In addition to selecting the appropriate methodology, project managers should proactively seek out key requirements for managing projects in accordance with internal and external requirements. These requirements can range from statutory compliance requirements as well as organizational policies that relate to decision making by the project manager. This enables correct and appropriate decisions in line with these requirements.

Project governance guides project management activities in different phases of a project. Armed with this guidance, a project manager does not inadvertently undertake activities or makes a decision that contravenes established norms. These norms that ought to be adhered to include the need to ensure project is undertaken in accordance with strategic direction set, making informed and well thought out decisions as well as being transparent to facilitate feedback.

To align projects to overall strategic direction of the organization, a structure for governance is required. This structure enables identifying a sponsor and project steering committee that oversees the activities of the project manager is identified. The project manager in turn oversees the activities of the project management team who manage the project team members. The project itself is defined as a culmination of a series of phases, each ending with a predefined phase gate in which phase deliverables are delivered.

Such a governance structure based on a project with clearly defined phase gates has two benefits. It offers the steering committees to provide the required oversight and decide on whether a project phase has been completed as planned. It also offers the project team an opportunity to develop lessons learned at the end of each phase by validating assumptions made at the beginning of each phase.

Governance structures enables roles for governance and decision making to be undertaken at appropriate levels. When requirements are fixed and validated, governance structures are based primarily on immediate reporting relationships. However, when requirements evolve with time and circumstances specific roles for governance must be established. In agile based project management approach such as scrum, the different roles for governance are delineated based on product, process as well as development.

A product owner is responsible for providing guidance and making decisions regarding the product being produced. This product owner represents the customer and acts as the voice of the customer.

A scrum master is responsible for providing guidance and making decisions regarding the process being undertaken. He or she acts as a supportive or servant leader for the scrum team.

The scrum development team is self-organized as they make all decisions pertaining to the development of the product that is to be delivered to the client. In this regard the team ultimately decides on the tasks as well as the duration or effort required to complete the tasks.

Being a Project Management Professional (PMP)

As you embark on the journey of being a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP), you should be guided by four main considerations.

They include:

1. Unlearning and relearning to reframe your thinking
2. Applying key principles in decision making
3. Recognizing how concepts apply in practice
4. Practicing applying what you have learned

This article seeks to elaborate on these considerations to better prepare you on what lies ahead.

Unlearning and Relearning to reframe your thinking

The questions in the Project Management Professional (PMP) exam are not meant to test how you deal with situations and make decisions in practice. They are meant to assess whether you know how a professional project manager deals with situations that emerge.

You may not be used to think in this way. However, for the purpose of passing the PMP exam you need to unlearn what you are used to do and relearn how you should do things from the perspective of a professional. Unlearning requires asking questions, clarifying issues and being open to reframing the context within which situations emerge.

As you attend the Project Management Professional (PMP) classes, you will be exposed to a different way of thinking and analyzing situations. These would initially appear too idealistic to be applied in practice. However, these are best practices that have stood the test of time and need to guide your thinking process as a Professional Project Manager.

To help you unlearn and relearn, it would help if you welcomed new perspectives that are shared in overcoming challenges faced. Instead of relying on what you already know, try to reanalyze the challenge or situation from the perspective of a professional project manager.

Asking good and relevant questions is also important. By asking questions you develop a better clarity of what you are unlearning. This will transform the unlearning experience into a discovery experience.

Applying key principles when selecting the correct answer

When selecting the correct option to choose in the PMP exam, be always guided by basic principles of project management. There are several underlying principles that should guide your thinking when managing projects as a professional.

These include: 

• Seeking to understand before seeking to be understood
• Being proactive when overcoming challenges
• Refraining from being reactive when dealing with challenges
• Taking necessary action required in a timely basis
• Seeking and incorporating continual improvement

By basing your answers on these principles, you should be able to eliminate options that are:

• Reactive in nature
• Take too long to be implemented
• Involve others when they require decisions to be made by the project manager

You will be better able to zoom into options that:

• Involve seeking more clarification and understanding
• Are proactive in terms of preventing problems from recurring
• Indicate an attempt to improve what is being done

Recognizing how concepts apply in practice

Concepts relating to people management, process management as well as business environment considerations are meant to guide you to have a structured and analytical way of dealing with these issues. You should understand the concepts individually as well as seek to find how these concepts are integrated in practice. Start thinking how these concepts apply in practice based on your experience to deepen your understanding.

As you become exposed to many such concepts, theories, terminologies your understanding level should be broadened. Gradually you will be able to see the interrelationships between different concepts to help you select an option that integrates different topics and concepts in a holistic manner.

Practicing applying what you have learnt

The ONLY way to internalize the process of unlearning and relearning, applying principles and recognizing concepts is by doing exam-based questions. It’s OK if you answer these questions incorrectly. It only confirms that your unlearning and relearning is incomplete, you have not internalized the principles and you are still grappling with the concepts at a very superficial level.

Selecting the incorrect answer and then being clear where you went wrong is important. It helps you refine your understanding and internalize the concepts, principles and reinforces the unlearning and relearning.

Scrum is a framework that focuses on continuous improvement. In particular, the Scrum retrospective is a time for teams to reflect on the opportunities to continually improve.

