The Project Solvers' Chat Room

Here are the pictures from the PMP class held on 10-12-11 at Medialle College.

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Earned Value has been getting a “bum” rap in many companies outside of the Government and nuclear industry. Part of the reason for the non-use of EV has been the Project Management maturity of the company. I believe there are four maturity levels of a project management process in a company,
1. Clueless
2. Novice
3. Normal with a process in PM defined (potential for EV to add value)
4. Mature- long standing project process in place with fully defined PMOs.
For organizations at the “Clueless” level of maturity EV might be overly complex. PM development efforts should first concentrate on basic roles and responsibilities, definition of project objectives, scope and basic timeline planning and control. The processes within a “Novice” organization are unlikely to respond well to the rigor and visibility introduced by the introduction of EV, significant problems are likely because of the requirements of baseline plans, progress reporting, understanding within the organizations of EV performance measures. However if the organization has the commitment to develop to a “Normal” level of PM performance, especially if required by a client, EV may be the way to achieve this improvement. The rigor, integration and visibility introduced by EV will rapidly highlight any weakness in the organization management, processes or systems and act as a driver to stimulate management action to further improvements. Organizations that have reached a “Mature” level without using EV for project control are likely to benefit little from its introduction. With a mature organization the changes required to implement EV should be simplegiven the increased levels of the project delivery capability.

In Summary EV offers project management the promises of significant benefits, however very few project managers have adopted it because of significant barriers linked to the PM maturity of an organization. In order to be ready to adopt EV, organizations should be at least at a „Normal‟ maturity . This should prevent the necessity of Project Managers continually having to sell and explain the concept to their superiors.
-Al
Please send comments to agubiotti@theprojectsolvers.com

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Here is an interesting article I found on the web for project managers and others.

5 Ways to Get More from LinkedIn in 2010

Do you understand everything LinkedIn can do for you? Start the new year off right with these five tips to help you get even more from the business networking service.

By Kristin Burnham

Fri, December 11, 2009 — CIO — As the economy plummeted in 2009, LinkedIn’s popularity skyrocketed. LinkedIn grew to more than 53 million members and announced partnerships with IBM, Microsoft and Twitter. If you’re on the hunt for a new job—or just looking to ramp up your activity and connections—start the new year off right with these five tips to help you get more from the business networking service.

1. Groups. Actively participate in a handful of groups related to your professional interests to expand your network. Find "Groups" on the navigation bar. From here you can search for a group to join, manage your groups or start a new one. Groups will keep you updated with industry-related information, plus they function as a forum where you can propose and answer questions, helping you become a recognizable name.

2. Company Buzz. Under "More…" choose "Application Directory". This will bring you to a page with a number of applications that you can add to your homepage and profile. The "Company Buzz" tool aggregates mentions of a company from Twitter, allowing you to discover relevant trends and comments about your company. The tool lets you customize and modify the topics to watch and displays charts to track activity. "A lot of people who use Twitter don’t know where they can see what’s trending, so this is a great application for that," says Eve Mayer Orsburn, CEO of Social Media Delivered, a social media consultancy.

3. Recommendations. These blurbs from your coworkers make your LinkedIn profile more dynamic and bring more credit and validity to your profile. Career experts recommend that you seek recommendations from your coworkers, former managers, direct reports and even clients. Shorter tends to be better; one or two paragraphs will suffice.

4. Events. "Not enough people use events," Orsburn says. "It’s a great way to find and connect with new people." Under "More…" choose "Events". Here you can view events (including webinars) that your connections are attending, search popular events and find ones to attend. Orsburn recommends searching for a person you admire and looking through the events he or she is attending. This will give you a good sense of which conferences or events are worth attending, and will help you build more meaningful connections.

5. Advanced People Search. Try using this search method instead of the basic search when looking for new connections. The "Advanced People Search" allows you to find contacts based on geographic area, company, keyword, industry and more. Advanced People Search also gives you the option to search based on when users joined LinkedIn, which Orsburn says can be especially handy. "One of the best ways to find people who can help you is to help them first," she says. "When you use this function to find someone who’s a new member to LinkedIn, you can introduce yourself, mention that you see this person is new and offer to introduce them to some of your contacts." You can find this feature under "More…" in the navigation bar.

Staff Writer Kristin Burnham covers consumer Web and social technologies for CIO.com. She writes frequently on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google. You can follow her on Twitter: @kmburnham.

Thank you,

Al Gubiotti PMP

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Al Gubiotti PMP

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