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The ASPE Project Management Professional Boot Camp

Okay, I’ve decided to do it!  I’m attending the ASPE Project Management Professional (PMP)® Certification Exam Boot Camp in Denver, Colorado!  It is part of a twelve-city tour by ASPE, Inc. to educate and prepare would-be project managers for the PMP Exam.  Cool!

Wouldn’t it be neat to read the unbiased personal experiences of somebody who had been through the course before taking the plunge yourself?  That’s exactly what I’m offering in this series of blog posts.  You’ll get my unvarnished daily experiences of the entire PMP Prep seminar.  After reading them, you can decide if this is for you.  I expect to enjoy myself, so you probably will too.

I’ll be posting my personal experiences every day I attend.  You’ll get a firsthand look at the whole process: the course materials, the homework, the hardships, and the excitement along the way – everything one might expect when taking such a course to prepare for sitting the PMP exam hosted by PMI.  See links below to check out the ASPE course I’ll be taking.

Honestly at this point, I just have a sketchy view of the week ahead.  I sort-of know what to expect, but not exactly.  I’ve been doing project management for longer than I care to divulge, but have never taken the PMP exam, and never formally studied the disciplines of project management.  Of course, having worked in engineering shops since college, I know much of the terminology and probably apply the principles on a daily basis.  So I’m coming from a different perspective than those who may just be starting their careers.  Honestly, I wish I’d done this a long time ago, but it’s never too late to improve your career with training like this.

To prepare, I read through the ASPE PMP Boot Camp overview and course outline (see link below).  I learned that there are four very full days of coursework – from 8 AM to 6 PM.  (I’m expecting to drink from a fire hose.)  The course outline lists 68 topics grouped into 8 areas.  We’ll cover such lofty subjects as Project Management Overview, The Project Management Life Cycle, The Knowledge Areas, The Elements of Project Management, The PMP Exam, The PMP Certification, and The Credentials.

After finishing the course, they say 97% of ASPE students pass the PMP examination.  That’s reassuring.  It probably means I could too!

The cost is $2,395.  Honestly, I think that’s a small price to pay to advance your career.  I mean really… if you plan to spend any time around projects for next forty years, this is probably a good idea – it doesn’t matter what your role is.  You’ll certainly earn it all back, especially since it launches you on a fast-track to higher management positions.  And PMI claims a PMP certification it directly impacts your salary.  Who doesn’t want that?  This little-understood fact is a big deal for career advancement:  Get all the training you can handle.  And get it early in your career!

Helpful links:

http://www.aspe-sdlc.com/courses/pmp-boot-camp/

http://www.pmi.org/certification/project-management-professional-pmp.aspx

http://www.projectteamblog.com/?p=239

Links to previous ASPE PMP Boot Camp posts

 

Disclaimer: The thoughts and feedback for the ASPE PMP Certification Exam Boot Camp associated with this series of posts are my own.  In exchange for providing my feedback on this community forum, ASPE has provided benefits related to my course attendance.

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Engineering Begins with Prototypes

I was talking with a senior software developer last week about the importance of early prototypes to define products. We concluded that it is pointless to begin developing any real architecture or engineering until the prototypes are finished and signed off. You must put your ideas into tangible form before you can trust them to the discipline of engineering. And customers must see examples of the finished product before you can move forward with deep development. Here’s why:

Under-the-hood engineering depends entirely on what you plan to sell. Notice I did not say what the developers thing might be cool or trendy. It’s what you plan to sell. Period. It doesn’t matter if you are selling transmissions or skyscrapers or operating systems; you have to know what the customer wants before you can build the most efficient version of that. Just try to dream it all up alone on a deserted island – without any input – without customers telling you what they will pay for and what they will not. That’s a lot like what you’d get if the developers in their Tommy Bahamas island shirts said, Oh, yeah! That’s so cool. Let’s make that!

Prototype Prototype

Take the automobile transmission for example. If you designed it on a deserted island, and sent the designs straight into production, the risks would be enormous. The finished product would likely have extra gears, “cool” new ideas, and “special” modes that the customer never asked for. And won’t pay for. All those extras make the product less efficient, more costly to manufacture, and more costly to maintain. You probably can’t afford that. Only the most efficient and cost effect designs survive. In other words, only what the customer asked for – nothing more.

Sure, you can get creative and throw in some extras. I call that “programmer candy.” The product doesn’t have to be a total bore. But make sure your core competencies are taken care of first.

