Welcome to the asapm August-September 2008 email Newsletter!
This is an Opt-in Newsletter from asapm, the American Society for the Advancement of Project Management. We produce it in the even-numbered months: February, April, June, and so on. Subscribe/unsubscribe information is on the www.asapm.org website. This Newsletter is in html, with links to the asapm website. Enjoy!
In This Issue
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1. PrezSez: Trends in Project Management
2. asapm Elections: Members Vote in August!
3. Press Release: asapm Announcee Extra Credit™
4. asapm Helps Promote IIR's November IT Portfolio Management Conference
5. Virtual Tools Increase Member Engagement and Project Performance, by S. Goff
6. Press Release: IPMA Seeks Applicants for Full-Time Secretary General
7. IPMA News: Young Crew, PM Perspectives, IPMA Newsletter, Roma Congress Update
8. Sponsor Assistance Sought For Roma Congress Paper Presenter
9. Resources: Max Wideman's Site, PMForum, Goff on PM Podcast
10. More Resources: Mind Mapping Software, Web-Conferencing, Members Only Area
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1. PrezSez: Trends in Project Management
As the price of resources increases, organizations will need to find new and better methods of conducting project work to offset costs while remaining competitive in the marketplace. The recent rise in the prices for gasoline and diesel fuel, with accompanying rises in cost of other resources, is of concern to business leaders. The increased cost of project resources must be factored into the project’s product for passing along to the client. Senior management must find ways to absorb the extra costs of resources or raise the price for products resulting from projects.
Current project management procedures and practices continue to find improvements that can save on the consumption of resources, but there is still room for improvement. Project managers are frequently assigned to projects for the purpose of delivering products that work – often with little regard for the cost – with the emphasis on schedule and technical performance. Project management literature focuses on project manager effectiveness and on functional manager efficiency, with product delivery implied as being the effectiveness. Under current conditions, project managers cannot always be both efficient and effective.
This is from the introduction to asapm President Lew Ireland's latest PrezSez. To see Lew's article, click here.
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2. asapm Elections: Members Vote in August!
The asapm Board positions up for election in 2008 are Secretary-Treasurer, Director of Marketing, and Director of Member Services. We have current Marketing Director Morgan Henrie running again, current Secretary-Treasurer Stacy Goff running for Director of Member Services, and Dennis Milroy running for Secretary-Treasurer. As always, write-in candidates are also welcome. See the asapm website for the offices and responsibilities for each.
asapm Members, watch your email for your ballot for the 2008 Elections--and vote! This Election is just part of the process of sustaining and improving asapm Governance. Each area of responsibility has several committees, or project teams in asapm parlance, and those teams need team members. Contact our President or the Board area of your choice to volunteer for one of the teams! Next year, the positions opening are President and Director of Education. The best way to prepare to run for any position is to work on a committee in that area, so come on up!
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3. Press Release: asapm Announces Extra Credit™
July 20, 2008, Colorado Springs, Colorado USA. President Lew Ireland today announced the details of the organization's new Extra Credit™ option to the asapm Certified Project Associate program. The Extra Credit™ program will allow eligible individuals to obtain the IPMA Level D® certification without the time and expense involved in sitting for the exam.
Ireland identified three target audiences for the program: individuals who have received a Masters degree in project management; individuals who have satisfactorily completed a project management certificate program of at least 120 contact hours; and individuals who have obtained a project management knowledge-based credential from another organization. Ireland went on to comment "we recognize the tremendous effort that so many practitioners put into obtaining academic certificates and other credentials. We wanted to do something for them."
Gary Klein, asapm's Director of Education and a professor in the business school at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, commented that he was "surprised no one else had thought of this before." He went on to add, "It's a great opportunity for our students. They have the knowledge and talent to pass the Level D exam, but they seldom have the time or funds to do so." According to Klein, there are more than 20 universities in the USA granting Masters of PM degrees, and perhaps a hundred or more with certificate programs.
The Extra Credit offer will be available starting September 1, 2008. The program will terminate at the end of 2008, or after 2,008 of the estimated 100,000 eligible candidates receive asapm Extra Credit. Applicants must live or work in the USA, and their degrees or other credentials must be verifiable through a public database. Candidates must also write a short critique of one competence element of the USA National Competency Baseline that will be judged by asapm's assessors. Complete eligibility requirements for Extra Credit are available in the certifications section of asapm's Certification section.
The cost of the Extra Credit program is $60 for asapm members and $250 for non-members. The fee is non-refundable.
In addition to the knowledge-based IPMA Level D certification, asapm also offers performance-based competence assessments for Project Managers and for Senior Project Managers with a Program Manager assessment due in mid-2009.
