Dear PM Advisor. January 21, 2013

Dear PM Advisor,

A lot of people around me have been getting their PMP certification. Some of them are right out of college. I've been managing projects for 20 years. Is it important to get it and what is it even worth if people with no experience are getting it? 

Old Fogie in Seattle.

Dear Old Fogie,

I studied for and received my PMP certification back in 1999. My number was somewhere around 14,000. My nephew just got his and his number was 2 million something. It has certainly become more popular. When I first received mine, I had to explain to people that PMP was not shorthand for my night job. Now everyone seems to know what it means.

Many jobs are not open to those without the certification. It is also seen as almost like a degree, you need to have it in your tool-kit to be considered a serious Project Manager. So the answer to your first question is: Yes, it is important to get the certification. It is worth getting it, just so that you don't get beaten out for a great PM gig by some kid with a PMP. If you both have it, the sponsor will pick the one with more experience.

But I've also noticed the same trend that people are getting this certification right out of college. I don't like this trend. It cheapens the certification. The pre-requisites are 7500 hours of project management experience but college students are making their coursework and course-projects fit the requirements. Then they pass the test and suddenly they are PMPs. I don't feel that they know what real projects are like yet.

The Project Management Institute gets $500 for everyone who takes the test so they are motivated to make it as accessible as possible. They have also added many other certifications to gain more money here. I haven't seen my dues diminish along with this huge surge of income so I can only assume that the leadership of this 'Not for profit' organization is doing quite well these days.

To answer your second question: It is slowly losing its value as more and more inexperienced people are gaining the certification. PMI better watch out that it doesn't kill the golden goose.

The greatest value I received from taking the test was what I learned while studying for it. I exposed myself to a lot of interesting concepts I knew nothing about. I may never use some of the areas like contract negotiations or formal project closure but it was nice to learn about aspects my team-members typically do.

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send me your questions at bfieggen@gmail.com

Weisel is a weasel

In a previous post I complained about Representative Weiner showing off all but his wiener in text messages. In this one we have a similar problem. Investment banker Weisel is trying to weasel out of any knowledge of Lance Armstrong doping during his Tour de France victories.

Really?

Harry Truman was famous for saying 'The buck stops here' and lots of other leaders feel the same way. But this Weisel guy claims to have had no clue that there was any doping going on with the group he funded.

Come on! If I was suspicious and care almost nothing for these cyclists, how could the leader of the group not have heard? And having heard, wouldn't he want to check into it? Pretty hard? A good leader would do so. Maybe some people like to live up to their names. Weiner with his wiener and Weisel being a weasel.

Dear PM Advisor January 14, 2013

Dear PM Advisor,

I have been running a project that was delayed for several months beyond the end date due to contract negotiations. My company's legal team caused most of the delays. Now they have signed off and the vendor is just about to approve it from their end. I expect their signature tomorrow.

Meanwhile, my company's purchasing department has looked at the contract and is starting to nitpick it. They want to add boilerplate things about non-compete clauses and change when payment must be made from 30 to 45 days. 

I'm ready to go live with this project and have people lined up to fly to foreign countries to perform work. I'm afraid that monkeying with the contract at this late date for trivial reasons will cause more months of delays. What should I do?

Talking Turkey in Mahwah, NJ

Dear Turkey,

If the contract changes your purchasing department wants are truly trivial, and what you mentioned above do appear so, do what I recommend below. If, however, there are some real sticking points that could cost your company serious money or put them at risk for quality issues, do what purchasing suggests and delay the project until the contract is modified and approved.

It does sound nit-picky from your description so here is my recommendation. You are only waiting on the vendor's signature. Don't tell them yet that your company is making changes. Get their signature and keep your go-live date on track. Meanwhile, make the modifications your company is requesting. When your company has approved the changes present it to the vendor as a revised version of the contract. The changes are small and they should agree to them and won't feel like you hit them with a bait and switch.

With any luck, your go-live will be preserved and the revised contract will be approved by both parties sometime later.

Good luck,

PM Advisor

Send me your questions at bfieggen@gmail.com

Fifty-first excerpt from 'Twelve Towers'

Spring this year was mild with light rain falling most days but warm enough weather to keep the progress going. The tower was completed on the outside except for the cap-stone. Gwilym and some of his crew were retrieving from the top of the hill. The walls had been repaired, completing the castle’s defenses. On the way back with the cap-stone, one of the horses threw a shoe and Fred and Gwilym took him to a smith who assisted the horse-breeders in these hills.

Padarn was a short, barrel-chested man with long, muscular arms and short legs. Gwilym caught glimpses of a young wife with a baby on her hip through the open door of the house. The man rushed about preparing and then hammering in the new horseshoe. It was rare to see a smith who didn’t walk with a limp. Bleddyn asked him about it.

“I’m not a town smith. I’m free to move where I like.”

Bleddyn looked confused.

“Don’t you know that town smiths are intentionally crippled by the lord to make them stay in that town? That’s the price they pay for their training from the old smith and that keeps them from leaving town when they get skilled.”

Mouth wide open, Bleddyn looked at his father for confirmation and received a grim nod.

Two days later, horns were blowing from the older, shorter tower in the castle. Gwilym climbed to the top of his tower and saw two boats approaching from the west. He ran to the Weary Pilgrim and brought Jac and Llawen, along with the other people in the tavern back to the castle gates. Bleddyn had insisted they carry their gifts from King Arthur with them. Gwilym carried Bleddyn’s heavy tool chest while Bleddyn brought his own scroll box plus his father’s books and scrolls. A throng of villagers was pushing though the gates to reach the safety of the castle walls. The town militia was passing out bows and arrows to those who could shoot and buckets to those who couldn’t. “Fill them with rocks and bring them to the top of the walls!” they shouted to the townsfolk.