 

Prototype

 

Also, it should be understood that prototypes can rarely be morphed into shipping products. (Managers don’t get that.) They are usually throw-away models, so expect to add that extra time to your overall project schedule. For instance, take the old clay automobile models as an extreme example. Remember them from the 1950’s? Even after sanded and painted, they still couldn’t serve as production automobiles. It’s almost humorous to imagine. But still, it has always been a strong desire in engineering circles to go from prototype to shipping product with the stroke of the pen. After all, the prototype looks so real, why not just clean it up and ship it! That’s what the manager usually ask for. Actually, that goal is not far off in computer-aided design, like software development, because editing is so easy. Not so with clay models.

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False Front Prototypes

When you watch the old Westerns like ‘3-10 To Yuma’ you are usually treated to a Main Street with old-time businesses and homes on it. Horse drawn wagons lumber by. Victorian dress is on full display. A child taps an iron barrel ring down the dusty street with a stick. There’s the obligatory livery station, bank, gunsmith and hardware store, and cobbler. They all sport a nice tall false front, as the turn of the Century buildings often did. It’s exactly like “real life” in 1880.

But what you don’t see is the backs of those buildings. The Hollywood cameraman never goes back there. Guess what? There’s nothing back there! The buildings are literally just false fronts. You couldn’t actually live in one of those houses or do business in one of those stores. Sure, there are a few sets where you see characters going into and out of those businesses, but those movie sets may be in a completely different sound stage. Nothing is as it seems; it’s all staged for the camera.

Got your attention? Now consider how this happens in engineering…

In engineering, we build prototypes to help people see what a finished product will look like. What people? Customers, potential investors, buyers, company executives, project stakeholders. Everyone needs an idea what a product will look like when the engineering is complete. It gets everyone on the same page, and dispels misunderstandings. Sure, the prototypes have a few warts. It can have reduced functionality, but it must *look* like the finished product, and must allow the sales force to tell the story and make the sale.

The problem with these prototypes is that they have almost none of the proper engineering – much like a Western movie set. Sure, they look good, and may even appear to work. For the purposes of a First Look, they satisfy everyone curiosity and need to see something tangible, and they get everyone thinking in the same vein. But they may not have any of the correct functionality! That fact alone leads to a false sense of completion.

Project managers, engineers, project stakeholders, and everyone alike can be lulled into a false belief that these systems are just a step away from completion. In actuality, they are like false front Western movie sets. You could never consider actually using them for everyday purposes. But after looking at them for an extended period of time, you come to a false belief that you could. You forget how far they are from reality.

It’s that “one step to final product” illusion that gets everyone into trouble — especially the engineers. They are the ones tasked with readying the product for release. Everyone around them believes the product is almost there – almost finished. But it’s not. The stakeholders have big money riding on a swift move from prototype to production. Customer expectations have been set, and they are waiting – sometimes not so patiently. Problem is, there is no swift move. The prototype must be thrown away and the “real” engineering begins. It’s like throwing away the Hollywood false front hardware store and building a real one. You can’t just build onto the false cardboard buildings. They have none of the real factors that go into a real building. Real hardware stores are expensive! And they take a long time to build! They are nothing like the quickie cardboard movie sets.

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Overtime: The Devil’s In The Details

I keep running into the same old product development story: All the developers meet for a status update to compare with the project schedule (and this isn’t just a fault of project schedules… it happens with scrum stories as well) but the engineers are just a little behind schedule. Gee, what’s new? They all have just a few more tasks to complete their stories, just a few more details… And that goes on and on and on… It’s enough to shake my faith in project management methodologies. Not enough to shake my faith in the project team, just the narrow ruts we find ourselves channeled into. It’s the same old story. The program manger doesn’t have a full grasp of the detail that team members must face to complete their tasks. In fact, you can’t know that level of detail until you are the one doing the tasks. And sure enough, every one has 50 – 100% more detail than initially scheduled for. So… the schedule blown, and everybody is in trouble. And working overtime. Who made that up? Okay, I complete get that companies have to fight hard for an advantage. Overtime is a necessity just to survive sometimes. If you don’t do it, you shrink back into oblivion. So yes, overtime is good. But I’m not sure I like how it’s arrived upon. It’s always “our” fault because we haven’t completed our tasks, so there’s a mad scramble to complete the project on time. Overtime is never pitched as something good for the species. Or necessary for survival. Instead, it’s simply because we haven’t competed our tasks in a timely manner. Ooo, gosh.  I guess I’ve been complaining, huh?  🙂

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Hook a Timesheet to MS Project

PMO’s and project managers, have you ever considered hooking a timesheet to your MS Project MPP file? You spend a good deal of time pouring over your MS Project files, scheduling tasks, and assigning hours, but are you ignoring the ‘Actual Work’ field?

Do you have an automated way to input actual work?