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4. asapm Helps Promote IIR's November IT Portfolio Management Conference
The IT Portfolio Management Event is the only unbiased, cross-industry conference designed for IT professionals who need to position IT as a strategic business partner in their organization and find ways to improve project prioritization, align resource allocation, and optimize development processes. Go to www.iirusa.com and get the tools you need to maximize your IT investments in today’s challenging business environment. Register using code XNM2017ASAPM1 for a special 15% asapm member discount.
asapm works with some of the best PM-related conferences each year in a mutually-beneficial relationship: We help publicize and promote them, and in turn, we are able to bring members and friends a discount; plus, we get our Demonstrate the Competence Difference™ message out to more and more people. We suggest that you consider attending this November 17-19th event, to be held at Disney's Contemporary Resort | Lake Buena Vista, Florida. Florida is great in November!.
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5. Virtual Tools Increase Member Engagement and Project Performance, by S. Goff
This article, by Stacy Goff, was originally written to help IPMA (International Project Management Association) to improve project communications while reducing costs. Re-purposed for asapm, it explores the use of technology to improve project performance and society member engagement.
From the Abstract: Project teams and professional societies, such as asapm share many of the same challenges: competing priorities, reduced availability of needed resources, and increasing costs of travel. The purpose of this article is to explore ways to use available technologies to achieve two objectives: increase internal society communication and engagement, while also building greater project management competences in virtual communication.
To read Stacy's latest article, click here.
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6. Press Release: IPMA Seeks Applicants for Full-Time Secretary General
The International Project Management Association (IPMA) has decided to appoint a Secretary General. This will be a full-time role, possibly based in Holland, but the location will be open to discussion. A sub-committee from the Executive Board has been established to consider applications and plans to move forward quickly on this issue.
Founded in 1967, the IPMA is the world’s longest-serving project management professional organization. Its structure is unique, because IPMA is an international network of national project management societies. Interestingly, its original name was INTERNET. While the National local serve the specific project management development needs of each country in its national language, the IPMA, as an umbrella organization, represents them at the international level. The IPMA is truly a global organization with member associations throughout the world, including some 45 national representative bodies spread across Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. This is the first two paragraphs. Click to see the entire Press Release.
Editor's note: We have seen other member organizations struggle with getting the right the balance between a professionally-managed organization and a member-run organization. IPMA relies on volunteers for all its efforts, and the commitments of National Council of Delegate representatives, special initiative Project Managers and Team Members, and especially the ExBo (Executive Board) members is huge. We serve on the IPMA Governance Committee that developed the position description for this new role, and will be helping to guide this IPMA transition. We are confident that this important step, that has the potential to significantly improve IPMA performance, will also assure ongoing responsiveness to member needs. --S. Goff
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7. IPMA News: Young Crew, PM Perspectives, Roma Congress Update
As part of asapm members' two memberships in one, we receive increasing benefits from IPMA. Here is the current IPMA news, in addition to the announcement above about the new IPMA Secretary General position.
IPMA/USA Young Crew
We have a update on the establishment of a USA Young Crew. Ms. Jhaymee Wilson is working on getting a group of asapm members who qualify (age 35 and younger) together, both those who are local to the DC area and virtual participants, to form a USA Young Crew. If you are interested, see the new Young Crew group in the asapm Members Only area of the website. Or, email us to find out how you can participate!
IPMA's PM Practice Magazine
The Summer issue of IPMA's Quarterly magazine, PM Practice, is now available on the asapm website. Featured in this issue is "Agilean Project Portfolio Management", and an extensive article by our friend Roland Gareis with Sabine Herlitswchka, "Strategies for the Management of EU Research Projects".
Roma Congress Update
July 31 was the due date for paper submissions, and several of us who are authors or co-authors were burning the midnight oil to help get the papers done. It's a good thing that email uses the local time and date, rather than the destination time and date, because that gave us another 8 hours. Of course, Stephen Lynn and Carol Dekkers had their papers in long ago--that shows what great Project Managers they are! And already, we have over 30 papers to review for just Stream 7, with more than 40 yet to come.
So, mark the dates of the IPMA World Congress in Rome November 9-11. Some of the events begin before that date, including a full program of Young Crew activities. See the latest on Streams, Registration and accommodations at the Roma 2008 IPMA World Congress website. Also, see the latest Roma Newsletter from the asapm website; we are trying to get a less-fuzzy pdf copy, and will replace this download when we receive it. The Roma Committee was reducing the download size, resulting in the fuzzy copy..
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8. Sponsor Assistance Sought For Roma Congress Paper Presenter
Related to the item above, the IPMA World Congress, scheduled for November 9-11, we have an asapm member from the Commonwealth of Dominica, who would like to present a paper, but cannot fund the trip, lodging and Congress fees. Her proposed topic is Risk Management of Projects in the Public Sector, and she is looking for Sponsors who together would help fund her expenses. Her government organization cannot fund her trip, but in addition to this request for sponsorship from our readers, she is attempting to find some funding locally.
Her Abstract has been accepted by IPMA/Roma, and her paper completed. Having seen her finished paper, she puts Risk Assessment in a bit of a different light, pointing out the national and societal challenges resulting from Central and South American rainforest destruction. She moves Project Risk Management from the micro, or project level, to the macro and global level. She urges government officials to balance the short-term benefits of economic development with the long-term consequences. We estimated Congress travel, lodging and conference fees in the range of $4500-5000. If you are interested in helping Sponsor her paper and presentation at the IPMA World Congress in Rome, Italy in November, please contact us!. Thanks!
