The demand for professionals with IT security and project management certifications has never grown faster. Off Peak Training has expanded its ownership and its course offerings. This month Chris Talmont and Chris Schulz, were added as principals to the business.
Additional PMP Certification courses and CISSP Certification courses.
www.offpeaktraining.com/pmp
www.offpeaktraining.com/cissp
The much anticipated FastTrack Schedule 10 was released by Sterling Virginia based AEC Software this week. This version promises effort driven scheduling. I love FastTrack Schedule and have been using FastTrack Schedule since version 7. Effort driven scheduling is the one feature that has been lacking all these years. I am very excited to role up my sleeves and dive in!
AEC Software describes the feature – “For tasks that can be completed faster by adding more resources, use effort-driven scheduling for simple schedule compression. Automatically adjust task durations as resources are added or subtracted, while keeping the total work for a task constant.”
Sometimes it happens. Or it doesn’t happen. The cause is irrelevant because no matter what, at some point we must deliver bad news to our project sponsors or contacts. Even project managers with the most impeccable track records run into trouble every now and then—it’s part of risk. There are plenty of materials out there on dealing with and mitigating risk, but sometimes we have to face the situation.
There are some best practices to handling this scenario. It’s not a guarantee that no one will become upset or that it will save your project, but at the very least, these are a series of actions that you may take to get the best results out of a bad situation.
You may encounter situations that require different approaches, but following the above tactics will help you to brave what can be a very difficult task during a project. Never forget to be proactive and to act as an expert and you will experience success, despite unavoidable problems.
Harris Eisenberg, MBA
Harris has worked in a project management role within both the marketing and music industries. Most recently, as Strategy and Business Lead for a small marketing agency in Virginia, Harris managed dozens of projects from individual brochure development to enterprise software development for the Federal government. If you wish to contact Harris, you may email him at harris.eisenberg@gmail.com.
Off Peak Training, a Reston, VA based company, offers public and private training classes to help prepare business professionals for professional certifications like the PMP®, CAPM®, PMI-SP®, CISSP®, CAPM®, CISA®, and is a Registered Education Provider for the Project Management Institute.
No Comments »Reap the financial and professional rewards of becoming a more effective leader in 2010. Prepare for your future with a PMP certification! The PMP® certification validates demonstrated leadership skills and expertise in directing project teams across budget, resources and time constraints in diverse industries ranging from IT, telecommunications and finance, to health care, education and construction.
Off Peak Training’s Project Management Prep course prepares practitioners and organizations for the PMP® exam, strengthening their core competencies which helps further develop and advance career prospects. Our project management courses are recognized by the Project Management Institute (PMI), the world’s leading not-for-profit membership organization serving the Project Management profession. We serve one of it’s largest and fastest growing chapters, the Washington DC Chapter (PMIWDC).
Off Peak’s PMP certified training professionals have delivered hands-on and online project management expertise to clients globally and across numerous diverse industries and sectors and will prepare you with real world situational and scenario-based questions.
Our commitment to quality, along with an expert knowledge of leading edge Project Management and best practices, ensures our clients have the tools needed to meet any and all regulatory requirements. 100% of our students have passed the PMP Exam. Off Peak Training is a PMI registered education provider.
Join the nearly 300,000 certified Project Management Professionals worldwide. Sign up for a week long PMP Boot Camp or a 12 day PMP evening course today!
Attendees of our PMP training classes write positive reviews…
The exam is composed of 200 questions and takes approximately 4 hours to complete. Applicants must meet the following requirements to qualify for the PMP exam:
Most of the time, as a project manager, change requests must go through you before they can be approved. That way, you have the ability to adjust the scope, schedule, and cost and keep the entirety of the project properly maintained. But we’ve all seen this situation: the client or sponsor gets a hold of someone other than the project manager and all of a sudden there’s major scope creep. I’ve noticed two critical areas where this tends to occur:
Once one of these scenarios has occurred, the additional scope is the least of your worries because now the client not only expects the extra work but also that it will not affect time or cost. Dealing with these new challenges is difficult, but not impossible.
Of course, the best method is prevention. Ideally, the project manager will be proactive at the beginning of the project, carefully explaining the change request process to all stakeholders and making it very clear that no additional scope will occur without proper approval, no matter who promises it. It is important to get this documented and signed by the client. This will not completely mitigate all instances of scope creep, but it should eliminate a good 80-90% of cases.
If a proactive approach still results in scope creep, the project manager can always use direct communication with the client to try to stop it by explaining that, although someone on the project team or someone on your side made a promise, it cannot be honored because it was not made through the proper change request process. If you’ve made sure to have the client sign a document outlining the change process, this shouldn’t pose any problems. You’ll also want to discuss unofficial promises with the stakeholders on your side to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
Unfortunately, we’re sometimes stuck honoring an unofficial change one way or another. If it has come to this, there are some tricks that can help maintain the project’s momentum. Fast tracking tasks and creating work overlaps will help to keep the schedule together. There might also be some opportunities at reductions in other areas of the project if there are non-essential activities that could stand to be cut. Finally, try using some of the buffers that you’ve built into different areas of the project to handle these new changes. All of these techniques carry risk, but if successful, can keep your project on track.
