Saturday, April 25, 2009

How to claim for 60 PDUs fast!

4 comments
Are you a PMP ? Ok this is the most important post Im going to write in this blog for you .If you are also a PMP in my category who waited till the last moment to claim PDUs ( Please I don’t recommend that period! PMI can always reject what you claim so you need time for that) and in the mission of saving your title for another 3 years.. This post will sound music to you. First thank you Shawan Futter(http://www.theicpm.com/) ,Dr. Madhu and Cornelius (http://www.thepmpodcast.com/) for all the help. Ok Here we go. 15 points – Category 2 SDL If you are a regular listener of PMPodcast , (If not you can start now ) claim 15 points per one cycle.. (http://www.thepmpodcast.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=51&Itemid=33) has more details 15 Points – Category 2h If you are really doing PM related work, you can claim 5 for each year so you got another 15. Now itself you got 30., ok the next 30 is the challenge.. I will do it and update the post.. :) wait ….
Here you go for the next 30..
10 Points – Category 2g
Have you done any research on new Project Management method or framework ? why not creating a presentation on that as training material and train your own colleagues ? Or if you are in to PM consultancy, you can use that for various teams training. There you can get 10 PDUs.

5 Points – Category 2 Activity
Create a Project Management forum in your own company with people who are interested to share knowledge and talk about Project Management related stuff. You are the moderator of this forum, have weekly meetings.. there you can collect 5 PDUs.

15 Points – category 5
This is really a good one . Under volunteer activity you know that you can claim PDUs for your PM subject specific blog? You can claim 5 points per year so you can get maximum of 15 points there. But be honest they do an audit J

There are many more available. If you are doing some formal higher studies on Project Management, if you do a research degree and publish journals, you can collect many PDUs easily. But above is the most easiest path I have found.

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Special note for Sri Lankan PMPs who will be losing their credentials soon…. I know there are lots of PMPs in SL right now.. and I know many of them are going to lose their credentials this year :) I was one of them before. Just like you guys, I also like to attend to worldwide seminars, conferences and earn PDUS but there is a big price to pay for these as we are located in SL. Traveling is very costly and these seminars are costly when you convert to Rupees. I know there are ways that you can purchase PM stuff, learn and then claim for PDUs. …Again you need money.. I know most of us are not invited to address our PM chapter dinners etc ;-) so we don’t get PDUs from that way. In the same time most of us have not written any books or published journals. Then how do we do this??? Don’t worry … Still you can claim for PDUs for what you have done .. Remember how hard it was for us to do this PMP exam.. Sooo many questions..PMBOK guides, online test exams, remembering inputs and outputs of each phase of the cycle ( Shoot me !! ) , Rita’s book.. oh its a nightmare.. So don’t lose what you have gained in hard way.. Actually I also believed that earning PDUs is unbelievably difficult task till few PMPs guided me on how to do this without spending any money. All what you have to do is all the days do your reading, participate online forums etc. , help other Project managers and practice as a Project Management professional. I specially thought to post this blog post for you guys to help to claim PDUs. I will improve this post to make it much more usable as much as information I find day by day…

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

SQL Server Books..

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Okii.. This is not about Project Management.. But something which I think worth dedicating a post of my blog for.

In the past I’ve been very lucky to work with colleagues who have quite unique skills in IT industry and the guys who pitched the top in their own technical domains.. They have been always a great inspiration to me..

This is another breakthrough of one of my current colleagues at Exilesoft., He published 2 Books.. WOW can you believe this.. I hardly can write a half page blog post.. But this guy, having 2 small kids at home, doing really a good job at office.. wrote 2 books..Unbelievable... (Of course Sri Lankan men don’t work at home ;-) that’s a different story )

Check his books and his blog here..

http://dbfriend.blogspot.com/2009/02/two-books-from-sql-server-central.html

http://dbfriend.blogspot.com/2009/02/book-on-sql-server-replication.html

His blog http://databasenews24x7.blogspot.com/

He is a great inspiration to me !!! J and I wish him all the success. !