Hooking a timesheet to the Actual Work field turns your static project schedule into a living, breathing document. You’re now releasing the beast into the wild, and you might be surprised at what it turns into! What, exactly, does that mean to release the schedule into the wild? It means letting employees enter their own actual work against their own tasks. It means hooking a timesheet to your project schedule. See this timesheet program for an example.

 

Getting actual working hours from employees might completely surprise you. Many project managers are uncertain how long tasks take. They have a good intellectual guess, or even some estimates from the actual engineers on the ground, but actual hours from employees can be a huge eye-opener. They are almost never what you expect. Project tasks often double or triple from their initial baseline estimate. No kidding! And when that begins to happen on a regular basis, panic sets in! You now have to either rein back your initial proposal or force employees to be more efficient.

See what I mean by setting the beast lose in the wild?

When engineers blow past your estimates, or even their own, they have no particular malice in mind. They are just doing their jobs. They may have no idea how those bloated task hours fit into a larger picture, or how they may affect a static project schedule. Again, they are just doing their jobs to the best of their abilities. And if that means a little extra work, then so be it. Problem is, stakeholders and project managers are freaking out as the schedule blows up. I once heard a manager say, “At this rate, we can only do a quarter of what we hoped.” That’s project management panic!

So back to hooking a timesheet to your MPP file… Sure, panic may set in for a while. You may need to rethink your plan. But you’ll be much more educated than if you had left the schedule in an “open loop” system without actual hours from employees. Ignorance is bliss!

A timesheet is the best thing ever invented for a project plan. They are so closely related, they should be in the same package! Fortunately, with this timesheet app, they are. In fact, you don’t even need MS Project. You can create your own project schedules with full hierarchy and project tasks, and then track time to them. You’ll instantly compare estimates with actuals, and avert most of the panic associated with a blown schedule.

Getting “Actual Work” feedback early is the best answer to project management panic!

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Three Reasons to Track Project Time

Time tracking, for the purposes of project management, is an overhead some companies are not willing to undertake.  (Read this as an exploitable mistake!)  We all know that some level of administrative overhead is necessary to maintain a healthy organization.  And some level of process or methodology is also necessary.  In this article, I’m suggesting that time tracking should be part of that process.

There are three primary reasons to track project time that apply to all organizations.  It matters nothing whether your company is a consultancy, manufacturer, government agency, non-profit, or otherwise.  Time tracking is valuable to all.  Here are the top three reasons to track project time.   1) Reduce budget overruns, 2) Prioritize projects, and 3) Learn your own business.

I’ll discuss these three project tracking benefits in detail.  Feel free to skip to the ones that interest you most.

1) Reduce Budget Overruns
Human beings are curiously bad with two things: time and money.  A huge number of cottage industries are built around helping people manage time and money.  Why?  Because almost every one of us does it badly.  Admit it… your bank account scrapes bottom almost every month.  And you’re late for at least one event per month.  That’s so easy to predict, I don’t even have to know you to feel confident in its reach.  Everyone suffers from the same poor time and financial accounting.

Unfortunately, we carry those same poor principles into our work life.  I’ll venture to guess that your boss, and his boss above him, is also a poor manager of his personal time and money.  Just because he’s a boss, doesn’t mean he’s any better at time management, or money management, than you are.  We’re all crap.

But if you’ll just subject yourself to a little time tracking discipline, you can avert the most common budget overruns.  It’s the low-hanging fruit you’ve heard so much about.  Just track the time you spend.  That time translates into salaries.  Now you know the project cost.  Don’t spend more than you take in.  Simple.

I know a great time tracking product for this.  It’s named Standard Time.  Click here for Timesheet and Time Tracking Software.  You can install this on everyone’s workstations, and start tracking project time.
You’ll see why it’s important in the next two reasons to track time.

2) Prioritize Projects
Instinctively, you know which projects are strategically important to your company.  You know which ones represent a strategic investment that will pay off big-time in the future.  Even the lowest employee knows that.  (Although it’s the company executives that should enforce the participation in such projects.)  So, are they doing that?  Are you doing that?  (Hint: if you’re a low or mid-level manager, here’s your chance to advance:  Talk “strategic projects” at every meeting.)

“Secondary projects” are nice to do when you’ve got time and money to burn.  Have you got time and money to burn?  If not, you must focus on the strategic projects.  They’re the only ones that make money and keep people employed.  And how, exactly, do you do that?  You track time to them!

Collect all your hours for every project you work on, and then run a report that shows you which projects are getting the most time.  You might be surprised!  Even better, categorized your projects as “strategic” and “non-strategic” and run the report again.  Which category is getting the most time?  Are you surprised yet?

