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Neall Alcott, Springhouse Education and Consulting Services VP of Technology, has been invited to speak at the PMI World Congress, October 18-21, 2008. Neall will be sharing the speaking bill with other Enterprise Project Management (EPM) experts and will feature a keynote address by Former U.S. Secretary of State and World Leader Colin Powell.
Springhouse’s expertise in deployment and support of the Microsoft Enterprise Project Management suite of tools has raised Springhouse to be recognized as a premiere partner. In addition to the presentation at the PMI World Congress, Springhouse is also presenting on EPM topics at the regional EPM Conferences held in the Philadelphia and Washington, DC markets throughout October.
Neall will be presenting on the topic of Mitigating Project Risk through Microsoft Project Certification. His talk will introduce new certification processes, share the success metrics that come with certification, and outline the certification process.
“We are excited that organizations are seeing the value of training and certification in mitigating risk on major projects,” says Alcott, “Our experience has proven that Client Satisfaction is consistently higher for those teams with high concentrations of Microsoft certified team members. Our goal at Springhouse is to provide those skills to help get teams to that level of knowledge, efficiency and validation.”
Read More about the PMI World Congress.
About Springhouse Education and Consulting Services
Springhouse, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for Learning Solutions and a PMI Registered Education Provider (REP), has provided world-class education & consulting services since 1989. Our trainers & consultants are experienced in both real-world implementations and professional classroom education techniques, resulting in the highest quality learning experience available! Visit Springhouse on the web at http://www.springhouse.com.
For More Information Contact:
Jeff Tincher
PRINFO@springhouse.com
www.springhouse.com
610-321-2090
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Filed Under Project Management |
We’ll Simplify your ITIL® Training and Certification
Springhouse Education and Consulting Services would like to announce that we have recently added Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) training back to our curriculum. We will be offering three courses to bring you and your organization up to current ITIL V3 certification.
Familiar with ITIL?
The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a set of best practices that may be used to deliver high quality IT services. ITIL’s body of knowledge represents the consensus derived from over a decade of work and experience by thousands of IT professionals world-wide, earning for it the status as de facto world standard for IT service management best practices. ITIL Version 3 (V3) is the latest evolution of ITIL which puts heavy emphasis on the alignment of IT to the business.
Looking to Implement ITIL?
If you or your organization is looking to implement ITIL V3, our ITIL V3 Strategy Workshop will assist with developing a strategy for implementation and help define and prioritize the problems to be solved and the opportunities to be capitalized on. This is a two day ITIL consultant-delivered workshop based on the new ITIL® V3 publication suite. Learn more about this workshop.
“I currently hold no ITIL certification”
With our new partnership and training offerings, Springhouse can help get you the training and certification you need. Our 3-day ITIL V3 Foundations course and certification is intended for IT Managers, IT Support Staff, Business Managers and Process Owners, Service Providers and System Integrators. The ITIL V3 Foundations course will prepare you to take the ITIL V3 Foundation Certificate in IT Service Management.
“I hold just the V2 Foundation certificate and will take only V3 courses”
Since you already hold certification in V2, Springhouse can help update your certification to V3. Just take our ITIL V3 Foundation Bridge Course.
This is an intensive 1-day course that introduces learners to the lifecycle of managing IT services to deliver to business expectations. This Bridging Course is designed as an update for candidates who hold Foundation certificates from earlier versions of ITIL to a level of knowledge and understanding in line with the ITIL® v3 Foundation Certificate in IT Service Management. Learn more about this bridge course.
Need Additional Information?
You can call and speak to our specialists and ask questions and receive answers to your ITIL or other training needs. Please call us at 610-321-2090 to discuss all of your training options.
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Filed Under Project Management |
Earned value analysis is a tool that can be used to track performance on your project. From a PMI perspective, it’s part of the cost control and schedule control processes.
In this writeup, I’m simply going to start you off with the four critical pieces of data that are used as the framework.
