle of dynamic scheduling. You have to make sure you enter all dependencies and minimize the number of constraint dates.

© 2005 allPM.com

Eric Uyttewaal, PMP
Executive Director, Microsoft EPM Division
International Institute for Learning, Inc. (IIL)

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Eric Uyttewaal is the author of the book "Dynamic Scheduling with Microsoft Office Project 2003" (see http://www.iil.com/iil_shortdescr.asp?sku=PT246 ). Eric is Executive Director, Microsoft EPM Division at International Institute for Learning, headquartered in New York . He developed and currently manages the training and certification curriculum in MS Project and Project Server, which he and his colleagues teach all over the world.

He has presented at many project management conferences in the USA , Canada and Europe . In Holland , he published several articles on management issues. In 1997, he was President of the Ottawa Chapter of PMI, currently serving over 2000 members. He was president of the MPUG-Ottawa chapter (MS Project Users Group) from 2000 until 2004.

allPM Today Tips Feature: MS Excel tips, by Bob Umlas, Microsoft Excel® MVP

This tip is an excerpt from Bob Umlas ' soon to be published book (Fall, 2005), "This isn't Excel - this is Magic!" (working title)

Selecting random sample of data

If you have a database with many records and you want to take a random sample of that data, here are a few techniques you can use.

One way to get a random sample is to use a computed criteria and advanced filter.

Suppose you want to take a random 10% of the data. Enter the formula as shown in C2 (keep C1 blank). By entering the formula = RAND ()<0.1, every time this worksheet calculates, the = RAND () will return another random number. So RAND ()<0.1 will return TRUE, about 10% of the time.

( Rand () returns a random value between 0 and 1, not including 1).

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Bob Umlas has been a Microsoft Excel MVP since 1995. He has been a beta tester for new versions of Microsoft Excel since version 1.5 (on the Macintosh)! He has led several sessions at Microsoft's Tech-Ed: Maximizing Excel development using Array Formulas, and Excel Tips and Tricks (at 2 separate Tech-Ed conferences). He has also led a session on Tips and Tricks at the Advisors' Developers Conference in San Francisco in 1998, and at the Convergence Conference in Orlando in February 2004.

Formerly an independent consultant in NYC using Excel exclusively, Bob now works in New Jersey for one of the top 5 tax and accounting firms.

Theme of the Month: Quality in Project Performance: People Make the Difference, by George Pitagorsky, PMP, Senior Enterprise Solutions Advisor, International Institute for Learning, Inc.

Performance excellence should be the goal of every performer and every organization offering products and services to its client base. Project managers deliver products and services. As experienced project managers know, people make the difference. This article addresses the difference between mediocre and excellent performance. The focus will be on defining, valuing and leveraging star performers and excellent performers.

Quality begins with people who share a common vision. Quality assurance (QA) directs the vision to the process to answer the questions "Are we working in the best possible way? How can we improve our process?" Quality control (QC) directs the vision to the outcome to answer the questions "Does the product meet its quality criteria? Does it comply with its specifications? Do its specifications satisfy the needs and expectations of product stakeholders? To what degree?"

Performance excellence is the ability to consistently deliver high quality results within time and cost constraints. High quality results are defined for each project, service or product instance in terms of a number of measurable criteria, including subjective criteria such as client and performer satisfaction. The key to excellence is quality assurance, evidenced by a well defined practical, continuously improving process being performed by people with the right capabilities in a supportive environment.

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George Pitagorsky, (PMP) , is Senior Enterprise Solutions Advisor for International Institute for Learning (IIL).  He is an expert in project management, and process improvement and facilitator.  George authored IIL's Project Management Basics™ , a multimedia interactive browser based course, and has authored or directed development of all of IIL's core PM courses.  He has written numerous articles on Project Management, organizational development, conflict resolution and personal development subjects.  George is the author of IIL's IT Project Management System, a multimedia product, and co-creator and director of IIL's The Unified Project Management Methodology (UPMM™), Web PM knowledge tool.  He is a meditation teacher with over thirty years of experience in Yoga and meditation practice and co-creator of both the Conscious Living and Working Wisely workshops.

