Book review: PMP: Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide

I recently got a copy of the 5th edition of PMP Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide, which is the partner text to the Review Guide and has been fully updated for the 4th edition of the PMBoK. Kim Heldman’s book is a weighty text, coming in at over 600 pages and with another two hours of audio on the included CD. It needs to be, as it covers the whole PMP syllabus in massive amounts of detail, with exam tips thrown in along the way.

I really like the way that Heldman writes, and she does a good job of describing the rather boring concepts that form the project management processes in a way that makes it interesting for the reader. Of course, you need to be at least vaguely interested in project management to find the book interesting, and it does help to be a PMP candidate, but it isn’t as dry as the Review Guide – this book is aimed at the beginner who needs to learn the concepts from scratch.

The book covers the basics of the project environment and the project charter before spending a fair amount of time discussing scope and requirements gathering. Chapters 4 and 5 cover scheduling and budgeting. With those out the way, Heldman goes on to write about risk management, resource planning, running a team, monitoring and controlling work and how to close down a project. There are also sections on procurement management and professional responsibility, which is a hot topic in the PMP exam.

Each section includes real world scenarios, exam hints and a final section on how the theory applies to the next project (or your current project, I suppose).

Heldman writes articulately about team management, which is unsurprising given that she says these topics are some of her favourites.

Although rewards and recognition help build a team, she writes, they can also kill morale if you don’t have an established method or criteria for handing them out. Track who is receiving awards throughout the project… Consider individual preferences and cultural differences when using rewards and recognitions. Some people don’t like to be recognized in front of a group; others thrive on it. Some people appreciate an honest thank-you with minimal fanfare, and others just won’t accept individual rewards as their culture doesn’t allow it. Keep this in mind when devising your reward system.

If this book was smaller and lighter I would seriously consider carrying it around with me, but unfortunately that isn’t practical. However, the entire book is available as a .pdf file on the CD, so you could print off a couple of pages to review on the train, or carry the thing around with you on your laptop if you wanted to study while you are on the road.

Overall, if you are after an interesting, comprehensive book and CD package to help you study for the PMP exam, this is it.

The Project Manager and Press Briefings

Thankfully, the projects I’ve run have not required that I go before the press and give any kind of a briefing – either pre- or post-project. The closest I’ve come is helping a customer put together written press briefings – these were in the case of US Airways for an enterprise-wide software implementation and Rockwell Collins for the release of their pharmacy website for employees and retirees for publication in a trade journal.

Carl Pritchard presents his take on press briefings and the PM’s role when leading those types of projects. The following text, for the most part, comes from his book entitled “The Project Management Communications Toolkit.” Again, I’m not wholeheartedly endorsing this process or the information contained here, but I think it is solid information nevertheless and would be helpful to project managers who find themselves faced with the need to “meet the press.”

Press Briefings

Few environments are as grueling for a project manager as when he or she must face the media. Press briefings are held to inform members of the media about the status of a project, its environment, or its supporting organization. They are intended to present the project organization (or host organization) in the best possible light. Press briefings are held when a project or its impact is sufficiently significant that public information campaigns using mass media are appropriate. They should be held whenever the project has achieved sufficient recognition that the project organization’s perspective on the effort is deemed to be of public interest. That recognition may be positive or negative in nature, and may be proactive or reactive, depending on the nature of the project organization.

The Subject Matter

The subject matter for a press briefing should be determined well in advance of the briefing to ensure that the correct information is shared and any information that the organization does not want to share is clearly defined for those hosting the briefing. Members of the media are often given “press kits” at such gatherings, highlighting corporate history, general information, past press releases, and any contact persons’ business cards. The organizational spokesperson (sometimes, the project manager) should open with a statement regarding the nature of the project and the issue(s) that brought the project into the public eye. The statement should anticipate any questions, objections, or concerns that may be raised. If broadcast media are present, consideration should be given to phrases, paragraphs, or references that may be presented in 8- to 20-second sections (classic “sound bites”).

A press briefing need not necessarily include question-and-answer periods, but keep in mind that most members of the media will have questions. Although the spokesperson is not compelled to answer these questions, failure to respond is sometimes interpreted as a lack of cooperation or as a sign of deviousness. In situations where off-the-cuff responses may be dangerous, it is wholly appropriate to offer to do supplemental research and respond at a later time. The most effective spokespersons will identify the time when the additional information will be available and how it will be made available. If “no comment” is the appropriate response, alternative means to couch that phrase can be very effective and can leave media representatives with something quotable. Saying “This would not be the time to offer comment on something of that nature,” followed by an iteration of the key point of the briefing affords the presenter the opportunity to emphasize what is important.