BAC (Budget at Completion) = Baseline budget
EV (Earned Value; formerly known as Budgeted Cost of Work Performed) = Value of the work completed
PV (Planned Value; formerly known as Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled) = Value of the work scheduled
AC (Actual Cost; formerly knowns as Actual Cost of Work Performed) = How much was spent
So how are they used? Let’s just say that you have a project that requires you to create 10 widgets, each estimated to take a $1,000 and 1 day to produce. We decided to track progress at the end of day 5 and realize that we only produced 4 widgets and spent $6,000. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recognize that we are behind schedule and overbudget but let’s take a look at the earned value numbers.
Each widget was estimated to take $1,000 and since we are expected to produce 10 of them, the overall project budget at the start was $10,000. Therefore, the BAC is simply $10,000. At day 5, we produced only 4 widgets, thus the value of the work completed, or EV, is $4,000. However, we had planned on completing 1 per day so the PV at day 5 is $5,000. We also took $6,000 to produce those 5 widgets which gives us a AC of $6,000.
That’s the toughest part of earned value. — plucking those four pieces of data. The rest are just plugged into formulas.
In my future writings, I’ll show you how to calculate the other earned value components and explain how you can use them to manage expectations. I’ll even show you how you can use MS Project to present all of it to you with a few clicks!
Filed Under Project Management |
New Microsoft Project Exams
By Gabe Y
Microsoft has released their new MS Project certifications and they are on par with their other serious certs.
70-632 Microsoft Project 2007 Desktop, Managing Projects
70-633 Microsoft Project 2007 Server, Managing Projects
70-634 Microsoft Project 2007 Server, Managing Projects and Programs
The first two are MCTS (Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist) exams, while the last is a MCITP (Microsoft Certified IT Professional). The MCITP also requires achieving the two MCTS credentials first.
I took the 70-632 exam last Fall when it became available and although I passed easily, I was surprised at the difficulty of the exam. Almost all questions were scenario based and I really had to not only understand MS Project inside and out, but also have project management knowledge.
Today, I took the 70-633 exam and passed. It was a very similar format and again, I was impressed with the number of scenarios that required me to really think. That said, I took these exams without the help of practice exams, which I’m sure would have made the process a tad easier.
Now that the 70-634 is actually available, I plan on taking that soon as well. Stay tuned…
Filed Under Project Management |
As I stated one of my posts last week, your main job at your meetings is to be the gatekeeper. So how do you take notes when you’re controlling the flow of communications? You don’t!
For example, when I teach my courses, I know my material inside and out. However, from time to time, I play a game with my students and just because I have to keep score, it detracts from my control. I either miss part of the discussion or make a scoring mistake (which the students would quickly correct!). It’s nearly impossible to do both of those things at once.
So who takes notes? The note taker’s official role is Recorder or Scribe. The PM must be the gatekeeper but the recorder can be anyone. Find an administrative assistant, project coordinator, business analyst, or intern. Just make sure it’s not you. If you must, ask someone who’s going to be the meeting anyway and kindly ask him to take notes for the team so you can focus running the meeting.
Filed Under Project Management |
Of all the “roles” project managers can play during a meeting, there’s only one that is crucial — that’s the gatekeeper. Sure, it may sound bad (partially because of Sigourney Weaver’s role in the movie Ghostbusters!), but it simply means that you control the flow of the communications.
In my opinion, there’s nothing worse than sitting in a meeting and watching the project manager have little or no control of the discussion. Not only can the meeting become chaotic, but it also poorly reflects on the perceived competency of the project manager. When there are disruptions, sidebar conversations, topics totally off on a tangent, or someone else “running the show”, team members undoubtedly lose confidence in the project manager’s ability to lead.
This does not mean you are to boss people around. Just use your own style and control who says what and when. It may be advantageous to have an agenda so when someone pulls you off it, just refer back to the agenda to reel the discussion back on track. Jot down these off-topics and address them offline.
Filed Under Project Management |
Every class I teach, I write my name, a welcome message with the course title, and the following two words on the board:
Manage Expectations
Take a moment and think of every good project manager you ever have worked with. I guarantee these folks communicated to you what is occurring, when things were changing, and what is going to happen; in other words, they managed your expectations. They may not be the ones with the prettiest Gantt charts or the best dressed or the most entertaining (though I must admit those things could help). Rather, they are simply excellent at telling accurate stories — verbally and nonverbally.