Personal Issues - When Are They Your Business?, by Kate McLeod, PMP

Project Managers are taught to plan for any possibility: we have plans for procurement, communication, and even a plan for how we will plan. We have risk and resource planning, which sometimes intercept: we must plan for the loss of a key resource, or for a shortage of subject matter experts. But how do we plan to deal with the emotional, medical and family problems with our staff? Should we even take this into consideration?

We all have personal challenges that we deal with, but at what point do the challenges of staff become the business of the project manager? The instructor of my project management school Human Resources course answered this by saying that anytime it impacts the project, it becomes the business of the PM. Hearing this, I threw all kinds of scenarios at her, to challenge her thinking and to see if there were limitations to her advice. Alcoholism? Absolutely, she said. You first speak to the person and encourage them to take time off and seek professional assistance, and if this is not done in a reasonable length of time, you take it to management. Out of character anger or sudden mood swings? And before you start laughing, I'm not talking about the mood swings that women frequently experience - I mean the kind that could indicate some other underlying health problem, like high blood pressure or diabetes. Marriage and family issues? "Yes", she said, "These are all within the preview purview of the PM if it affects the project."

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Kate McLeod (PMP) is currently working as an Information Technology Project Manager for the Canadian Federal Government. She is a graduate of York University and also has college diplomas in Web programming and Project Management. She received her PMP designation in 2002. Kate lives in suburban Ottawa , Ontario with her husband Brian, two children ages 9 and 10, and two cats. She hopes that when she retires it will be to a place that is warm in the winter.

Column: Positive Leadership In Project Management - The PNR (Positive to Negative Ratio), by Frank Saladis, PMP

There are many leadership styles in the business world and what works for one leader may not work for another. Leaders must be aware of how they interact with people, especially their subordinates, and continuously monitor how people react to their personal style. Most people, when asked about the characteristics of an effective leader, mention the following traits or skills: communication, ability to motivate, establishing a vision, high energy, trustworthiness, passion, dedication, ability to work effectively with people, and so on. These are all traits commonly associated with leadership.

In my search for information about leadership, I found something else that can have a significant impact on the people who report to leaders: The PNR or positive to negative ratio. The PNR is described in an article entitled "The Impact of Positive Leadership" by Tom Rath, co-author of the book "How Full is Your Bucket?" The article focuses on the typical positive and negative interactions an employee may encounter on any given day. The PNR is the ratio of bad or unpleasant interactions to the good or positive interactions. An unbalanced ratio can lead to the loss of key employees. The manager should therefore be aware of his or her contribution to the PNR . As Tom Rath states, " Unless you are actively working, today and every day, to make sure your employee has more positive interactions, you may soon have a disengaged employee on your hands - or worse, you could lose one of your best people. "

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Frank P. Saladis (PMP) is Senior Consultant with International Institute for Learning, Inc. He has been involved in the development of standardized Project Management Guidelines (PMGs) for the AT&T Corporate Information Technology Services (Corporate ITS) organization and is the author of the Project Evaluation Review Process (PERP). He is the President of the NYC PMI Chapter.

Acceptance Criteria Part II: The process of acceptance, by Eoin Callan (MBA, PMP)

How many of us have ever experienced the happy joy of being tasked to do work by someone who gives only the target of "I'll know it when I see it" as our guide to completion? This is particularly frustrating when our clients or bosses use this loose definition of a job well-done only because they themselves have not thought through what it is exactly that they want. Somehow, someway, when we fail to read their minds and produce their wants on the first try, we are found to be at fault and we may even be "guilted" into apologizing for our inability to deliver efficacious results.

The truth is, it is our fault.

It is our fault when we allow half-baked requests to be dropped on our desk without any insistence from us to clarify the wants, needs and expectations of such requests. We said previously that we end up delivering products, services or results that don't serve the true, root needs of the project sponsors and stakeholders because our focus is usually on the wrong part of the process by concentrating on the product of work results and not on defining success beforehand. Our last article gave a template for use in assessing success through SMARTY ® while this second of three articles on the subject of acceptance criteria highlights the process involved with acceptance.

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Eoin Callan (MBA, PMP) has over 15 years of practical application of disciplined project management. His business experience includes varied industrial expertise such as call centers large and small, financial services firms, direct mail efforts, pharmaceutical companies, software manufacturers, market research ventures, medical research, journalism/public relations and training.