The Scrum sprint retrospective is a timeboxed meeting that takes place after the sprint review. Its purpose is to:

1. Examine how the just-completed sprint went as far as people, relationships, processes, and tools.
2. Identify and order what went well.
3. Do the same with things that didn’t go well.
4. Identify potential improvements.
5. Create a plan for implementing improvements to the way the Scrum team accomplishes its work.

What is discussed during the Scrum retrospective? Everything that affects how the Scrum team develops the product is open to discussion and improvement. It allows development teams to adapt Scrum to their particular circumstances. This is in line with one of the pillars of the Scrum principle which is articulation.

Scheduling a Scrum retrospective at the end of every sprint ensures that needed changes are understood by all Scrum team members and implemented before they are lost. It helps to identify how they can improve the specific things they contributed to the sprint, asking:

1. What work has been done well in this sprint?
2. What work hasn’t been done well?
3. What should we start doing to improve?

How to run a sprint retrospective:

One of the most common retrospective techniques is using a start-stop-continue approach. Each development team member is asked to identify the things the team should start doing, the ones they should stop doing, and the things they should continue doing.

The Scrum Master can facilitate this process by asking attendees to call out ideas during the Scrum, or they can go around the room and get feedback on what to start, stop, and continue in a more orderly fashion, person by person.

Agenda

While the agendas for sprint retrospective meetings can vary, they generally cover these common steps:

1. Setting the goal—Establish the objectives of the meeting up front, such as aiming to improve daily Scrum stand-ups, enhance communication with stakeholders or product owners, change operating rules, or something else.
2. Gathering essential data—Draw on everyone’s experience and perspective to create a shared body of information.
3. Developing insights—From the amassed data, identify useful patterns and see the big picture, always asking why things happened the way they did.
4. Deciding on the next steps—Identify the issues and challenges the team will tackle, and put in place a concrete plan of how to achieve success for each one.
5. Closing the retrospective—Clarify and summarize the meeting, thank participants, and consider how future retrospectives could be improved.

Some advantages of conducting the Scrum retrospectives are:-

• Increases customer value
• Helps to identify issues early
• Sprint Retrospective creates a collaborative and communicative environment that allows honest, open and transparent conversations
• Pinpoint Process Improvements
• Promotes learning and growth mindset.
• Facilitate Transparency which is a pillar of a Scrum principles, Empirical Process Control.

To learn more about the Scrum retrospective, join our “Online Scrum Master Certification” course. Click on this link to learn more.

By,

Udhay Sharma,

Certified Scrum Trainer,

Scrum Master Certified, Scrum Product Owner Certified, Scrum Developer Certified,

HRD Corp Certified Trainer

Do you qualify for the Project Management Professional (PMP®) Certification?

In the field of Project Management, the most popular professional upskilling certification course is the Project Management Professional (PMP®) Certification. However, before anyone can join for the course and sit for the exam, they will need to qualify for the course.

Aspiring students will need to satisfy the following conditions:-

• Degree or Diploma in any field;
• If in possession of Degree, at least 3 non-overlapping years of project management based work experience. If in possession of a Diploma, at least 5 non-overlapping years of project management based work experience;
• 35 Contact Hours of Project Management education with an Authorized Training Partner (ATP)

The first question that usually arises when an aspiring student views the terms above is if their work can be considered as a ‘project’ in the eyes of PMI. In short, if you are working towards a unique deliverable (as opposed to an operation), with defined start and end dates, it is most likely a project that you are working on.

As for the non-overlapping requirement, let's look at an example to see how this plays out. Assume an aspiring PMP candidate worked on multiple projects that add up to 3 years, but all projects were concurrently managed and was actually completed in 18 months. This candidate would not qualify despite the fact that both the projects he has worked on adds up to 3 years, as the timeframe was overlapping. This candidate would still need to have another 18 months of experience before being able to qualify for the examination.

This is what PMI means when it says your experience must be non-overlapping. Keep this in mind when adding up project experience.

The applicant must also show that, over the course of their experience, they have worked in some fashion on each of the five process groups: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring and Controlling, and Closing. They need not have touched on all these areas for every project, nor is there an hourly requirement for each specific process group. But in the aggregate, must document some hours falling within each of these process groups over the course of the overall experience.

One final note on the experience requirement: PMI will not consider work experience that is obtained more than 7 years before the date of your application. This cutoff sometimes wreaks havoc for people who worked on projects in the distant past, but have not done much recently.

Audit

PMI will usually accept that the experience aspiring students have declared on paper without further scrutiny. However, aspiring students must not simply misstate their experience. This would be a serious ethical violation and would likely bar students from ever obtaining your PMP certification designation (or any other PMI® credential for that matter). In any case, PMI also randomly audits around 5 – 10% of all PMP exam candidates to verify that all information provided is accurate.

These audits are fairly simple with the first step being the submission of your education certificates. Next, applicants must verify the project experience submitted, by having your project supervisor sign off a pre-prepared letter confirming your experience in the projects listed. Finally, the applicant must prove that they have collected the required 35 Contact Hours of project management education by sharing proof of attendance.

If you are interested in obtaining a PMI certification but do not qualify, there is still a way to distinguish yourself before PMP certification. Aspiring project managers should consider earning their Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)® Certification. Find out more here

If you do think you qualify, the PMP certification remains a must-have for any serious project manager, opening the door to increased salary and better job opportunities. Let us help you take the next step in your career. Contact us for further information on the course!