PMP !

It's official. I have done it. I am now a PMI-certified Project Management Professional (PMP)!

I took the exam yesterday (29-Dec) and spent a little over 3 hours on it. When I hit the submit button to finish the exam, I was fairly confident that I would pass. In fact, during my entire preparation I had full confidence that passing this exam was inevitable.

The reason for my confidence is that I had fully project-planned my entire PMP experience! I made the goal of attaining the PMP back about May 2010. I then realized my company was offering a prep course for the PMP exam in November. I signed up for the course and targeted December as to when I would take the exam. So my milestones were set!

I signed up to become a member of PMI & my local chapter in mid-June. I then spent Saturdays going into the office over the summer to count up my hours. To aid in this, I scoured the web for a spreadsheet that would enable me to easily count my hours. I found one and several Saturdays in June, July & August were spent tallying these hours going back 3-4 years.

The next step was to get these hours into the PMI website. I'll admit there was some slight procrastination here :) Actually, I already had a lot of slack for this task. The hard part was counting the hours. All that was left was data entry. So one Friday night, I stayed late at work and entered all the hours.

The next step came in November when I took the PMP course. I missed a lot of it because of work issues that came up, but the materials in the class were invaluable. It was taught by ESI and I got all their study aids as well as the 9-disc CD set for each knowledge area. I then decided to set a date for the exam in late December and made that my target. For over a month, I studied: Listened to the CDs, read the PMBOK, did practice questions, downloaded PMP apps for the iphone that I could play with on the subway; After this initial stage, I deep-dived (dove?) into each knowledge area. I bought the Head-First PMP book and did the entire book. I then re-took the practice questions from Stage 1, elevating all my previous scores to about 90% and higher. I was already sure that I would pass the exam at this stage. I then took a full comprehensive test exam that ESI provided me with and then the online Head-First PMP exam. On both I scored 85 % and higher.

I then just practiced writing down a few formulas and making sure I knew them cold. And that was it!

It's really amazing how planning this whole endeavor worked so well. I executed flawlessly and mission accomplished!

So tips for passing the PMP: I don't have much to add that would improve upon what many others out there already advocate. Just that you should know your own style of studying. I am an accomplished test taker and so I already knew what would be the most effective for me. Do the same for yourself and you should be fine. A little discipline goes a long way!

Cross-Managing

One of the most valuable things I've heard on my project management journey is "If you want to be a project manager, you have to first learn to be managed". I was puzzled by this but it was so zen-sounding, I just knew there was some truth in it. That was several years ago and since then I've seen the truth of that statement everywhere. Many people want so badly to be "managers" and feel that by getting their PMPs & learning to delegate, they will have made it in the project management profession. They don't want to put in the time to learn the tasks they need to do their current job really well. They do the tasks to get them over with so they can get onto the next "bigger" thing. In other words, they become close to "un-manageable" in the job they are already in. Why would a senior person trust such a person with an important project to do if they are unable to perform their current job really well?

That's the way to grow in this business of business: Perform excellent work *now* in whichever role or function you're in. Gradually you begin to build yourself up and show yourself capable. Then people everywhere come to see you as reliable and you will increasingly get more work (which is a good thing!) Before you know it, you will become a manager!

However, it doesn't stop there. The entire business of management is not only top down, but also  bottom-up (as I've blogged about here: Managing Up). Now, I have yet another addition: Managing Across! What does this mean? It means managing people on initiatives/requests that you have no direct relationship with. So for e.g., since I am in IT, I have no direct relationship with someone in Expense Management or Credit. However they may ask me for something or I might need something from them. There is no on-going project that we're all involved in. Usually it's something like a one-off request. And yes, this can easily be seen as a distraction from current project work. And people may not respond with alacrity. Or they may not respond at all! In fact in some circumstances, you may need to escalate to get your request fulfilled. So in this case, there's nothing really in the PMBOK guide that addresses such circumstances (or actually there may be; I just haven't looked closely enough). However, some of the techniques that are used for managing people in general can be valuable here as well.

Here are a few:

• Ask for a favor
• Make the request as simple as possible
• Make a phone-call OR send an email and then follow up with a phone call: a personal touch is much more effective than an email to someone you don't know
• Thank them!
• When someone requests something of you in a similar fashion, respond with alacrity and be helpful

Managing Across is yet another opportunity to learn to be managed. We're managed by our bosses, but we can also be managed by colleagues in other parts of the organizations to provide them help/information. It's a constant exercise and requires discipline. There is no point at which you will NOT be managed.

In fact, if I can get philosophical, Life is the greatest manager of them all. Life constantly introduces new stresses and pressures; it changes directions on all of us & sometimes does so whimsically.  We all are managed by life in one way or another. So how do you deal with it?

The answer: Being managed at work is a microcosm of life in general and serves as excellent practice! So if you find yourself getting frustrated by requests from others or "distracted" from your project, treat that as an opportunity to be managed. How you respond in such circumstances will be an indicator of how you respond to your life in general.