What's next after PMP?

Good day,

I am sure that the above question resonates in each of you, who has been PMP certified for sometimes. You have done great job with project deliveries, successfully delivered multiple projects at different scale, holding PMP certification for years, and... what's next?

In term of study, I found a number of certifications in the market that can well complement your PMP degree. As for me, PMP was my first professional certification I obtained in 2010. Soon after that I had CISA certification by ISACA, followed by ITIL v.3, Agile Scrum Master and Six Sigma Green Belt.

With today's trend in project delivery, whereby a significant number of projects are delivered in agile manner, I would personally recommend that Agile scrum master can fit nicely to your project management portfolio. While PMP is heavily focusing on waterfall, a scrum master certification can give you a different paradigm towards project delivery with agile methodology.

The two certifications together will increase your credibility in project delivery. There are a number of training providers providing Agile training and certification including PMI itself. Regardless which provider you choose, the one that matters the most is the skill for you to see and experience the difference between Agile and waterfall. See my earlier post on the two methodologies to start learning on the difference between the two.

Another path in project management you might be interested to pursue is to becoming a program manager or portfolio manager. In brief, as a certified project manager you are acknowledged on your skill to lead one project into completion. It takes a totally different skill if you want to lead the delivery of multiple projects at one time. Going this path will take you into a managerial position where you are expected to oversee the delivery of multiple projects each has its own project manager.

Again, for this certification, PMI offers a good set of skill development courses, i.e. PgMP and PfMP. This skill is still considerably rare in Indonesia, which creates a good distinctive opportunity for you.

Well, hope that gives you a bit of light that there are still a wide opportunity for skill progression and self development in project manager once you are PMP certified.

-Edwin-

When good work is not enough

Good day,

It has been a while since the last time I posted a new blog. Well, adjusting in a new working place needs me to focus all my energy and attention. As you might all know, when you start a new career then you can not rely on all your previous achievements, no matter how great they are. You need to once again prove yourself worthy. And in many cases, that might mean investing all your time and energy.

Anyway, that is not the topic I would like to bring up in today's posting. I am more interested to discuss an interesting fact when working well is not enough. Sounds weird, doesn't it? From the day of our childhood, our parents and seniors would encourage us to work well and be sure that we will get what we deserve in return, praises, salary increase, reward and promotion,

Let me challenge you on that. How many of you have witnessed yourselves that the ones who earn a promotion is not the ones that work the hardest or stay the longest in the office. In most opportunities, promotion goes to the ones that can "sell" themselves to the senior management, regardless of their real performance. When we really think about it, it is quite natural isn't it? Our managements will give appreciation to those they see doing well and might not be aware of the true performance when their success get hindered by their colleagues or managers.

Well, given that the above situation is something we can not avoid, my advice to you would be to keep doing your best, work hard and smart, and put your best effort, as your seniors would tell you to. But, as importantly is, do not keep silent. Let your good performance observable by your colleagues, managers, and if possible, until the top rank in your organization.

How? Making good progress reports, asking time for presentations, contribute in solving a problem with your work whenever possible, and always be there to support your other colleagues are among the things you can do to get yourselves visible and heard. It might not happen overnight, but over time people will start seeing the value within you and trusting you on bigger responsibilities with greater impact to your organization.

At the end, never give up. Good work is always good. When it is not enough, then making yourselves visible is the next thing you need to do.

-Edwin-

To deliver with a limited resource

Good day...

Have you experienced a time when you are expected to deliver good result, nevertheless you are equipped with a very limited number of resources? You have a small team, who are passionate about the work, yet, very obvious that you fall short of resources immediately after the delivery commences.

This is where you need to be smart in utilizing any source of assistance you can get. Highly qualified vendor is always a good option for you to turn to. Browse through different vendors you can possibly work with and use them as your partner. In this situation you might want to sacrifice some of your idealism and rely more on the capable team the vendor has. A careful vendor selection process is key for you to appoint the right one, based on their experience, expertise and team capabilities. Getting recommendations from other people, your manager, your team members, your cross department colleagues will also help in determining the right vendor.

Picture credit: Tumisu

Another good option you will have in this situation is to look around and see any resource outside of your department that are passionate about the work you are doing. For example, any work related to innovation, technology, or digital might sound very attractive to most people and I am sure that you will be able to find good people that are not officially reporting to you, but are willing to spare some of their time to be involved in the activity you are doing. In this case, make sure that you have the endorsement from their line managers to avoid any future conflict.

Lastly and very importantly, you need to develop your team. No matter how junior they are, as long as they are passionate on what they are doing and willing to do extra mile, there is a huge chance that they will be strong contributors to your work. You might need to spend extra time to coach them and make sure that they are up to speed with your expectation, but do not hold off, just do it! It is the right thing you need to do.

-Edwin-

Becoming a good team player

Good day...

Throughout the postings I have done so far, you would have noticed that majority of the topic is discussing to become a strong leader and a highly capable project manager. But not in every occasion we can be the leader. In many occasions we have to play our role as a team member or as a project supporter. Especially when you are a new starter at project management.

This is completely OK and it is key for you not to feel that you are not important. A project or any other team efforts can run successfully only when all of the team members contribute to the expected level. Therefore, when you are in the position as a team player, make sure that you do all you can to bring the project into success. Despite that you have been a seasoned project manager for multiple large and complex projects, when you are in the position of a team player, demonstrate your respect to your leader.

