The Job Market, Project Management, and Other Thoughts

I’ve written – and you’ve commented – about the state of project management, current hiring practices by employers, and the relevance of the PMP certification through the Project Management Institute (PMI) as it pertains to finding your next project management gig.

What I found eye-opening…maybe even eye-popping…was some findings I read about recently concerning job boards and their ability to help individuals find positions.

PMP Certification

First, let’s cover the PMP certification – briefly again – and what we’ve discussed already so far. It’s a given that more and more postings are requiring PMP certification for prospective project managers. Nearly all others state PMP certification as being highly preferred or that first consideration goes to PMP candidates. And even on some of those candidates have been told by recruiters that company ‘X’ won’t even talk to you if you’re not certified.

Good or bad, employers are eliminating the need to wade through thousands of good resumes of experienced individuals by having their HR departments do initial screenings – in many cases – on the existence or non-existence of PMP certification for the candidate. I’ll maintain again that this is a bad and lazy practice, in my opinion, but I’ve already beaten this one to death, so I won’t go into it any further.

Most of the rest of the information for this article comes from August Cohen’s very comprehensive article entitled “Need a Job? Then Don’t Waste Time on Job Boards.”  You can read his full article here.

Job Board Findings

Now on to the recent job board findings. CareerXroads recently conducted their 8^th Annual Source of Hire Study and the findings for external hires were astounding…downright disappointing, I guess. If you’re looking for a job right now, brace yourselves because this is very surprising information…but there’s light at the end of the tunnel in the form of job board advice so keep reading on.

According to the study, CareerBuilder is accountable for 3.95% of all external hires, Monster is accountable for 3.14%, and HotJobs is accountable for 1.35%. Granted, Craigslist isn’t mentioned – it’s a flaky job search site at best – but this means that the Big 3 right now account for only 8.44% of all external hires. I never would have guessed it.

What does this mean to job seekers? At the very least it means don’t rely only on those three job boards – be sure to incorporate other sources (yes, including Craigslist), but also utilize sources like Twitter and LinkedIn and network as much as possible. And when you are using the job boards, be sure to keep your information fresh because that gets the attention of hiring organizations. Be careful on this one if you are currently employed and just looking or keeping your information updated – it also gets the attention of your own HR department. I can attest to that as I did a CareerBuilder refresh one time at CareerBuilder’s request and had to have a discussion with the PMO Director and HR. Geez.

Ways to Aid Your Search

As I mentioned, keep your job board info fresh. Just as you look for recent postings, HR departments are looking for recent resumes and if you keep yours updated, it looks new.

Here are a few ways you can help your online search process:

• Make sure your resume is uploaded in the exact format requested, e.g., .doc or .txt. Note that .docx is not widely accepted.

• Refresh your resume every week or two so it looks like a new submission and doesn’t get stale. Just as you search by date of position posted, sourcers search by date of resume posted.

• Use job board aggregators like Indeed.com or SimplyHired.com. These sites are great time savers as they provide an easily searchable database for thousands of boards in one location.

• Take advantage of industry association and niche job sites. And, don’t forget LinkedIn’s exclusive job postings.

• Apply directly to the company career board if possible. LinkUp.com is a nice website that features jobs aggregated exclusively from more than 22,000 company job boards.

• Create a resume that is rich with keywords that are reflected in the position description. This means you have to modify your resume for each specific position, every time.

• Label your resume document as “lastnamefirstname,” or “lastnamefirstname_position” to make it easier for the recipient to identify and remember you.

• Don’t put a date on your resume file (“resume_05-08”), as you don’t want to accentuate how long you may have been looking.

Dashboard Data for Government IT Projects

Since we’ve done a decent amount of discussion here on project status, project budgets, on schedule, behind schedule, and project dashboards in general, it was refreshing to read the federal government’s CIO, Vivek Kundra’s idea of making IT project data available for everyone to view. And he wants it completely unfiltered. He’s correct in stating that data gets too much massaging…that happens too much in the private sector – imagine how much it can happen in the public sector.

The following info comes from J. Nicholas Hoover’s article for InformationWeek and I find it a breath of fresh air for those of us who have been managing projects a long time and priding ourselves in presenting meaningful, realistic data even when it hurts. And I have worked a great deal in the public sector on large government projects – much bad news can get hidden if you choose to go that route. It’s nice to see them wanting to take the high road with the tax payers’ dollars.

