Partial Listing of Upcoming Project Management Events

For a complete listing of events, or to add your own event for free, please visit the Online Calendar at allPM.com

MSP 2002 Blue Belt Professional, Orlando, FL
July 1, 2003
http://www.iil.com/iil_coursedesc_cart.asp?selectCatid=456

Project Estimating and Scheduling in Toronto, CAN
July 7, 2003
http://www.iil.com/canada/default.asp

Project Management Methodology Free Webinar Overview
July 8, 2003
http://www.iil.com/free_resources/quality_improvement_project_management_detail.asp

Six Sigma in Healthcare FREE Overview
July 10, 2003
http://www.iil.com/free_resources/six_sigma_healthcare_overview_detail.asp

Project Portfolio Management
July 13, 2003
http://www.ppmsummit.com/

Project Management for IT Professionals in Baltimore, MD
July 14, 2003
http://www.iil.com/str_link_all_results.asp?select_cartid=382

PM Certification on-line
July 21, 2003
http://www.iil.com/str_link_all_results.asp?select_cartid=415

June Poll Results

June's poll question was: Which is most difficult aspect of your projects to take a proactive approach with?

A. Human Resources 37.04 % (10)
B. Cost Control 11.11 % (3)
C. Time Tracking 33.33 % (9)
D. Resource Management 18.52 % (5)

Total votes: 27

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July's poll question is: What is the most useful aspect of Microsoft Project?

A. Resource Workload management
B. Critical Path management
C. Deadline Date management
D. Calendar management

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

Column: Positive Leadership in Project Management - Sixth in a Series
Lead Like Everyone’s Watching

Written by Frank Saladis, PMP

It seems that just about every day of the week you can pick up a newspaper and read about another CEO or corporate officer that has been sentenced to time in prison for "cooking the books" or some other completely inappropriate or downright illegal action that caused tremendous loss for a company, disappointment for shareholders, and a trip to the unemployment line for hundreds, even thousands of employees. These so called "leaders" completely missed the boat on what leadership is. Instead of working WITH the organization and its employees, they focused their energy on their own interests and their wallets and pocket books. They were not leading a company to greater levels of success, but they were successful in the areas of deceit and dishonesty. Try finding any book, publication, or periodical that includes those words in the definition or description of leadership.

Most people, at some time in their lives, have heard the phrase "Dance Like No One is Watching." It means that we shouldn't be concerned about how people are judging our behavior or how we act. We should do what feels right and what makes us comfortable. Too many people stay off the dance floor in fear of what others may think. We sacrifice fun and feeling free because of the fear of looking silly. Expressing one's self without fearing what someone else may think is, in my opinion, an essential leadership quality. Leaders need to share ideas, think differently, and cause other people to look their way while not being concerned about judgmental issues and whether or not they are dancing in step.

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 former President of the NYC PMI® Chapter.

allPM Today Tips Feature
Top Ten Time-Savers in MS Project 2000, by Eric Uyttewaal, PMP

Tip #8:
To re-assign a task to somebody else, you could use the Replace button on the Assign Resources dialog. I find this a lot of clicking. Furthermore, I have found that sometimes the resource units change when using this feature. If you switch to the Resource Usage view and simply drag the assignment(s) from one resource to another, you can re-assign many tasks very quickly and the assignment will keep the units.

MAY 2001 TO MPUG

Eric Uyttewaal (BS, Engineering; MS, Business Administration; PMP) is Director, Microsoft Project Certificaton, International Institute for Learning, Inc and author of "Dynamic Scheduling with Microsoft Project ® 2000." This tip appeared in the 3/2001 MPUG eZine. 

Project Management Poetry!

allPM.com is very proud to present the lyrical "poetry" (aka song lyrics) of Frank Saladis, PMP. To read the poems that two of our talented members submitted last month, please visit allPM.com.

Frank tells us that his song is a straight blues progression similar to James Taylor's "Steamroller Blues."

The Project Manager Blues- Words and music (to come) by Frank P. Saladis, PMP

I'm a project manager baby, and I'll show my plan to you
I'm a project manager baby, I'll show you what a WBS can do.
If you like what you see honey, I'll schedule some time with you.

I've got a PERT Chart in my Laptop, and my tasks are all plain to see.
I've got a PERT Chart in my Laptop, I can build you one for a fee.
I'll work all night for you baby, but don't expect me to work for free.

