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.

1. Get the facts together. Never walk into a situation without knowing the lay of the land and all the available information. This will help to keep you in a position of expertise and help to alleviate some stress.
2. Gather solutions. The best thing you can offer your client contact after delivering bad news is some actionable items to rectify the problem. It shows that you are aware of the issue and on top of solving it.
3. Be proactive. The more time that passes between discovery of the problem and informing your client, the worse the results will be. Do not ever wait for your clients to discover the issue on their own.
4. Be objective and pragmatic. The client sometimes gets upset; it is inevitable. Your job is not to battle them, but to work through the situation and get to a solution as quickly as possible.
5. Don’t get emotional. This may be the most difficult rule to abide. When problems arise, tensions mount, stress rises, and sometimes hurtful things are said. You must always remind yourself that this is a business situation—not a personal one and that to persevere, you have to push whatever feelings you have aside and get the job done.
6. Blame can wait. You may want to blame someone on your team or even on the client’s team. The client will probably want to do this even more than you do, but this is not the time. Finding fault before the problem is solved only wastes time and further complicates the issue. There is always time during performance reports, debriefs and meetings to worry about post-resolution responsibility.

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.

Chris Miller, PMP
Principal
Fieldstone Equity LLC

Read more testimonials at: http://www.offpeaktraining.com/category/testimonials/

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.

“I can attribute my passing the CAPM exam to Off Peak Training. If I hadn’t gone through their prep course, I probably would not have sat down and set aside time to study the PMBOK.

The instructors, Chris and Nicholas, are extremely knowledgeable in the field of Project Management. Their enthusiasm for the subject really helps and shines through as material is covered.

The manual was very well put together and easy to understand. The Knowledge Areas and Processes were color-coded and that was a big help!

I would highly recommend Off Peak Training’s services. They really know their stuff.”

- Abigail

Pictured: Abigail Aguilar, CAPM & Serge Gloukhoff, PMP of AEC Software

Read more testimonials at: http://www.offpeaktraining.com/category/testimonials/

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.

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!

Testimonials

Attendees of our PMP training classes write positive reviews…

• “…without the Off Peak Training Boot camp training there is no way I would have been able to successfully pass the PMP certification test after 5 days of prep-time” — Paul F. Steinhauer, PMP
• “…the course was well organized, the instructor knew and presented the material well and the physical setup was great…” –Dennis Leister, PMP
• More Testimonials on our blog

PMP Exam Requirements

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:

• Applicants must have 35 hours of specific project management education.
• With a Bachelor’s Degree (or the global equivalent): Applicants must have a minimum three years’ professional project management experience, during which 4,500 hours are spent leading and directing project tasks, up to eight years from the time of application.
• Without a Bachelor’s Degree (or the global equivalent): Applicants must have a minimum five years’ professional project management experience, during which at least 7,500 hours are spent leading and directing project tasks, up to eight years from the time of application.

Someone breaks the communication structure and contacts a project team member directly, getting them to commit to additional scope.

A higher-ranking person in your company (usually someone involved in sales) makes a promise to the client without consulting the project team.

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.

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.

Thanks!

Paul F. Steinhauer, PMP
Vangent, Inc.
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.

Group-think: the need to reach an overall consensus produces the most neutral and safe decision;
Dissenters: lone holdouts that refuse to agree with the rest of the group;
Stalling: the inability to come to a decision extends the milestone beyond a reasonable timeframe;
Factions: groups within the group that take sides against one another, fighting over the correct conclusion;

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.

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 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:

A high school diploma or international equivalent.
5,000 hours of scheduling experience within the last five years
40 education hours completed with a certified educator.

- or -

A bachelor’s degree or international equivalent.
3,500 hours of scheduling experience within the last five years
30 education hours completed with a certified educator.

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.