Federal CIO Wants Unfiltered Data on IT Projects

Federal CIO Vivek Kundra is looking to improve the data that’s available on the effectiveness of government IT projects by tapping directly into systems that collect data on those projects.

Speaking during a town hall yesterday at the Open Government and Innovations Conference, Kundra said there are “too many people in between” the government’s recently launched IT Dashboard and the original sources of data made available there. The IT Dashboard is a Web site that discloses information about government IT projects, including whether those projects are on schedule and on budget. “Data gets massaged too many times,” Kundra said.

As part of the IT Dashboard, projects that are significantly over budget or behind schedule get highlighted in red in charts that show agency IT spending. Kundra acknowledged concerns among government IT professionals and CIOs that employees would be scrutinized and their job effectiveness judged on whether projects were in the red.

“It’s okay if a project is behind schedule as long as we understand what’s causing the delay,” he said. “Just because something’s red is not cause for panic.”

Kundra acknowledged that the IT Dashboard doesn’t do enough to recognize the successful outcomes of IT projects and said his office is working add that capability to the IT Dashboard. The challenge is to insure that performance and expenditure data are integrated in the process, he added.

Kundra said his office is looking at a number of federal regulations and policies, including the federal policy on cookies and the Paperwork Reduction Act, to assess whether they continue to make sense in today’s technology environment.

His team is also looking at FedBizOpps, the government site that lists procurement opportunities for private industry, to see if technology like RSS feeds can be added to make it more usable.

Data Risk and Cloud Computing

Most of the information in this article is derived from a portion of an article from InformationWeek’s website in it’s alert/managerisk section. As more organizations move toward cost-efficient cloud computing, the concern for their data security increases…at least it should. Many bury their heads in the sand, but as you will understand from this article, there are many concerns and often times no one is certain where in the cloud their data is residing.

Head in the Clouds

If you think you have risk management in hand, chances are cloud computing will shake that confidence. Assurances about data segregation, privacy, and security, while nothing new, take on added dimensions in cloud services because you don’t know where your data is most of the time. Don’t think cloud computing will affect your organization? It will. Surveys conducted by Deloitte’s Security & Privacy Services show that many companies already have moved to some outsourced computing “because you can’t argue with the dollars,” says Deloitte partner Rena Mears. “Stop asking if cloud computing is going to happen. It’s already happening.”

Knowing data’s location is fundamental to securing it, and the location of data may have significant legal implications. It’s a problem that Chiquita Brands tackles head on when considering external service providers. “The first step for Chiquita,” says CIO Manjit Singh, “is to understand the regulatory requirements for every country we operate in. We then know the requirements we need to meet to protect our sensitive data internally. Then we have to ask ourselves and local authorities what an external provider needs to show to demonstrate they can protect our data as well as Chiquita.”

To do that, cloud and software-as-a-service providers have to agree to periodic security assessments by external auditors chosen by Singh’s team, and Chiquita must thoroughly understand the policy and procedures of the service provider, including who has access to the company’s data and equipment. For example, Singh points out that many providers have one policy governing their contractors and another for their own employees. In other cases, the provider may outsource part of its operations to yet another service provider. “You need to be aware of what’s going on in the facility and not just what relates directly to yourselves, which is a step a lot of companies miss,” he says.

The economics of cloud computing are so compelling that SaaS vendors are starting to host their applications in a cloud service. Two examples are point-of-sale software vendor PayGo and healthcare information manager MedCommons, both of which use Amazon.com’s Elastic Compute Cloud as an option to host their SaaS offerings. For providers like them, data may go through a chain of hands, all of which need to be known and evaluated.

Assessing the Cloud Threat

As the Chiquita example points out, assessing cloud security is difficult and ongoing. Providers are inclined to ask you to trust that they’re handling your data securely, without providing a mechanism to verify if that trust is warranted.

One instrument often suggested for verification is SAS-70 assessments. SAS-70 is a standard that dictates how audits of service providers should be done, but the assessments cover only the operations that the provider wants covered, and often the only document you get to see is the auditor’s statement of opinion, which provides an overview of the scope of the assessment and whether the organization does what it says it does. What you don’t see, and what consultant Pironti recommends that providers not reveal, is the detailed auditor’s report, which lays out what the assessor found, including the tests performed.