It might be tempting to start thinking that you can do better than what your project manager does to lead the project. However, remember, you are not expected to lead the project at that very moment. Hence, keep the temptation deep inside your heart and put aside your ego for a while. By becoming a strongly contributing team member, you will be surprised that without you realize, there will be chance to lead part of the project, or even, the entire project one day, or even better, to lead another similarly important project.

Whenever you are positioned as a team member, always be sure that you become a catalyst for the other team members to work effectively. Try to remove any barrier with any third party of the project. And most importantly, try your best to becoming a problem solver and provide conflict resolution to the team. I am sure that your project manager or anyone observing the project journey will soon realize your potential and give you a more important role within the project or at other projects.

-Edwin

Picture credit: bykst

Are you a project manager without team?

Good day...

What is your first impression when you read the above question? It might sound ridiculous, doesn't it? How can you become a project manager if you do not have project team assigned to you? But wait! For some people it is so true that they are assigned project manager job, however, they haven't got anyone reporting to them. Well, what would be the solution in this case?

Picture credit: SJJP

As I have experienced the situation myself, I will try to give some tips here. Firstly, it would be acceptable if you are a lone-ranger project manager at start. However, with more success being delivered, I would strongly recommend you to strive for resources. I believe that by then your manager will realize how valuable your work is and obtaining resources to continue the successful delivery must not be that hard.

Secondly, during the 'proof-your-self' stage, it is barely possible to do everything by yourself. This is the time when your wit is being challenged. You would need to think of something creative here. In my experience, finding a resourceful vendor would be one good option. As usually, when your organization does not provide you with resources, they will back you up with budget.

Well, when neither of resource and budget is allocated to you, here is the time for you to use your personal relationship with your colleagues and other team members to help you out. Try to make use of every opportunity that resources can be assigned to you, for example, through internship or management trainee program. Once you notice that the organization is open for such program, be the first who voluntarily applies to be a mentor. In a worse scenario you need to leverage your bonding with the other team members and asking them to assist you. In return, you would need to give them the credit they deserve, appraisals, and could be some form of personal reward. Trust me, they will appreciate your sincere reaction to their assistance.

In the end, to answer the first question whether being a project manager alone is possible... I would say NO for a literal single-fighter project manager without any team member. The key to the question is use all of your creativity to find a team member and proof yourself and your project worthy for team members along the way to obtain all the resources you need.

-Edwin

Is leader born or made?

Good day...

Picture credit: Stones

The above question has been around for the past century. People are always asking whether leadership is given since the person was born, or something that a person can learn and grow. With the hypothesis that leaders are born, there have been a number of researches, trying to crack what genetic factor that shapes a leader.

In my opinion, there is no absolute answer to the above question. In my professional lifetime, I have met many natural leaders, who are born with strong character of a leader, namely discipline, result oriented, problem solver and people person at the same time. However, I also noticed that some people are growing leadership along with their career progression. In many cases, this is observable when a person is assigned a role when leadership is required, such as a project manager or team manager.

So, as of today, my conclusion is leadership is a combination between a person's character with learn and grow experience. There are many sources for leadership development. You can easily find endless number of book titles talking about leadership. In addition tot that, real life experience is the best leadership teacher to each individual.

In my case, I feel that the development of my leadership style began when I joined a company that some of the senior team members did not really welcome a new joiner in their team. Faced with hardship and challenges to cope with their way of working, until I was finally acknowledged as a good contributor, I promised to myself that when I become a leader, I will treat each of my team member with a personal care to their career and personal development. 

Coming back to the question which started this posting, I am a strong believer that leadership is a combination of both the character with learn and grow experience of an individual.

-Edwin-

Does PMP certification matter?

Picture credit: ArtsyBee

Good day...

The answer to the above question I believe would be something that everyone starting her career in project management would be looking for. In this posting I will try to share my opinion on the very crucial question.

As we know, there are a number of well-known certification in project management space. PMP and Prince2 are among the most accredited ones. Apart from those two, there are also local certifications at every country. Having worked with many project managers, both with and without certification, I found that being a certified project manager does not necessarily make you a stronger PM than your non-certified colleagues, and vice versa.

Don't get me wrong here. I am a certified PMP myself since 2010 and I found that the framework and methodology being elaborated in the certification course and exam is very useful as a foundation thinking towards the best and standardized project management practice in the industry. The material really helps you to have a structured thinking on different aspects of a project.

On the other hand, I learnt that to become a strong project manager, knowledge is far from adequate. The main characteristics any project manager needs to have in order to be successful in this space is strong communication skill, leadership, people management and result oriented. Without these four characteristics your chance to be successful is less, no matter how familiar you are with project management theory.

Again, whilst going through the project management book and sitting in the exam helps you to accelerate your knowledge, experience in problem solving and dealing with different situations in practice is something can never be replaced by any kind of study. 

I met some very strong project managers without certification, and at the same time, I have also been working with equally strong project managers with certification. However, in my experience, there are a number of job openings with project management certification as an advantage to the candidate. In my l case, I have been engaged by several organizations to help them in dealing with their clients, who required the representative to be a PMP certified.

As a conclusion, in my opinion, although being a certified project manager does not guarantee your quality in leading a project, I would recommend you to take the certification whenever you have the opportunity to, in order to upscale your credibility in the very competitive job market. At the same time, you will enjoy the benefit of having a basic structural thinking on best project management practice. 

-Edwin-