Summary

Press briefings are potentially volatile situations, but they are the host organization’s to control. Simple considerations (like morning coffee and comfortable seating arrangements) can go a long way to defuse a potentially hostile audience. Clear rules of conduct and engagement can also minimize the possibility that the session appears to be out of control—and the more that can be done to ensure a positive attitude and a forward-looking perspective, the better.

The Attributes of a Successful Project Manager – Part 3

In the finale of this three-part series we will look at further at Jason Chravat’s presentation of the attributes of a project manager from his book entitled “Project Management Nation: Tools, Techniques, and Goals for the New and Practicing IT Project Manager.”

In this segment, we’ll discuss the need for the project manager to be able to:

• Make timely and critical decisions
• Effectively select and manage a team of skilled IT resources
• Have a professional approach when dealing with management, the team, and the customer

Ability to Make Decisions

An important attribute of any project manager is the ability to make decisions on a project. In meetings, project managers are often challenged to make decisions that are crucial in moving the project forward. If the project manager cannot effectively make decisions, the project surely fail.

Ability to Select and Manage a Project Team

It is important that the project manager be able to draw up a preliminary list of people who will be needed on the project. He or she can be do this by selecting those individuals who are available within the organization and who possess the relevant skills and experience required by the project. The project manager should be able to guide and initiate the external hiring process for those team members who are unavailable. Key factors or selection criteria that should be kept in mind when selecting team members are:

• Candidates have the skills and expertise for the project
• Candidates are available to remain for the full duration required on the project
• Candidates are team players
• Candidates are results-orientated and can set goals
• Candidates are optimistic about the project and outcome
• Candidates are trustworthy
• Candidates are able to work on multiple tasks in isolation

Remember, once the project manager has selected the team members,the success of the project will depend on the manager’s ability to keep the team focused, optimistic, and committed to achieving the overall project objectives. However, it is not uncommon for personal problems to arise while working on a project, and the project manager should be able to identify many of the symptoms ahead of time. The project manager should have the experience and ability to work with all people, irrespective of any individual’s race, religion, nationality, age, or gender. The project manager and the individual should immediately deal with any conflict that arises, and the manager should use the most appropriate course of action to resolve the problem. Additionally, the ability to praise and recognize the project team is important. It is essential that when the team has worked hard to meet objectives, often under difficult circumstances, that they are awarded the recognition.

Having a Professional Approach

Project managers should want to be considered as professionals. The status affects the quality of life for all people on the project, organization, and even in society. Therefore, it becomes vital that a project manager conducts work in a professional manner in order to earn and maintain the confidence of team members, colleagues, employees, employers, clients, and the public. The following is a code of ethics that project managers should use to help maintain their professionalism:

• As project manager, I will strive to maintain high professional standards in the preparation and delivery of my projects, and I will be held accountable for the success or failure of those projects.
• Regarding the actual work aspect of my project, I will strive to provide the leadership, trust, tools, and support to ensure all projects are completed on time, within cost, specification, and to my clients’ requirements.

Professionalism refers to being able to encourage respect and honesty in all business-related matters and during the course of any project. It is important that project managers ensure that all client or employer information be kept confidential and not lead to a situation where there is a conflict of interest.

Project managers also have a duty to their respective communities, by ensuring that no project be implemented in any location where it could possibly place lives and property at risk. An appropriate quotation from one of history’s famous project managers can be used to describe ethics.

The general must be righteous. If he is not righteous, then he will not be severe. If he is not severe, then he will not be awesome. If he is notawesome, then the troops will not die for him. Thus righteousness is thehead of the army. —Sun Tzu

Work Risks to Your Advantage

I literally came up with this one in the shower last night. Not the concept…I’ve knowingly or unknowingly been doing this for years. But the idea for the article. I was thinking of the article entitled “When Project Management is Fun” and the concept of how keeping things edgy keeps people focused, energized, etc. That’s when it hit me. Risk is challenging. Risk is energizing. Fighting risk keeps a team cohesive. And it keeps a customer and vendor working in unison. Work it to your advantage.

It’s Never Easy

Everybody likes an easy, successful project and nobody likes and easy, successful project. No huge, visible, challenging project is every going to be easy and perfectly, swimmingly successful. Ever. If someone tells you their big project is running smoothly and perfectly then they are lying. When you tie together a group of opinionated, highly skilled individuals who also have other responsibilities than the ones you give them AND you add a customer with high expectations and large expenditures AND you sprinkle in an enterprise-wide solution with somewhat vague requirements (because requirements ALWAYS have some degree of vagueness to them), there’s no way it’s going to go perfectly or smoothly.