Deloitte’s Mears is of the opinion that generally accepted practices will be developed for cloud computing providers to communicate clearly what they’re doing to comply with requirements to secure and manage sensitive data. “Providers can’t let everyone do their own assessment,” she says. “It’s not sustainable for them.”

One group that’s generating some buzz is the Cloud Security Alliance, a group comprising industry and customer organizations. The group’s initial Security Guidelines document includes a set of questions to ask providers, and another set to ask about your own organization’s readiness to adapt to cloud services. Jim Reavis, co-founder of the alliance, expects version 2.0 to be ready by October, providing more specific guidance, exploring the threats to cloud services in more detail, and providing more precise definitions.

Reavis believes it eventually will be mandatory for cloud providers to pass a security certification. The challenge for CSA is to create certification requirements that don’t suffer from PCI’s snapshot-in-time problem and that are directly applicable to cloud environments. In addition to working with the Information Systems Audit and Control Association, CSA will likely work with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the International Organization for Standardization, auditing and security groups, as well as enterprise IT, service providers, and other stakeholders to come up with meaningful assessment and certifications, Reavis says. CSA is gaining support with backing from big-name companies like Dell and eBay, as well as cloud providers.

Chiquita’s Singh says certifications are a starting point, but “we and other Fortune 500 companies wouldn’t be satisfied with a certification. We’d still require the right to have our own auditors perform an assessment. SMBs might be satisfied with them, but global companies view certifications as a starting point, from which we exercise the extra diligence of our own assessment to our requirements.”

Project Management: Is PMP Certification Worth It?

This is one of those topics that might draw some emotions from individuals so let me first tell you my situation and my thoughts. First, I’m not PMP certified, but I was headed in that direction…more on that in a moment. I applaud those who have taken the time and effort to get certified. In my experience and interactions with PMs, I’ve not seen any instance where a PMP certified PM was any ‘better’ than an experienced PM. Real experience is always the key. PMP certification means you passed the test, but it does also mean that you have training and some experience for certain and that you have the drive and dedication to get it done and achieve the certification and that’s a project in itself.

I was a PMI member back in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s when I worked at Rockwell Collins. It was something they provided for their PMs, but pushing for actual PMP certification wasn’t something they cared about. I was also managing up to 20 live projects at a time so I had no opportunity to move forward with the certification.

When I came to Las Vegas, a company I began working for in late 2004 did think it was important and wrote a clause into my hiring agreement calling for a $10k bump in pay within 6 months if I acquired my PMP certification. Naturally, I jumped on that idea and started to document my training and experience so that I could sit for the test. Unfortunately, some issues at the top of the company – which I will write about very soon in another article to be entitled “You Think YOUR Project is in Trouble!” – caused that organization to shut down and with it went my $10k incentive to get certified. Now it was time to find another position…fast.

I digress. Back to the topic at hand. Is PMP certification worth it? I personally think that the PMP designation after your name is a nice thing to have, but is no indication of how good a project manager you are or will be. Having PMP certification means that you have the proper amount of experience and training to sit for the test, and then that you correctly answered 61% of the answers on the exam. 61%.

Employers

The most frustrating thing about the PMP certification to me is the weight that employers place on this designation when looking for Project Managers. I hear this again and again from PMs looking for work. To these organizations, it’s an easy screening mechanism for their HR personnel. Unfortunately, that will screen out PMs with many years of very busy and successful management of projects who worked for organizations that placed no emphasis on PMP cert and therefore didn’t pay for PMI and the tests or PMs who just didn’t have the time it takes to document the info and sit for the test. That is wrong.

PMI

I’m not trying to knock PMP certication completely and I definitely applaud the efforts of the PMs out there who have successfully studied for and attained the PMP designation. However, I think that PMI has done a very good job of ensuring their own financially viability with this certification. If they wanted to take it a step further, they could easily triple their organization’s income if they were to create different levels of PMP certification. Let’s consider this scenario:

• 91-100% correct answers = PMP Black Belt
• 81-90% correct answers = PMP Brown Belt
• 71-80% correct answers = PMP Green Belt
• 61-70% correct answers = PMP Yellow Belt

Imagine if you took the PMP exam and got 90% right….how much would you pay or how many times would you gladly retake the test to get 91% or above and achieve black belt certification? Employers would be jumping on this and start requiring a certain level of certification or they won’t even consider you. PMI’s profits would soar.