Harris Eisenberg, MBA
Harris has worked in a project management role within both the marketing and music industries. Most recently, as Strategy and Business Lead for a small marketing agency in Virginia, Harris managed dozens of projects from individual brochure development to enterprise software development for the Federal government. If you wish to contact Harris, you may email him at harris.eisenberg@gmail.com.
Off Peak Training, a Reston, VA based company, offers public and private training classes to help prepare business professionals for professional certifications like the PMP®, CAPM®, PMI-SP®, CISSP®, CAPM®, CISA®, and is a Registered Education Provider for the Project Management Institute.
The Project Management Institute® (PMI®) is a non-profit organization that works to advance the field of Project Management. PMI is the leading authority on all things Project Management. Joining PMI can help out any Project Manager regardless of where they are in their career. PMI is divided into Chapters based on location. Joining the local chapter is a crucial step to anyone serious about Project Management.
In the Washington DC Metropolitan area alone there are several PMI chapters including the Silver Spring, Montgomery County, and Washington DC chapters. In addition there are many more chapters just outside the DC Metro area including the Central Virginia, Baltimore, and Southern Maryland chapters. The local chapters offer networking, a great body of knowledge to draw from, and the wisdom and experience of thousands of local Project Managers. The local chapters hold meetings, lectures, seminars, and all manner of gatherings to spread knowledge and experience. For example, the Silver Spring Chapter of the PMI will be having a guest speaker from the General Services Administration on November 11, 2009. The Washington DC chapter will also be having a dinner meeting with Tom Davis, The Director of Federal Government Affairs, on November 4, 2009.
Being a member of these chapters is the perfect way to connect to other Project Managers and companies in your area. As a member of your local PMI chapter, you will also receive their publication, full of useful information about what’s going on in the world of Project Management. In addition to this, members receive discounts on a variety of Project Management resources ranging from credential exams to books and materials.
In addition to the local chapters, PMI also has online Communities of Practice where Project Managers can build network opportunities around the world. This gives yet another useful source of information. The Communities contain wikis, blogs, online discussions and many other resources.
As a member of the local Washington DC chapter and a Registered Education Provider, Off Peak Training recognizes the value of local chapter membership and the ability to direct and lead project teams efficiently and within scheduling and budgeting limitations. Holding a PMP can also greatly increase a professional’s salary and reputation among potential employers. In fact ZDNET’S Tech Republic organization conducted a survey of the top paying certifications in the technology industry; the PMP came out on top averaging over $100k! Before you get your PMP, get involved in one of the PMI chapters! Doing this will put you in a position to gain the maximum amount of knowledge before you get your certification.
Off Peak Training will be conducting a 5 day bootcamp class for the PMP certification. The class will be taking place from November 16 to November 20 in the Northern Virginia area. Our educators are professionals that truly enjoy imparting their knowledge to others in order to help them attain their certifications. Training through the right educator is an extremely valuable experience and Off Peak Training can give you that experience through the quality of our educators and the convenience of our classes.
Off Peak Training, a Reston, VA based company, offers public and private classes to help prepare business professionals for the PMP®, CAPM®, PMI-SP®, CISSP®, CAPM®, CISA®, and is a Registered Education Provider for the Project Management Institute.
Every project manager knows that milestones move quicker, smoother, and with fewer headaches when there is a single decision maker in charge of the approvals on the client side. Every project manager also knows that this is not always the case. When faced with a committee, board, or other group that must deliberate and reach a consensus before allowing the project to move forward, the pitfalls abound. If a decision cannot be reached quickly, we often face project issues such as:
Many others…
These issues usually arise for one reason: fear. Groups fear making the wrong decision for a number of reasons including failure, lack of complete acceptance by target audiences, and most of all because ultimately, the group must take responsibility for their decisions, good or bad. You’ll never be able to completely mitigate their fears, but it sometimes helps to remind them that individual decisions throughout a project are rarely written in stone nor will any one decision be likely to cause a project to fail.
The best strategy for dealing with a committee’s decision-making process is to be proactive and educational. Ideally, we avoid delays and infighting by preparing the group for all of the important decisions they will be making throughout the project. Lay out the important factors in each decision, explain their significance, and articulate the need to remain focused on the end goals of the project and its overall strategy, not the minutiae of each milestone. Act as a consultant and subject matter expert to lead the group through their decision-making process and hopefully you will be able to move things along on your terms.