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9. Resources: Max Wideman's Site, PMForum, Goff on PM Podcast
At MaxWideman.com
Dang! Every time we go to Max's website, we spend almost an entire day, and come back enlightened from the experience. This time we went to Max's site to see his August 2008 Guest Article, an adaptation of the Goff article, What is a PM Methodology? A Search For Efficiency, Consistency, and Performance. The irony is, he does a better job with our own work than we do!
But once there, we went exploring. We found an interview of Max by David Pells, Managing Editor of PM World Today who interviews Max on a number of topics. In Part 1: Probing Max's Background David asked about Project Management, Construction Management, Heavy Construction and Max's first contact with the term "Project Manager". The original interview was posted at PM World Today in October 2007. This interview was so great that we cheated, and went to PMForum for part 2 (which is now on Max's website). Both are great reads! We tried to cheat again, going to PMForum to see Part 3, but it is not there. Max: You are such a tease! Thanks!
At PMForum.org
We have the same habit of finding too much good information on PMForum, a site rich with news, insights and commentary. You know, you can get PM World Today, a monthly summary of the site's contributions, for free. Just sign up. While there, we saw the above-mentioned Press Release for the IPMA Secretary General position, the posting that IPMA President Veikko Valila will keynote a conference in Dallas in August, and a great interview of Veikko by David Pells (from last year). Also see the latest bok guide post by Ed Fern, with his delightfully acerbic and insightful global viewpoint.
Goff on PM Podcast
Many of the articles that first appear on the asapm website have extended lives. One way the articles reach more people is that host Cornelius Fichtner turns the ones he fancies into interviews on his popular The PM Podcast website. Episode 099 is a more in-depth set of questions and answers about the Goff article, Measuring and Managing Project Quality. His wide range of podcasts are free, and now Cornelius has added Overtime sessions, for a Premium Subscription fee; in these sessions, he and his interviewees provide even more insight than in his free sessions.
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10. More Resources: Mind Mapping Software, Web-Conferencing, Members Only Area
Book Reviews
asapm Director of Education Dr. Gary Klein sent us four Book Reviews from his classes in the MBA program, OPTM 639 - Managing Projects for Competitive Advantage, and OPTM 669 - Bridging Strategy and Tactics in Project Management, at University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Thanks Gary! And thanks, Krish, John, Philip and Neil!
The Business Savvy Project Manager, review by Krish Soundararajan
Fundamentals of Project Management, 3rd edition; review by John Guarniere
The Leadership Dojo, review by Philip L. Jacobsen
Accelerated Project Management, “How to be First to Market”; review by Neil S. Moysenko
Web-Based Mind Mapping Software
Web-based tools can improve virtual team interaction; and now, how about (as the website says) "Collaborative mind mapping in your browser"? Go check out mind42.com. We tried a quick example, then sent an invitation to several others. We included ourselves in a separate login, so we could concurrently see what the others saw. It is relatively quick, even with 2-3 people changing the mind map diagram at the same time. The current version is free and in beta, but looks better than most betas. They say they will have a paid version and continue to provide the free version. You can export to Freemind, and to the commercial product Mindmanager. That is the only tool we know of that round-trips to MS Project, a very useful feature. Why do we care? Because Mind mapping is a great way for team-engaged development of a Work Breakdown Structure (or break workdown structure, for the rest of us).
Web-Conferencing
We've been on the watch for a reasonably-priced or free Web-Conferencing option ever since IBM/Lotus bought out Unyte, the one you could pair with Skype. That tool is still available, in a free or fee solution, and it has useful features, Of course, none of the free tools have the features of the for-fee versions, but while we like Web-Conferencing, we don't like the high cost of frequent use. So in researching this month's article, we found two interesting sites. dimdim.com is a great free offering. And Yugma.com, which now integrates with Skype, may be a great option, once the surprises get worked out. We installed the conference manager on our system, then tried to start it within Skype. It wanted a different conference manager installed. The next morning we had an 86GB Yugma executable on our desktop. Hmmm. Do you have a preferred web-conference (fee or free) software? contact us!!
Members Only Area
The asapm Members Only area continues to grow; we implemented the new version in April-May, and most of the participants are new members. contact us! if you are a member and need the login information for this rich opportunity to use Internet 2.0 social networking software to collaborate. And, for those members who have logged in, put your photo up! There are too many who have not done that yet. The ideal photo is about 200x200 pixels. If you have a photo and can't resize it, contact us! and we can probably help. We moved to this format as part of our ongoing research on use of internet tools for virtual communities and projects, as reported in this month's article, Virtual Tools Increase Member Engagement and Project Performance.
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asapm: American Society for the Advancement of Project Management. We are a non-profit organization, staffed with volunteers who are dedicated to improving the practice of Project Management. asapm is a registered trademark of the American Society for the Advancement of Project Management.
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Stacy Goff, PMP
asapm Member Services