Journals/(Postings)

PMP Exam or Product Questions or Comments  - (157) postings!

Software Engineering or SE Product Discussion  - (32) postings!

Directors Journal, The Software Engineering Perspective

Project Management study materials and the additions to the bookshelves from Amazon.com:

Indespensible for PMP review: A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, Third Edition (PMBOK Guides)

Don't forget an iPod for a virtual boot camp ... Apple 80 GB iPod classic (Black) (iPod can rest easily on a bookshelf).

Maybe the current best PMP exam simulator: PM FASTrack: PMP Exam Simulation Software, Version 5

Practice Standard for Work Breakdown Structures

Pmbok Q&A (Cases in Project and Program Management Series)

A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, Third Edition (PMBOK Guides)

Guia de los Fundamentos de la Direccion de Proyectos/Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge: Official Spanish Translation ((Pmbok Guide))

Other audio materials:

The Portable PMP® Prep: Conversations on Passing the PMP® Exam

Hot Topics, Audio Flashcards for Passing the PMP and CAPM Exams, 4th Edition

PMP Exam Success Series: Terminology and Processes MP3 Audio CD

Technical reads reviewed:

Microsoft(R) Office Project Server 2007 Unleashed

The architecture of Project Server 2007 contains significant changes.

Prior version employed ODBC to connect to the server, which is problematic over low bandwidth & high latency connections. This problem is often skirted by remotely using a PC with the same LAN as the server.

The 2007 version leverages SOAP to access the server. Although this facilitates clients over low bandwidth \ high latency connections, it adds complex queuing that must be managed by an administrator.

Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products (The Agile Software Development Series)

Some of the salient thoughts I gained from this book:

• Deliver value to customers.
• Envision the objective.
• Create emergent results.
• Evolution is a good thing (particularly when applied to software development).
• Create a visual image of the product.
• Exploration acts as a project barometer.

The objectives of Agile Project Management or APM, include: innovation, adaptability, and reliability. Reliable innovation, as opposed to unreliable innovation that has permeated the marketplace over the last couple decades. Unreliable innovation is marked by the fear to buy anything new, which APM seeks to overcome.

APM emphasizes working products over comprehensive documentation. Ra, ra for that. Corporate America pre-current recessionary times appears to still be enamored with piles of documentation. Anything worth doing is worth writing 1000 or more pages about first. Agile seeks to bring some sanity to that paradigm. This attitude is preemted by responding to change instead of following a plan. This departure from the current PMI model of plan-do is more "envision-explore", with an adaptive instead of anticipatory bent. Both forms of project intel have their merits, but here at AskaGuide, we prefer the agile approach.

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation is not so different from the PMI attitude, but one of the nine knowledge areas, Procurement Management, would become Customer Management if Agile held sway with PMI. As a PMP, I can say that procurement and contracting is here to stay, but without buy-in from customers, there is effectively not a project to speak of.

Agility is balance with maneuverablilty. A ballet if you will. It is present in even the roughest team sports in the winning touchdown, the grand slam home run, the 20 foot swish in basketball and in the individual art of the perfect fly cast and sinking the 20 foot putt. Didn't they have proms in ancient Rome? They built roads that survive to this day.

The APM framework (Highsmith 2004) has five phases: envision, speculation, explore, adapt, and close. Each phase has supporting practices.

Simplification is integral to the processs.

Lean thinking led to the agile movement. The Japanese auto industry in the 80s systematically eliminated waste in their process. Much of the "improvement" activities in any organization (CMM, ISO, Six Sigma, TQM, BPR) add additional layers of an already bureaucratic process. They don't eliminate waste. They don't encourage innovation. They are about compliance, not adding value to the customer. Lean thinking separates delivery from compliance. Some compliance activities are necessary. Pay your taxes. Obey the speed limit.

Exploration is a good thing. A necessary thing to the survival of any organization, and they find our about it sooner or later. The agile manager encourages it from the start, or at least by the phase three, after envisioning and speculating.

Adaptive, self-organizing, self-disiplined teams are at the heart of the agile project. The key is getting the right people, articulating a vision for those people, then encouraging communication amongst them, but insisting on accountability emphasizing steering not controlling.

Simplification is paramount to agile success. Take Nordstrom for example, where the book of rules for the company fits on a 3"x5" card, where upon it is written: Rule #1: Use your good judgement in all situations. There will be no additional rules.

Process gets a bad rap in agile circles because it is thought of as static and difficult to change. The agile process ties "process" to business objectives. Vision documents, flipcharts, project data sheets, project objective statements, etc., all are process artifiacts, but without the "fat" inherent in the non-agile world. In the agile way, every project needs a project manager and a product manager. Within a team there should be a customer team and a development team. If, as a PMP, I read the PMBoK properly, in smaller projects these may be one in the same team. Here I begin to question the agile process as being truly lean. It appears to arbitrarily dicohotomize into the very thing it tries to lean out. But then I read that Highsmith believes excessive, inflexible planning may hinder adaptation and innovation. I agree, and I do like the reliance upon old-fashioned 3x5 or larger cards for "performance requirements" and other project and product management components. At the very least, the highly effective (I have done this) daily team integration meeting outlined on pgs. 192-3, along with the details on the "hub" is worth the price of the book. What do you think? Read the book, and let us know via our blog at askaguidectt.blogspot.com.

Microsoft Office Project 2007 Inside Out

The first thing that impressed me about this book upon unpacking it from the superior shipping material Amazon uses, it the thickness of the tome. It is over 1000 pages! It includes a CD with post-printing supplementary chapters and additional Ebooks. I found the Windows Vista Product Guide very useful. MS Office Project 2007 has a slew of new features. I like the visual reports that compile and export project information to either Excel or Visio. Online analytical processing (OLAP) cubes enable identification of sets of fields to build pivot tables or diagrams for visual reports.

PMI will no doubt endorse the ability of Project 2007 to manage dependencies on deliverables, as the deliverables orientation is a PMIism. MSP 2007 goes a long way toward helping the PM identify the project's milestones, deliverables and tasks, and then provide a comprehensive control and analysis tool. Chapter 3, entitled "Starting a New Project" is particularly refreshing, with colorful analogies of the project vision and the role of the project manager that uses a sophisticated tool like Project 2007 to help manage and see that big picture. Chapter 5 and much of the theme of the text is a pragmatic task scheduling orientation, toward deliverable ends.

Please shop for MP3 and 4 players as well as laptops, etc., etc., from our friends at BuyComps4Less.com (and tell them we sent you).