If you’ve already downloaded Standard Time (see link above), you can get all these reports for free.

3) Learn Your Own Business
Last thing: learn your own business (LYOB).  It takes 2 -3 years to really learn a business.  You may have a good guess within your first six months of employment, but you won’t truly know it for another two years!  Tracking your project time chops a year off that.  Here’s why:

When you track time to company projects, you learn what makes them efficient, and what makes them inefficient.  You learn the gritty details because you see everything that goes into the work you do.  My advice: pour over the descriptions in every time log entered by every employee.  Submit yourself to the excruciating pain of studying these details.  You’ll perfectly hate it!

But even as you hate it, you’ll love it.  You’ll become an expert on your business and will soon have the information you need to make improvements.  Time tracking provides the information you need.

Best Time Tracking Program

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Task Drivers

Microsoft Project as a simple method to find out which tasks are driving the ‘Start Date’ for a selected task. These are called “Task Drivers.” In other words, predecessor tasks that affect successor tasks.

Here’s how to find the task driver for a selected task:
    1. Click on any task that has predecessors
    2. Click in the “Track” menu button in the tool bar
    3. Choose “See what is driving the start date of a task”
    4. A panel appears at the left, showing the tasks that drive the selected on

 

 

Here, you can see that “Task 1a” drives “Task 2”, even though “Task 1b” is also a predecessor.  Task 1a is a “Task Driver” to Task 2.

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Don’t be the DIA and BAE Baggage System

Remember the expense delays in opening the brand new Denver International Airport?  Many case studies have been done examining the intricate reasons for such a colossal failure on a grand scale.  DIA was to be the most efficient airport in the world, able to accommodate over 50 million passengers per year.  One of the key components was to have a fully automated baggage system…eliminating the tug and trolley system.  This would cut a planes turnaround time by 30 minutes and would be a key component in creating more efficiency with flights and passenger throughout.  The chief project manager, Walter Slinger had his heart set on this shining new system and romanticized about the notoriety the state of the art airport would bring to the city of Denver.  BAE also liked the idea of designing a system that would garner great attention and further their own reputation for building baggage systems.  Again, you could read many in depth case studies about the key decisions that led to the cascade of delays and failures.  However, I would summarize them in a single manner, tunnel vision.  Both parties fell in love with an idea and ignored many internal obvious warnings about the baggage systems feasibility.  The delays were numerous and cost billions of dollars.  In the end, after many attempts to partially use the automated baggage system, it was virtually scrapped for the more economical tug and trolley method.  We all know the old saying that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs?  If you’re a project manager, make sure your love of an idea isn’t greater than your team’s ability to design and implement the idea.  Don’t be afraid to change directions.  Otherwise, you may be the next DIA, which is still one heck of an airport!

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Define: Work Contour

Work Contour: The distribution (or “shape”) of working hours over the duration of a task.

In Microsoft Project, working hours are not always spread across the duration of a task like peanut butter.  In other words, they don’t have to be evenly distributed.  They can front-loaded so that most of the work is performed at the beginning of the task.  Or, they could be back-loaded, to represent most of the work being performed at the end of the task.  In fact, there are several choices for the Work Contour.

 

Here they are:

  1. Flat
  2. Back-loaded
  3. Front-loaded
  4. Double peak
  5. Early peak
  6. Late peak
  7. Bell
  8. Turtle

 

The images below illustrate how to choose the Work Contour for each resource in each task.

First, choose View, Gantt Chart to create tasks and assign resources to them.  Then set the duration.

 

Next, choose View, Task Usage.  Insert the ‘Work Contour” column.  After choosing various contours for each resource, you will see an icon representing the distribution of hours across the task.  Notice how the front-loaded task has most of the hour distributed in the first few days while the back-loaded contour has them distributed at the final days.  Flat distribution is default.  It simply uses the resource schedule.

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No Vacancy

Have you ever dealt with a department manager who claims they have no resource capacity for strategic company projects, yet seems to be under allocated?

You suspect the department of using precious company resources on “secondary projects” with no strategic value, but you can’t prove it.  Either you don’t have tools to track what your departments do, or that department has successfully hidden manpower for their own use… or both.

Probably the first step is a good heart-to-heart company meeting.  All the functional managers should know the necessity and value of strategic company projects.  But how can you know they understand and support you?  Know your people…  That’s the only way.

The next step is to implement a tool that clearly defines the percentage of time expected on key projects, and tracks actual work against them.  This is a supply and demand system.  Such a tool gives you the opportunity to enforce the message in step one, above.  Employees and department timesheets (supply) should track closely to the numbers they’ve agreed upon (demand).  If they don’t, you’ll have a hot topic of conversation ahead.