Series: Why Do Executives Stay Awake at Night Worrying About Project Management? by Harold Kerzner, Ph.D.

In this 10-part series, Dr. Kerzner elaborates on the 10 PM migraine headaches that executives get from staying up all night worrying about project management. To read the original article with all 10 migraines, please click here: www.allpm.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1259

Each month Dr. Kerzner asks YOU for your remedies for the "migraine of the month." Once you read about it, please send your remedy to migrainecure@allpm.com .  The remedies that are submitted will be posted in the PM Migraine Forum on our website. You can then read them and vote for the remedy you like best. We will then publish the solution that receives the most votes in a subsequent issue of allPM Today!

The winner will receive a prize, which will be an autographed copy of one of Dr. Kerzner's best-selling books.

Winners of Migraine #3

Last month we had a tie between Kishore Kelekar & Cam Stevens which means they are both winners and will be receiving our prize! Click here to read their winning entries:
http://www.allpm.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=149

Vote for remedies submitted for Migraine #4!

Please click here to read and cast your vote for the best of the remedies: http://www.allpm.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=206

Migraine #5: The Cash Flow Dilemma

For many companies that survive on competitive bidding, the cost of preparing a bid can range from a few thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands. In most cases, project management may not appear until after the contract is awarded. The results can be catastrophic if benefit realization at the end of the project does not match the vision or profit margin expected during proposal preparation or at project initiation. In the summer of 2002, a large, multinational company set up a project management training program in Europe for fifty multinational project managers. The executive vice president spoke for the first ten minutes of the class and said, "The company is now going to begin turning away work." The project managers were upset over hearing this and needed an explanation. The executive vice president put Exhibit 2 on the screen and made it clear that they would not longer accept projects where profit margins would eventually be less than four to six percent because they were financing the projects for their customers. The company was functioning as a banker for its clients. Benefit realization was not being achieved. To reduce the costs of competitive bidding, the company was responding to proposal requests using estimating data bases rather than time-phased labor. The cash flow issue was not being identified until after go-ahead.

While project financing has become an acceptable practice, it does squeeze profits in already highly competitive markets. To maintain profit margins, companies are often forced to disregard what was told to the customer in the proposal and to assign project resources according to the customer's payment plan rather than the original project schedule provided in the proposal. While this may lead to short term profitability, it often results in elongated schedules, potential law suits, and customer dissatisfaction. The balance between customer satisfaction, long-term client relationships and profitability is creating a huge headache.

For our readers: What is your proposed migraine remedy from the eyes of the contractor? What is your proposed remedy from the eyes of the customer, and will Earned Value Measure help in this regard?

Please send your remedy for Migraine #5 to migrainecure@allpm.com .

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Harold Kerzner (M.S., Ph.D., Engineering and M.B.A) is Professor of Systems Management at Baldwin-Wallace College.  He is also Executive Director for Project Management for the International Institute for Learning and President of Project Management Associates, Inc., a project management consulting company based in Ohio.  Dr. Kerzner's expertise is in the areas of project management and strategic planning.  Dr. Kerzner has previously taught engineering at the University of Illinois and business administration at Utah State University.  He obtained his industrial experience at Thiokol Corporation where he held both program management and project engineering responsibilities on a variety of NASA, Air Force, Army, Navy and independent IR&D programs.

He has published or presented more than 250 engineering and business papers, and has 19 texts entitled:  Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling and Controlling; Project Management for Bankers; Project Management Policy and Strategy: Cases and Situations; Project Management for Executives; Case Studies in Project Management; A Handbook for Proposal Preparation and Management; Project Management for the Small and Medium Sized Business; Operating Guidelines for Project Management; Strategic Planning; A Dictionary of Terms for Project Management; Team Management; An Introduction to Operations Research for Managerial Decisions; Investing in the Corporate Bond Market; A Practical Guide to Strategic Planning;  In Search of Excellence in Project Management; Applied Project Management: Best Practices in Implementation;  Strategic Planning for Project Management Using a Project Management Maturity Model, A Casebook in Project Management, and Advanced Project Management.