I can be your best friend darlin', if you complete your tasks on time.
I can be your best friend darlin', if you keep the scope on the baseline.
Don't miss your milestone baby cause a missed date is a terrible crime.

Well I'm a project manager baby, and I've got a task for you.
I'm a project manager baby, let me show you what I can do.
It's the project manager blues oh yeah, I've got to find something better to do.

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 former President of the NYC PMI Chapter.

Column: Where is my Critical Path?

Written by: Eric Uyttewaal, PMP

Intro

The Critical Path Method (CPM) is a beautiful product of human logic. By highlighting tasks that are most likely to affect the project end date, CPM helps project managers meet deadlines. But often the enthusiasm for CPM wanes when the theory is applied in practice.

Put simply, the CPM works by making a forward pass through the entire schedule determining the early start and finish dates. The earliest finish date for the last task or milestone in the network establishes the earliest project end date. The CPM then uses a backward pass to calculate the late start and finish dates. The difference between the late date and the early date of a task is the amount of total slack (total float) on a task. Critical tasks have zero slack. Typically you see that one of the chains of tasks in the network drives the project end date, this is the Critical Path.

CPM with Project 2002

MS Project calculates the Critical Path continuously and can even highlight it in red if you run the GanttChartWizard. By default the wizard highlights those tasks red that have no slack, and it colors the bars of those critical tasks red. Many times the result has been disappointing for me when the Critical Path showed up as a partial and fragmented path. MS Project did not seem to find a path that started at the project start date and ran all the way to the project finish date. CPM has run its course, is what I first thought, but then I realized that without CPM there is not much else! So I went searching for the path and here are my findings. So far I have found four reasons why your critical path may show up fragmented and as a partial path.

Eric Uyttewaal (BS, Engineering; MS, Business Administration; PMP) is Director, Microsoft Project Certification, International Institute for Learning, Inc. This tip appeared in the 10/2000 MPUG eZine.

Column: Project Management Portals: a Valuable Management Tool

Spelling out the benefits to your executives

Written by: Steve Cook

You have to get real-time project information to team members on the road, technicians on your shop floor, or employees around the world. You need to collaborate with partners to bid on or complete a project. You want to provide a way to get project status information to customers or other stakeholders.

What you need is a project management portal.

And to get that, you need executive buy-in.

Showing How a Portal Meets Business Objectives
One of the best ways to get executive buy-in is by showing how project management supports strategic business objectives.

As Mike Peterson, a manager with PricewaterhouseCoopers' Global Risk Management Solutions practice, said, "It may seem obvious, but any project undertaken by a company should be driven by business objectives: projects that do not clearly advance the aims of the company should simply not be undertaken. These days, the traditional measures of a project's success extend well beyond 'On time, on budget, and to specifications' to include such criteria as 'Delivery of anticipated benefits, engagement of stakeholders, and organizational adoption.'"

A project management portal that provides easy, secure access to project information for everyone from team members to executives to stakeholders will advance the aims of the company. Increased project visibility achieved through the portal improves productivity throughout the organization.

Steve Cook is the Executive Vice President and Co-founder of Welcom, Inc. He has over 20 years of experience in computerized project management, primarily in the U.S. and U.K

Column: Column: PRINCE2® and the PMBOK® -- Extend your Project Management Knowledge

Written by: David Whelbourn

In the project management profession there are two key public domain knowledge sources that concentrate project management knowledge. In North America there is the Project Management Institute's (PMI's) PMBOK® Guide and in the UK there is OGC's PRINCE2®.

Both PMI's® PMBOK® Guide and the PRINCE2 methodology have been developed over the last thirteen years and provide a substantial depth of knowledge in their respective areas.

Both have similar features:

• Over 13 years of research and development
• Wide acceptance within industry
• Independent authored books on "how to interpret" or extend their use
• Certification of practitioners and education providers
• Global acceptance

However, they are two different animals.

PRINCE2 is a tried and tested project management methodology complete with well-defined processes and strong project control features. It is the de facto standard project management methodology in the UK and other European countries.

The PMBOK® Guide is a knowledgebase that defines the key knowledge areas that a practicing project manager should know about. Over 500,000 copies have been sold (this includes the1996 and 2000 version)

Many of the features of PRINCE2 are best practices defined by over 120 organizations that helped develop PRINCE2.