Harris Eisenberg, MBA
Harris has worked in a project management role within both the marketing and music industries. Most recently, as Strategy and Business Lead for a small marketing agency in Virginia, Harris managed dozens of projects from individual brochure development to enterprise software development for the Federal government. If you wish to contact Harris, you may email him at harris.eisenberg@gmail.com.
Off Peak Training, a Reston, VA based company, offers public and private training classes to help prepare business professionals for professional certifications like the PMP®, CAPM®, PMI-SP®, CISSP®, CAPM®, CISA®, and is a Registered Education Provider for the Project Management Institute.
“I took the Off Peak Training PMBOK Version 4, 5-day bootcamp training in August. The course was well organized, the instructor knew and presented the material well and the physical setup was great. I’ve done dozens of trainings similar to this, so I can speak from experience. Going into the course, I had not yet completed my application for the PMP nor scheduled a date for the exam. The weekend following the course, I submitted all the paper requirements on line. Within the specified time, I got my approval from PMI to take the exam. I scheduled the exam immediately and passed on Sept 4th. So 19 calendar days start-to-end. For me, this compressed, trainer-led format worked best. I recommend Off Peak Training to anyone wanting to build a solid foundation for taking the PMP exam.”
Dennis Leister, PMP
Off Peak Training Student
Off Peak Training, a Reston, VA based company, offers public and private classes to help prepare business professionals for the PMP®, CAPM®, PMI-SP®, CISSP®, CAPM®, CISA®, and is a Registered Education Provider for the Project Management Institute.
In 2008, the Project Management Institute (PMI®) released two new credentials to its family of certifications. These credentials are meant to complement previous offerings, such as the PMP®, and recognize subject matter expertise in a specific knowledge area.
They include: PMI-SP® – Scheduling Professional and PMI-RMP® – Risk Management Professional
The PMI-SP® is a versatile certification ideal for both new project schedulers lacking the experience required to obtain a PMP®, as well as experienced project managers wanting to highlight their expertise in the knowledge area of project scheduling. The PMI-SP® focuses on the development, maintenance, analysis, and communication of the project schedule to the project team. In order to be eligible to take the exam for the PMI-SP® you must meet one of the two following sets of requirements based on experience and education:
Earlier this year, Off Peak Training became the first training provider in the United States to have a PMI-SP® course registered under the PMI Registered Education Provider program. We are pleased to announce our first public PMI-SP® Exam Preparation course in November 2009. Two levels of the course will be offered:
Level 2 – Provides 24 hours of education to prepare students for the PMI-SP exam. This course is intended for students who already possess a PMP® or CAPM®. It will be held over 3 weekend days (11/14, 11/21, 11/22).
Level 1 – Provides 32 hours of education to prepare students for the PMI-SP exam. This course is intended for students who do not already have a PMI® certification. It will be held over 4 weekend days (11/7, 11/14, 11/21, 11/22).
To learn more or register for class, please visit:
http://www.offpeaktraining.com/courses/projectmanagement/pmi-sp/
Off Peak Training, a Reston, VA based company, offers public and private classes to help prepare business professionals for the PMP®, CAPM®, PMI-SP®, CISSP®, CAPM®, CISA®, and is a Registered Education Provider for the Project Management Institute.
The Project Management Institute has posted errata, or correction sheets, for the Guide to the PMBOK® 4th Edition. These sheets, typically about a page or two long, list content revisions and other corrections that are necessary for consistency and accuracy in the book. These sheets are frequently posted after a first printing of a new book. These documents do not list minor typographical errors, but instead, are meant to clarify any potential questions or confusions resulting from content errors. The vast majority of the Project Management Body of Knowledge is unaffected by these documents, so if you own a first printing of A Guide to the PMBOK® 4th edition, you should not worry about replacing your book, but it may be helpful to print off the errata sheets for reference as you read through your book. If you are not sure if your copy of A Guide to the PMBOK® is a first printing, you can check the bottom of the copyright page. The last number in the string of numbers that begins “10 9 8″ etc. will tell you which printed version you have. Click here to view the PMI® A Guide to the PMBOK® 4th Edition erata sheet.
Get a free copy of A Guide to the PMBOK® 4th edition when you sign up for any of our PM certification classes. All classes take place in Sterling Virginia, near Dulles Airport.
For all of our courses, we work with you, the student, until you pass the exam. Even if that means you take another one of our classes for free. We are committed to helping you achieve success.
Course Price = $2,395 – Sign up early for the next class to take advantage of special pricing. Call us for details. We have had a lot of requests for this class so please sign up before it fills up.
Call us: 703.638.2320 or register online at:
http://www.offpeaktraining.com/courses/projectmanagement/pmp/
Off Peak Training, a Reston, VA based company, offering public and private classes to help prepare business professionals for the PMP®, CAPM®, PMI-SP®, CISSP®, CAPM®, CISA®, and much more.
