Archive for the ‘Project Management’ Category

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What I learned about job hunting

15 June 2010

Project Management Job HuntingA few weeks ago, I was invited as a panel member on “how to find opportunities in a challenging economic environment.” As part of my preparation, I listed all of my 22 previous jobs since high school, where I found those opportunities and whether I searched for those jobs or if the jobs found me.

Overall, 27% came from ads, 64% from referrals and 9% from co-op placement. It was interesting that 50% of the time, I was actively searching for jobs, and for the other half, the opportunities found me. Take note that for the last seven years, 100% of projects that I worked on came through referrals.

Lessons learned: devote 1/3 of your job search on networking and referrals, tell your friends about your expertise and availability, and recognize that most of the jobs are not posted anywhere!

Connect with Dr. John A. Estrella via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

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Three E’s For Dealing With Difficult People

30 April 2010

Rules for RenegadesChristine Comaford-Lynch’s book Rules for Renegades (p. 174) talked about how to deal with difficult people. I found her advice useful so I decided to share it here.

Equalize: Place yourself on par with the person in your mind. You both were drooling babies; you both will grow old and die; you both are made of the same stuff.

Exchange: Perhaps the person is suffering in some aspect of life. Maybe this is why the individual is so difficult to deal with. Remeber a time when you were struggling and ‘exchange’ your suffering for his or hers.

Embrace: Accept people exactly as they are. When you are annoyed by people’s behaviours, know that you cannot possibly change them. So, embrace or accept them just as they are. Later on, you can decide to interact with them or not.

Connect with Dr. John A. Estrella via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

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US $12 Trillion Reasons Why The World Needs You to Teach Project Management

9 April 2010

Project Management TrainingThis week, I was interviewed for an article for PMITeach.org. During the interview, the need for more organizations and professionals to offer project management courses became so obvious.

Consider the following facts: roughly US $12 trillion will be spent on projects each year (1/5 of the world’s gross domestic product) with average projected new jobs of 1.2 million yearly for the next decade. At 30% attrition rate, try to imagine the need to train and retrain these project management professionals.

If you are planning to start or strengthen your project management training business, there are plenty of resources out there that can help you. You can start with PMI’s standards and PMITeach.org.

Interestingly enough, good project managers may not necessarily translate into excellent teachers. For want-to-be teachers, until we can bridge that gap, there will always be a shortfall.

Connect with Dr. John A. Estrella via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

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Teenagers? Teach Them Project Management!

5 April 2010

PMI Educational FoundationThe Project Management Institute Educational Foundation (PMI EF) aims “to enrich lives through knowledge of and education in Project Management Life Skills.”

As a scholarship recipient, PMI EF paid for a portion of my doctoral studies. PMI EF contributes greatly to our society. I particularly like the Project Management Skills for Life course.

If you have teenagers or if you work with youth on various projects (e.g., church groups, community groups, Scouts), this free course is an excellent way to expose them to the project management profession. Youth can download the handbook and instructors can use the PowerPoint slides to teach the materials.

Most children aim to be doctors, lawyers, firefighters and police officers when they grow up. I am hoping that someday, we will start hearing children who would like to be project managers when they grow up!

Connect with Dr. John A. Estrella via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

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Posted in Project Management | 3 Comments »

Traceability Matrix: Letter vs. Spirit of the Law

26 March 2010

Project Management Audit - Traceability MatrixAfter posting my blog about project scope creep, Joshua Milane asked if I am a proponent of traceability matrices. I replied YES.

He immediately sent me his preferred approach. It is a good article particularly for practitioners who occasionally prefer the spirit vs. the letter of various methodologies, processes and standards.

As long as the job gets done, is it really necessary to have physical vs. conceptual traceability matrices? In my projects, I have never seen the former per se but I know that we can:

- trace the origins of requirements
- map the design against the requirements
- vet the solution against the design
- pinpoint where a change came from
- identify who signed off on the changes

We use unique IDs for requirements, test cases, defects and change requests to link various artefacts. Do we need more?

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Posted in Project Management | 4 Comments »

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