Risk Doctor Briefing: Risk Management : Making it Work, ©2005 Dr. David Hillson, PMP, FAPM

Introduction

The risk management process is not difficult, because it is just a structured way of dealing with significant uncertainty. All you need to do is determine which objectivesare at risk, then identify uncertainties that might affect their achievement. The next step is to prioritise identified risks and decide how to respond, and then take action.

But although this process is simple to describe, it seems hard to make it work inpractice. And the hardest part of all is the last step - implementation.

For some reason, we seem well able to identify and assess risks, and to devise appropriate responses. The problem arises with putting our plans into action, and actually doing the agreed responses. Why does this happen?

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Dr. David Hillson (PMP, FAPM, FIRM, MCMI) is an international risk management consultant, and Director of Risk Doctor & Partners ( www.risk-doctor.com ). His speciality is risk technology transfer, assisting organisations to develop in-house risk processes, and he is a popular conference speaker and author on risk, winning several awards for his papers. He is recognised internationally as a leading thinker and practitioner in risk management, and his recent emphasis has been the inclusion of proactive opportunity management within the risk process, which is the topic of his latest book "Effective opportunity management : Exploiting positive risk", published in 2003 by Dekker of New York.

David is an active member of the global Project Management Institute (PMI) and was a founder member of its Risk Management Specific Interest Group. He received the 2002 PMI Distinguished Contribution Award for his work in developing risk management over many years. He is a Fellow of the UK Association for Project Management (APM) and a Fellow of the UK Institute of Risk Management (IRM), as well as being a member of the Chartered Management Institute.

To provide feedback on this Briefing Note, or for more details on how to develop effective risk management, contact the Risk Doctor (info@risk-doctor.com), or visit the Risk Doctor's website (www.risk-doctor.com)

PMBOK® Guide, Third Edition - Is more really better? A Review by R. Max Wideman - Part II

A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge®, Third Edition,
is copyright by the Project Management Institute, PA, USA , 2004.
It has been distributed on a CD free of charge to members of the Institute.

In Part 1 of this review we took a general look at the Institute's latest A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, Third Edition , highlighting the good points but also drawing attention to some serious Missed opportunities. In this Part 2 of our review we look at Sections I and II of the Guide in more detail, examining both What we liked and the Downside .

Section I - The Project Management Framework

What we liked

In Chapter 1 it states:

"Uniqueness is an important characteristic of project deliverables. For example, many thousands of office buildings have been developed, but each individual facility is unique - different owner, different design, different location, different contractors, and so on. The presence of repetitive elements does not change the fundamental uniqueness of the project work."

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Max Wideman is a retired Canadian professional engineer and project manager with experience in systems, social and environmental projects, as well as design and engineering projects. He is a Fellow of the Project Management Institute, of which he is past president and chairman, and for whom he developed the 1987 version of the Project Management Body of Knowledge. He also enjoys Fellow status in the Institution of Civil Engineers (UK), the Engineering Institute of Canada, and the Canadian Society of Civil Engineering.

Max has lectured or presented papers in eleven countries and has contributed books, chapters, papers and articles on many project management topics. His latest book is A Management Framework for Project, Program and Portfolio Integration , Trafford , BC , 2004. Comprehensive coverage of project management theory and practice can be found on his web site at http://www.maxwideman.com

PM Crossword Connections™ - Having Fun While Learning the PMBOK® Guide: "Scope it Out", by Frank Saladis, PMP

(Click here or the image above for a larger, printable crossword in a new window. )

Across

1. Deviation
3. A deliverable is this
5. Where to run after a hit
6. Should be SMART
11. Can be positive or negative
12. They have special knowledge
14. Leads to acceptance
15. Founding member or authority to proceed
16. Uncontrolled change
17. Cornerstone of the plan
19. Worked out with care
20. Breaking it all down
22. Higher level or parent task
24. Breakdown by organization

Down

2. Give it a once over
4. Hazing or start up
7. What we plan to do
8. Tangible and verifiable
9. Limitations
10. Proceeding in steps
13. Obtained from a previous project
18. Provides financial resources
21. Sum of the work
23. To run into

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Click here to view/print the crossword solution: http://www.allpm.com/Crosswords/April2005answers.htm