Sunday, April 19, 2009

PMBOK guide for free..

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You can download the 4th Edition of PMBOK guide free now..
To access the digital edition of the PMBOK® Guide:
Visit www.PMI.org
Logon to Your Members Area
Select the Resources tab
Go to Global Standards Library
Click on "Library of PMI Global Standards"
Click on "Projects (View Details)
Right Click on Language and select "Save Target As.."

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

New Scrum tool in the market - Agilo...

1 comments
Good news is that I found this “seems to be cool “ Agile PM tool “Agilo”
http://www.agile42.com/cms/pages/tools/
The bad news is that they charge 29 Euro for 30 day trial.. Smart ha.. ;-)

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Newbie to Agile.. Some random things based on my experience so far..

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1. Scrum is only one of the Agile methods. There are many. But at the moment Scrum is the most popular due to its simplicity and not forgetting the scrum alliance marketing effort too.. ;-)

2. I had a situation where the product owner had an idea.. Agile is no documentation.. period!.. This is not right! If you look at what Agile Manifesto says “they prefer working software over comprehensive documentation and not over any documentation. The point is that more effort should be for making software and not for making documentation. But we always need simple good documentation in software. Which is a known factor.

3. Can the none technical Project Manager becomes the Scrum master? My answer is YES. But still if you have a choice, go for the technical guy. Because in Scrum the “Management “ is very less. All what you have is team work and coordination and resolving impediments. When the Scrum master is a techie he will be very efficient in conducting the scrum stand up meetings in the morning and resolving technical impediments for the team members to sign in for respective tasks. But still if the scrum master is none technical.. its team work.. get the techies to help you in all the aspects…

4. Sometimes I see many think that you don’t have to commit on a release date in scrum. No.. in real world it doesn’t happen like that. There is always a tentative date.. But what happens is that based on the changes to the PB, your time expansions or reductions become much more visible to the product owner. Therefore there will be lesser problems to convince on expanded time lines

5. How do we do the DB design , Architecture UI themes etc? Part by part for each delivery? No what best I have experienced is that have a pre sprint on those high level tasks which you need to perform for the whole project at once. But minimize them and have only the vital ones.

6. How do we use Scrum for research projects? – I think it’s the ideal. Very uncertain type of work.. Scrum works fine !

7. Do we still have to do reporting to the management? YeAAS – Recently I read an Article by Mike and he suggest to continue the same type of reporting as much as possible till Agile thinking mature in the organization.

8. Is Gantt charts needed.. For me the answer is “NO” but again Ive seen many agile gurus have mentioned that .. use it as a communication tool if really needed by someone.. But personally I don’t like Gantt charts..

9. Is MS Project needed for Scrum : NOOOOO

10. How about the WBS ? I say keep it as the component diagram for the project.. this has many advantages over disadvantages.

11. How long a waterfall team will take to convert to a scrum team: My experience is 2 days most the time.

12. Is planning Poker a must? Nope Nope.. But when you don’t play cards some team members start to play ;-) specially in SL context not all team members talk. Planning poker help to define your ideas and stand by it ., then there will be so much valuable points coming from the team about a particular user story. I find it helpful.

13. Do you only assign the weight to a task in the sprint? No for me number of hours at this point is also important.. the secret is not more than 16 hours per task.

14. Can you compare velocity of multiple teams to identify team performance? : NO because there is no base for that. Different team may assess weight to similar tasks differently.

15. How do you practice scrum in outsourced Projects? A million dollar question. But still possible.. there are many tools which may help with customer communication when it comes to product backlog and sprint backlog. The secret is ask the product backlog in advance.. so you can be well prepared..

16. Will the PO always write user stories?.. Hmm…….. :)Somebody has to do all the work sometimes…

17. One tip I would give is that when playing planning poker.. get the moderator to write notes about the requirements elaborated by the PO and the team. Recording the conversation is really a good idea.

Friday, April 03, 2009

Here I am.. This is me :-)

8 comments
PM Network April Issue 2009
PM Network April Issue 2009 thush_ksnz1981
Be a PMP
 

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