Monday, February 13, 2012

The All-Important PMP

Whether you’re managing one small project or multiple large projects, you want to serve your client(s) with efficiency and proof of solid, consistent performance. The best way to set this up is to develop a Project Management Plan (PMP).

A PMP is essentially the work plan for a project, without all of the contractual legalese. It’s a living document, as a project moves forward, describing the how, who, and when for each step. If managing multiple projects for a single client, identify all aspects that are common to that client, then define how they should be tackled. As an example, consider invoices: your Project Management Plan should describe what needs to be included on each invoice, and there should be a sample format. This simple instruction can save a huge amount of wasted effort, aggravation, and client dissatisfaction. Other elements of a Project Management Plan include:

• Goals & objectives

• Project approach (general scope and accountability)

• Team organization & responsibilities

• Risk management

• Quality control / quality assurance process

• Master/task order contract

• Change management process

• Communication plan


Thoughtfully creating a PMP you can stick with will provide the deep understanding and common ground you need to command your project’s direction and ultimate success.

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3 comments:

keira said...

Thanks for your article, its looks interesting and providing some valuable information.Please post some more articles and mean while please check PMStudy.com for those who are searching for Pmp Exam , pmp certification PMP Online Classes

Daisy said...


Is it worth getting PMP certified?

PSMJ Resources, Inc. said...

Thanks for your question! We asked our project management expert, Chris Martersteck, your question, and here’s what he had to say:

We do tend to believe certification of any kind and having appropriate credentials are valuable. However we also find that like all the initials after my name, mainly credentials act to open doors for you to be able to perform rather than providing tremendous amount of knowledge - which is really best gained by hands on experience on real projects.

In addition, using PMI's tools and techniques in the AE arens, you run the risk of making things too detailed and too complicated and then that people will abandon use of your tools and processes if it is not fairly simple in this industry.

I believe the party line at PSMJ - and I agree with this - is that PMP certification is very valuable. And we agree with the concept so much that our bootcamp course also incorporate at a simple level all of the basic project management concepts that they preach. Mike and Bill are PMP certified I believe and I have taken a number of their courses which are very good.

However unless you are running extremely complex and large projects we believe that the industry needs to walk before it tries to run and right now it is in a crawling mode. As a result we tend to think that. PMP for this industry is currently overkill and tends to be costly to achieve and maintain.

If you would first do all the things in our course consistently, then we think you could consider sending the $$ and time to move on to PMP certification. But in typical projects in our industry the planning, tracking and monitoring that we must -or are prepared to budget to do - to keep even extremely complex projects on track doesnt warrant it or even have enough resources in a typical project to achieve.

For very complex industries like pharmaceutical or information technology we see many people who have this certification who manage the entire effort from R&D through production design and setup and facility design and construction and government approvals - and do use those tools at that level.

AEs not so much.

Thanks! Please let us know if we can help you with anything else.

 
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