PRINCE and the PMBOK® Guide shouldn't be viewed as competitors in the global market vying for project management attention. They provide a view on different aspects of what a project manager needs to know.

David Whelbourn is the Co-Lead of the Quality Team on PMI's OPM3 (Organizational Project Management Maturity Model) and a volunteer on their Program and Portfolio Management Standards project. He is also a Programme Manager with over thirteen years experience in project management after serving twelve years in the British Army. He has over five years experience in managing projects with PRINCE2 within Information Technology Projects combined with Rapid Application Development. He is a certified PRINCE2 practitioner and has implemented PRINCE2 in three companies, tailoring it to fit their culture and structure.

Column: The Myths That Rule Our Projects

Written by: David A. Schmaltz

Wicked. If one word echoes through today's workplace, it's wicked. We speak of being blindsided by wicked projects, as if each project somehow had it in for us. We complain of death marches and blame the usual suspects - unreasonable customers, clueless decision-makers, and unwieldy technology.

Yet even a cursory examination into the source of this wickedness leaves us holding more of the blame than we probably think we deserve. Why? Traditional project management focuses more on reinforcing a persistent blindness than on opening our eyes to the myths that rule our projects.

Projects have always been difficult. Building the pyramids was certainly a death-march wicked project. Materials had to be transported across hundreds of miles and shaped by backbreaking toil, using only the most primitive methods. Work was completed by thousands of slaves who labored under the threat of death.

To manage these projects, resistant multitudes had to be directed across decades of time, so the overseers understandably employed methods that any modern manager would consider wicked. Yet the Egyptians succeeded in achieving their goals.

On the other hand, we know that most modern projects don't achieve their goals. We explain that today's projects are much more complicated than even the most daunting civil engineering projects of the past. But while architecture and engineering have progressed, the methods we employ to manage projects might be mired in ancient myths.

© 2003 David A. Schmaltz. All rights reserved

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David Schmaltz is a writer, teacher, and consultant with a quarter-century's experience in the field. Founder of True North project guidance strategies, Inc., he shows individuals and organizations engaged in project work how to escape tradition's cages to create more fulfilling project experiences. His book The Blind Men and the Elephant: Mastering Project Work focuses on the practical considerations that make projects successful and personally meaningful. His Mastering Projects Workshop graduates are among the most innovative people working on projects today. He hunts elephants from a Victorian home on a tree-lined street in Walla Walla, Washington. Contact him at David@projectcommunity.com (www.projectcommunity.com)

Column: EMPOWERMENT AS A DRIVER OF CHANGE

Written by: Muhannad Al Nabulsi

When Jordan Cement Factories (JCF) faced the prospect of privatization, we knew that the change would have a dramatic impact on our business. The end of a home-market monopoly could even have jeopardized the existence of the company itself. At the same time, we were also preparing to join with a large international corporation, which would mean further adjustments to structure and workplace culture.

Cement production may seem to be one of the industries least capable of - or interested in - change. Our long-running experience and expertise, however, gave us confidence that we had established an identity strong enough to be challenged and regenerated by the necessity of change. Viewing change as an opportunity to focus on the Jordan scene and prove our merit in comparison to our competitors, we began planning a formal company-wide change effort.

Defining the Scope of Change
First and foremost, privatization and integration with an international corporation meant becoming more competitive on the regional and global levels. We had to maintain and develop our position in the Jordan market and increase sales inside as well as outside Jordan. To support this development, we knew we had to reduce costs and optimize the organization. Change would extend far beyond simple marketing and sales efforts.

Copyright ASQ Six Sigma Forum, 31 January 2003

Muhannad Al Nabulsi holds a postgraduate degree in Chemical Engineering from TU Freiberg/Germany. He is a certified quality manager (from Manitoba University/Canada) and a board member of JSQ. His authorship credits include one book in TQM Implementation, with two more books currently in progress, and more than fifteen quality research papers. Having more than twenty-five years' experience in the cement industry, mainly in production, training, and quality control, he is now a free-lance quality lecturer and consultant. At the time of this writing, he was JCF Horizon 2001 Project Champion. E-mail: manabulsi@joinnet.com.jo