As long as you’re wearing a PM hat, if you’re not managing expectations, with very few exceptions, I’m not really sure what you’re doing then. Perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate your daily priorities. Every meeting you run, every requirement you capture, every email you send, and every report you create, you better be managing expectations.
If you can remember those two words, your job will be much, much easier. Trust me on this tip: paste those two words on top of your monitor so you can see them all day long. It will provide you with a constant reminder of what your job is all about. Everything else is gravy. And you know, gravy without the turkey is not all that tasty.
Filed Under Project Management |
Upcoming Event: Enterprise Project Management
By Jeff Tincher
Learn what an EPM Solution can do for the operational efficiency and bottom line of your organization.
We are holding two Executive Briefing events on January 22nd, one in Malvern, PA and the other is in Pittsburgh, PA. To register and learn more, click here.
See the Microsoft EPM System in action including Project 2007 Desktop, Project Server 2007 and Portfolio Server 2007 . Springhouse EPM Consultants will be on hand, as well as Microsoft EPM Solution Specialists to address specific business and technical questions. We will also discuss recommended training paths that will prepare you and your organization for EPM.
EPM Demo
The EPM Demo is a one hour demonstration of the Microsoft EPM product line as well as a description of the various components in the Springhouse EPM Solution Framework.
Project Management Tracks
Project Management is an increasingly in-demand skill set. With the myriad of training courses available, how can you choose those that are of the greatest value to you? Springhouse has created Project Management Tracks to assist you in your training choices.
Register for this event and view our other events by clicking here.
Filed Under General, Project Management |
Many new users to MS Project, or any other project management tool for that matter, do not set baselines for their project files. Without a baseline, however, a you can never really accurately gauge performance on the project. For instance, you won’t see variances or earned value data.
A baseline is what I call an original snapshot of your project. When you set a baseline (MS Project 2007 calls it ‘Set baseline’; all previous versions refer to it as ‘Save baseline’), you are essentially saving Start, Finish, Duration, Work, and Cost data for the entire project, each subproject, and each subtask.
Although you may have multiple baselines for each project (up to 11 baselines in MS Project), nearly all of my clients and students only have a need for one. I usually recommend only using one anyway since there is no quick way to extract those other baselines without additional configuration. Anyway, I’ll save that topic for another day.
In the meantime, here are some general best practices for setting baselines:
- Set your baseline when you are ready to begin the project. That means when it has been approved, the day before, the morning of, etc…
- Only clear baselines when you don’t want to see baseline data in your tables and views. Otherwise, simply set the baseline again and MS Project will overwrite the previous baseline.
- If you have new tasks during the project, you can save a baseline on only those tasks so you don’t have to save the baseline for the entire project.
- Interim plans are similar to baselines but MS Project only saves Start and Finish data.
Filed Under Microsoft Project, Project Management, Project Server |
Skipping Questions on Your PMP Exam
By Gabe Y
A commonly asked question when I teach my PMP exam prep course is “When I’m taking the PMP exam, can I skip the questions that I don’t know?”
Let’s take some of the guesswork out of that. You should never skip any question on the exam! That’s because you are not penalized for wrong answers (unlike the SAT exam you took way back in high school).
In the current version of the PMP exam, you have four choices for each of the 200 questions. If you know the answer for a question, choose an answer and move on. If you don’t know the answer, or at least not totally confident of the answer, choose an answer anyway and mark the question before moving on, which can be done by simply clicking the little checkbox in the corner of your screen.
You’ll have an opportunity to come back to all your marked questions later to review your choice. Throughout the rest of the exam, other questions may trigger your memory for the marked questions.
Just remember to choose what you feel is the best answer before moving on, just in case you don’t have time to get back to that question. You definitely don’t want to submit the exam with blank answers. Afterall, a 25% chance of getting a question correct is better than 0%, right?
Springhouse PMP Courses:
PMI Project Management Course (5 days)
Filed Under Project Management |
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