PMI Processes / Real Life

PMI bases everything on the following 6 separate, but overlapping processes:

• Initiating
• Planning
• Executing
• Montoring
• Controlling
• Closing

These are great and there are PM and project activities that occur within each phase. However, here’s a frustrating thing for me. I write for a website that is designed to help out project managers with real-life tips culled from experience. I wrote a detailed article on each of the 8 phases of a general project management methodology that I use. I then wrote one article that contained a “quick guide” to this methodology. It outlines what the purpose of each phase is, what activities happen in each of those phases and what deliverables are generally expected out of each of those phases. This quick guide I wrote can be used by an inexperienced project manager to very quickly setup a project schedule shell for their project in MS Project or a web-based project tool like ProjectOffice.net.

However, when I published the article, I received a comment from someone saying that they had no idea what it was I was documenting…they couldn’t see past the 6 PMI processes. The 6 PMI processes won’t setup a project plan for you…they just tell you the ‘duh’ of what is involved in managing a project. They don’t tell you what phases need to occur and what you need to deliver and get signed off in order to be successful. In other words, they don’t give you real-life experience to help someone with. The concern was that this person read my quick guide and didn’t even understand it.

Summary

This article will probably offend some. Remember, I’m not saying PMP certification is a bad thing at all. I sometimes wish I had my PMP cert. But what is bad is that employers are quickly screening out experienced individuals up front for much less experienced PMP certified project managers. It should be a ‘nice-to-have.’ It’s a test, not real life and it should not be an in-or-out screening mechanism but I’m hearing repeatedly from PMs and organizations that it is. That’s frustrating for our industry. And it’s sad that it’s become such big business.

How to Make Your PMO More Visible

Visible? Did I say visible? What I think I really mean is viable. We all want our Project Management Office (PMO) to be visible, right? And, if the projects are flowing through it like they should be, then it probably is visible. The scary part is when some projects flow through it and others – possibly the big ticket, high dollar projects – aren’t.

Separate is Not Equal

It’s not wise to segregate like that. I worked at one very large aviation and engineering company in the late 90’s and early 2000’s leading all internal web development projects just prior to helping them build their PMO. There was an internal struggle to be the web project provider between our group, the Internet Team, and the other group, the Graphic Design Team. I truly was some strange internal political struggle. Our team eventually came out on top meaning all web development projects were channeled through us, but it was strange to see such an internal battle going on like that.

The same can be said for the PMO and the projects that are allowed to run through it. If you have a PMO in place, or are building one, then all projects should at least run THROUGH it – if not all are run BY it. All projects should be tracked by the PMO and status reporting should be run up through the PMO, even if the project ends up being managed elsewhere within the organization. If the high visibility projects aren’t even being channeled through the PMO for documentation and tracking, then you have a real problem brewing.

PMO Promotion

It is the responsibility of the PMO leadership to properly promote the PMO and help ensure its viability and visibility. Its viability is maintained by doing the following:

• Implementing proper and repeatable processes to consistently and successfully manage projects
• Implementing consistent templates for managing project and reporting status to customers and executive management
• Hiring competent, experienced Project Managers to lead projects for the organization
• Implementing proper compensation plans to retain good PM resources
• Implementing adequate training and on-boarding programs and processes to ensure that PMs are well-trained and up to speed on the PMO processes and practices

The PMO’s visibility is maintained by doing the following:

• Reporting project portfolio status on a regular basis and in a meaningful and useful format so that executive management realizes the PMO’s value
• Implementing solid PMO practices to ensure that the high-visibility customers are happy and referencable and the high-visibility projects are successful
• Inviting executive leadership to regularly attend weekly PMO meetings and sit in on project status meetings for the critical, high-visibility projects
• Managing project budgets thoroughly and reporting budget status up through executive leadership to show bottom-line PMO and Project Manager value

The PMO Director, as the leader of the PMO, must be a strong leader with pull inside the organization to ensure that these things happen. Otherwise, the PMO runs the danger of becoming obsolete or, at the very least, insignificant…and the mission critical projects will pass right by the PMO to special teams outside the PMO’s jurisdiction. Executive leadership must see value and ensuring that happens begins with the PMO leadership.

Summary

I’ve personally helped setup PMO’s and I’ve personally watched PMO’s fail. They’ve always failed for one of the following three reasons:

• Lack of strong, focused leadership
• Lack of repeatable process
• Lack of executive leadership support

The PMO must be formed and move forward with all three of these in place to ensure it’s success.