Gwilym saw a faster way to accomplish this so he gathered his crew and sent the weaker half of them up to the top of the walls while the stronger half threw rocks up to them to catch and stack. Meanwhile watchmen on top of both towers were giving out reports.

“Eirishmen!”

“They’re landing!”

“They’re armed and looking for battle!”

“Close the gates! They’re here!”

The townsfolk were all safe within the castle walls by this time; only the farmers in outlying areas were in immediate danger. Gwilym hoped they had their own hiding places in the hills.

The marauders, armed with swords, hammers, and pikes, stormed the castle gates. Soldiers and townsfolk fired arrows and threw rocks down upon them, thinning their ranks. The raiders broke away and ran into the town. About ten of them lay dead or dying outside the castle walls. Two soldiers took careful aim and finished off the dying with well-placed arrows. Gwilym felt sick at watching these men die, even though they would have killed his own children moments earlier had there been no castle walls before them.

The marauders could be heard looting the town. Gwilym wasn’t worried about his own possessions. All that remained were some clothes and eating implements; unlikely to be taken and easily replaced. From the castle walls facing the town, the townsfolk saw the raiders moving from buildings to their ships carrying goods. Cries of dismay greeted each new recognized item. The people inside became more and more indignant with the king’s soldiers as more of them saw their own goods being taken away.

“You are armed soldiers! They are untrained pirates! Go get them!”

The captain of the guards refused to abandon his defensive position. “If we’re killed out there, who will remain to protect you?”

One of the more belligerent women stepped up. “You’re not protecting us now!”

“I’m protecting you very well right now. I’m just not protecting your ale. Would you rather I only protect your ale?”

They stopped bickering when a cry arose from the townsfolk. All eyes focused on a group of marauders running down the main street in a tight group. “Bring them down!” cried the captain.

To read the entire first draft in one shot, click here:

Leadership on Social Security

We've all heard about the time-bomb called Social Security. When all the baby-boomers are retired, there won't be enough Generation X and Y people paying taxes to cover their Social Security payments. We've seen the issue come up again and again but nobody seems to want to deal with the issue. Because older people vote in high percentages it is a political hot potato that leaders prefer to ignore and hope their successor will deal with.

A recent article in the Times shed some interesting light on the issue that I wasn't aware of. The government's forecasting methods have barely changed since the program was set up in 1935! Their actuarial tables are significantly different from reality. The Times did a great job exposing some of these errors. I'll try to summarize for you some of the more egregious ones.

How about the number of smokers? Do you think that might have changed since 1935? You bet it has which means what? People are living longer. Of course some of that gain is reversed by increasing obesity though the link between that and lifespan is being questioned lately.

The study the Times conducted showed weirder results. Like the stoke graph below where the projections going into the future have different curves so that the lines cross when they shouldn't.

The data becomes more ridiculous when you add up the deaths from all causes to end up with death rate charts. Look at this one where everyone who is between the ages of 55 and 59 will die in 2028. What's this, the Incan calendar end date?

So, come on Obama. I understand why you wanted to avoid the political hot potato but how about getting someone within the administration to look at the data and statistics behind these models and get them up to date and accurate. If insurance companies can do it, so can the Social Security Administration. 

Great graphics by the way NY Times!

Jillian Michael's poor leadership dooms her Biggest Loser team

Episode One of every Biggest Loser season follows the same basic script. Once the contestants are chosen, they show up at the gym for a grueling workout. For some reason, the trainers put these people who have barely walked in years on a treadmill for two hours at speeds they cannot maintain. I think the producers just love to see obese people falling off the end of a treadmill.

One of these days there will be serious consequences to this behavior. We already have seen people pulled off to the hospital with cardiac events torn ligaments, fractured joints. Last night we saw two of Jillian's team sitting outside, after being thrown out for being lazy, with iced up knees.

Jillian came back last night with a vengeance after a two year hiatus. The problem was that it was all about her. She seems far less interested in helping her contestants than proving how tough she was. She yelled and screamed at her team, then threw them out of the gym when they proved incapable of living up to her demands.

The other two trainers even remarked on the utter chaos of the gym under her leadership. Bob and Dolvett worked their team up carefully. They also had some people throwing up but nobody complained. And the net result? Even with a five pound advantage on the scales, Jillian's team lost the weigh-in and one of her members had to leave the ranch. Unfortunately it was the one with the most heart-wrenching story.

But this is not my biggest complaint about  her last night's performance. She was so hard on her team, berating and belittling them, that one of them quit. To me, that was not a failure of the contestant, that was a failure in leadership.

Biggest Loser ties up their videos pretty well so I can't insert one but you can catch the episode here.

China bullet train project

The Chinese aren't messing around with their infrastructure projects. They are spending $640 Billion on a bullet train network that will link the country with trains moving at speeds of up to 300 kilometers per hour! (190 mph for Americans)

Compare this to the US vision, none of which is a reality and the few existing trains barely reaching 160 kph, (100 mph)

I guess it helps when you are China and have a budget surplus rather than a deficit and you can throw this kind of money at infrastructure projects to keep your people working during a downturn in the global economy. $640 billion is some serious money, that's over 40 big digs to put it in perspective.

Let's just hope the Chinese solve the quality issues they've had with early tests on the system that have cost time, money and 40 lives so far. I'll also be interested to see how much the project costs when it is over.