It may be successful….highly successful, but it will always take a good deal of effort to get there and you’ll have to fight your share of adversity along the way. And make your management know it…because you and your team might as well get the recognition for it at the end of the engagement. Let them know it wasn’t easy…let them know it was tough. Tell the CEO if you can.

Work the Risks

So, knowing that your large project is not going to go through the motions without risks and issues coming into the picture, focus a decent amount of effort on identifying and managing those issues and risks and make the entire project team own them…both the delivery side and the customer side. Ownership breeds caring…which breeds focus…which breeds productivity and responsibility and accountability. Your delivery team needs to be more than the resources who act on the tasks their assigned from the schedule.

You know how your workday seems more satisfying and goes faster when there is some degree of non-monotonous activities going on? Things that are out of the norm. Wrenches thrown in here and there…fires to fight. The same goes for the project. Don’t get me wrong, if I have 5 or 6 projects I’m leading at once, I’d prefer to not have multiple fires to fight on each project at the same time. I wouldn’t even mind if 3-4 of those projects were easy ones. But having fires around – and unmitigated risks can become huge fires – then things can never get boring. Let me clarify…I’m not saying one should let those risks and issues become big fires. But the challenge of identifying, assigning, managing and mitigating those risks and issues breeds creativity and brings a team together like nothing else. You don’t have to actually face the adversity…but knowing it’s out there if you don’t work together and do something about it brings a team together on a common goal and can make for a very enjoyable…and successful project.

Summary

The idea is to stay a step or 10 ahead of the risks and issues on the project. Identify them early with your team and with the customer. Assign them to individuals or groups of individuals. Come up with strategies to mitigate those risks if they should actually occur. And keep managing them and holding people accountable to them throughout the engagement. Those risks and issues hold the highest likelihood of derailing your project and making you unsuccessful. So manage them well and manage them carefully. And delegate….delegate often and well.

Balancing Critical Project Success Factors – Introduction

I found this excerpt to be applicable to what I’ve been writing about customer satisfaction lately from a project management perspective as well as a worthwhile read overall. This comes from Paul Tinnirello’s book entitled “New Directions in Project Management”.

In this section, Mr. Tinnirello introduces 5 prescriptions for preserving the balance between project success factors. Over the next few days we’ll look at each 5 of those prescriptions in greater detail. Read on….

A Question of Balance

As IT budgets have soared and user demands for optimal ROI have increased, managing quality, time, and cost must be accomplished with recognition of a fourth critical project factor — customer satisfaction. User complaints about a lack of responsiveness, the inability of IT professionals to engage users about their IT needs in “user-friendly” terms, a lack of reliability about time lines along with related service sins have all produced a heightened awareness of customer satisfaction and the means used to secure it in many IT organizations.

To address the greater importance of customer satisfaction, the quality, time, and cost framework introduced earlier has been expanded. Exhibit 1 displays this expanded view of IT project management.

The implication of the quality, time, and cost framework is that IT professionals must balance alignment among the task factors (i.e., quality, time, and cost) with the press of the relationship factors (i.e., customer service and customer satisfaction). If IT professionals allow the balance to tip too much in the favor of task factors, too little emphasis is given to the relationship factors. Project managers may successfully complete the tasks on their project plans but create off-target work products and frustrated customers.

On the other hand, if the balance is allowed to tip too much in favor of the relationship factor, the opportunity to deliver timely and cost effective work products is lost. Creating a service balance is the second major theme underlying changes in the IT field. When the balance is achieved and maintained, IT professionals come to be respected as business partners by users because they build useful work products for satisfied customers.

Viewing IT work through the lens of this project management framework emphasizes the importance of balancing four critical project factors: quality, time, cost, and customer satisfaction during project planning and later in the project life cycle. To achieve and maintain this balance, IT professionals must directly engage in the power and influence dynamics of implementing organizational innovation.

Productively managing these dynamics helps preserve the balance between the project factors and enhances the IT professional’s ability to manage priority pressure.

Five prescriptions for achieving this are as follows:

• Sell good ideas by emphasizing benefits that the user or customer perceives as valuable.

• Build a common vision of project outcomes and how people will work together to achieve them.

• Generate commitment to ideas or implementation plans by getting users to modify them in the direction of personal and business interests.

• Engage conflicts directly and resolve them efficiently and effectively.

• Assertively enforce standards of IT excellence.

Paul C. Tinnirello is the editor of “New Directions in Project Management” from the Best Practices Series.